Lobbying Congress: Advocacy and Digital Empowerment
How has digital technology changed advocacy? What should influence look like in a networked social environment? How can individuals best affect government? What role should intermediaries, advocacy organizations, opinion leaders and movement organizers play in organizing government?
Matt Stoller is a political consultant and blogger. He has worked in liberal internet politics for five years in a variety of institutional and outsider roles, including blogging for Jon Corzine for Governor in 2005, working in communications and blog outreach for the Democratic National Convention in 2004 where he started the first blog for a national political convention, and embedded himself in the campaigns of Ned Lamont in 2006 and Donna Edwards from 2006-2008. His consulting clients have included MSNBC, Free Press, Actblue, Working Assets, the Sunlight Foundation, NDN, Miramax Books and They Work for Us.
John Wonderlich is the Policy Director for the Sunlight Foundation and one of the nation's foremost advocates for open government. John spearheads Sunlight's goal of changing the culture of the federal government by opening up key data sources and expanding the use of new media tools by elected officials in order to make them more accountable to their constituents. He is one of the foremost authorities on lobbying reform, franking and social media use in Congress as well as efforts to shed light on the congressional legislative process.
