I’m at the Politics Online Conference, put on by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. It seems to be te place to be. With 400+ paid attendees, it’s the biggest conference the IPDI has put on.

The attendees ain’t no Internet hippies. The guys dressed informally are the ones whose navy blue suits don’t have pin stripes. Well, there is a Net brigade here, including Cameron Barrett, Mathew Gross, Joe Trippi, Dick Bell, Scott Heiferman, Joe Trippi. I’ve heard Zephyr is coming, too. (Yay!)

[NOTE: Much of what follows is in the voice of the speakers.]

Phil Noble (PoliticsOnline) is the moderator: It’s a revolution. Are you having fun? Even TV didn’t change politics as much as the Internet will. We’ve come so far so quickly: It was in 2004 that the first home page for a candidate was created, for Diane Feinstein. Two years later, Bob Dole, “the most unwired white man in America,” talked about his home page in a debate. Then Jesse Ventura, then John McCain. The digital revolution is here.

Panelists: Charles Buchwalter (Nielsen ratings), Ed Kellerr (RoperASW), Mathew Gross (Dean blogger), Scott Heiferman (MoveOn.org) and Jimmy Orr (Internet News Director, The White House…yes, that White House).

Charles Buchwalter (Nielsen Net Ratings). People use TV because it’s what they’ve done. The Bush and KErry TV campaigns are the ultimate brand campaigns, trying to distill their brands into just afew words. [Which is why they’re evil. Oh, wait, that’s my conclusion.]

There’s definitive evidence that online is going mainstream. Whether you’re talking about seniors, or Hispanics, there are groups across the board going online.

Do online media offer unique opportunities to reach new voters? Yes. [He shows some slides of data, but there are props on the sage obscuring my view.] Web users seems to be about 15% more likely to be interested in politics than a typical American. Web users are less likely to say that TV is their main source of news. Web users also vote at much higher rates. Overall, in the US population: 28% are Dem, 32% are Republican, and 40% are independent; the Web population significantly skews Republican. Buchwalter suggests that this is because of the digital divide. The conservative sites are more homogeneously conservative; the liberal sites have more independent visitors.

He ends with a pitch for using Nielsen to figure out which sites to advertise on.

Ed Keller (RoberASW) is a co-author of The Influentials. Who are these influentials? [He uses the rhetoric of “conversation,” maybe because the theme of the conference is “The Conversation is Changing” — Markets are conversations and so are elections…at least they should be.] “Decisions are conversations,” he says. From 1977 through today, word of mouth has become the dominant factor in conversations. The Internet enables word of mouth. The influencers are 10% of the population. [Ed goes through his standard slides about the demographics of the influentials. I sort of stopped caring, for no particular reason.] The influentials are connected to groups. [“The Influentials” is starting to sound like a bad Harold Robbins novel. “Gig Young and Kim Novak are The Influentials…in Panorama!”]

Scott Heiferman (Meetup). Scott shows photos of recent MeetUps, starting with a Bush MeetUp in Florida. Scott dispells myths about MeetUp: It’s not just Dean, it’s not just young, it’s not just for “decideds,” it’s not just bottom-up, it’s not just about raising money to buy TV ads (“Cut out the middleman”). and the idea that people want to get together is not new. Scott holds up a placard from an event sponsor and says: “This is not good.” It’s from a company that sells video-enhanced banner ads. “This is not what it’s about.” [Go, Scott!]

Mathew Gross (Dean blogger). I love Ed’s numbers because a year ago it was hard to convince people that the Web sphere matters. Blogs let you do communication and community. Simply having the tool won’t change politics; it’s how you use it and what you say. The Web is and will continue to be a written medium. Home pages may start to disappear in favor of weblogs. Weblogs won’t succeed if it’s just press releases posted in reverse chronological order. The challenge is to make the site engaging. We did that in part by engagingi n the conversation alaready going on in the blogosphere. People read blogs looking for a filter. And weblogs and commenting gives everyone the ability to interact with the campaign.

Scott Orr (Internet News Director for the White House) was advised by White House counsel not to show up.

Q: David Halberstam says that the Internet isn’t as transformative as TV. It’s good for outsiders coming in, but not a big deal otherwise.

Charles: Yes.

scott: The lines are blurry. Suppose a campaign promotes its MeetUp campaign via TV.

Keller: It’s too early to tell.

Q: Mr. Keller, what are the age demographics of the influentials?

Keller: They’re found in every age group. There are more boomer influentials because there are more boomers.

Q: [Micah Sifry] Charles, what makes someone count as a “net user”?

Charles: It’s a wide spectrum.

Q: Ed, are you saying that influencers are the same whether you’re talking about SUVs or voting. I’ve never seen anyone genericize influencers across all categories.

Keller: If you step back from the individual point of view, that’s what we look at. [?]

Q: [Henry Copeland from BlogAds] What percentage of influentials are online political citizens?

Keller: 7% of the population are OPCs.

Henry: That means half the influentials are OPCs.

Q: The Dean campaign raised $22M. Why did the campaign spend so little on Internet stuff, and most of it on Iowa and NH TV ads?

Mathew: We invsted far more in the Internet than any other campaign in history. We’re not at the point at which the Internet can solve all problems. When you’re 4-6 weeks out from Iowa, it’s TV. The online communities are tremendous because they help you put the resources on the grouhd or on the air. The Internet is more powerul, at this stage, at the initial stage of the compaign.

Scott: Because most online advertising doesn’t work.

[My point of view: Good panel. But not enough about what makes the Net special. Or, maybe I’m just wrong. Noooooo!]

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