We Are Social and A New Politics

simon.collister

A New Politics

We’re really pleased to be helping the NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations – England’s umbrella body for the voluntary sector) socialise tomorrow’s flagship political campaigning conference, A New Politics.

The event pulls together an impressive line-up of campaigners, political insiders and high-profile commentators to debate how social media is shaping the future of the UK’s political landscape as we approach the 2010 general election.

To support the event and extend its online reach we’ve created a conversation platform which forms a hub for all the juicy content created ahead of, during and after the conference.

The pre-event debate has already kicked-off with guest posts from some of the speakers. For starters Leonard Cheshire’s local campaigns coordinator, Ellie Bullimore, has posted about the importance of hyperlocal activism in getting your voice heard by politicians; while the Speaker of the House of Commons himself, John Bercow, gives an insight into the implications of the expenses scandal and sets out how parliament will be seeking to work closer with individuals and organisations in the future.

The most re-tweeted post comes from the NCVO’s Learning and Development Officer for Campaigning, Liam Barrington Bush, asks the question: does it matter what politicians and political parties do with social media? After all, social media is increasingly empowering the public to self-organise and achieve great things with needing government intervention.

Tomorrow’s full speaker line-up is available on the site. Highlights for me include:

We’ve also created ‘events’ on Facebook, LinkedIn and Upcoming so attendees have been able to let their networks know about the event and that they’re going along. They’ve also been able to let their friends and followers on Twitter know about the event via Twtvite.

If you can’t make the event tomorrow, don’t worry! We’ll be live-blogging from the conference, working with those friendly ‘social reporters’ from Amplified! who will be creating AudioBoo content, taking photos and conducting video interviews with delegates and speakers. All this great content will be aggregated on the conversation platform and there’ll be a live Twitter back-channel so you can join in the conference debate by following and using the hashtag #newpol.

So if you’re not doing anything tomorrow and want to know how you can use social media, radical transparency and hyperlocal activism to help shape the UK’s political agenda at the 2010 general election, head along to A New Politics and find out.