Previous events were frequented by press and area start-ups, techies and social media gurus.  This year, Francisco has introduced an all day session complete with talks by the likes of serial entrepreneur and co-founder of TechCrunch 50 Jason Calacanis, former TV host and online entrepreneur Brooke Burke, social media and PR expert Brian Solis and Grammy Award-winning musician and entrepreneur Chamillionare.  In all, 19 speakers from a variety of backgrounds have been confirmed to give talks on topics ranging from early stage investing to monetizing social media to startup ecosystems to opportunities and challenges of user generated content.  Additionally, 10 companies, known as “Showoffs”, were selected out of hundreds of entries to showcase their websites and provide pitches and Q&A during the event.

Twiistup cost $297 for an event pass including the daytime sessions and Thursday evening party.  A pass to get into the party only cost $79.  Tickets can be purchased at http://www.eventbee.com/view/twiistup6/events and you can RSVP and see who else is going at the Facebook event page.

Note: Kevin Kelly also has one of the best examples of lifestreaming I’ve ever seen. Check out his site: http://kk.org/ to see what I mean.

I’m using Pollster.com to follow polling data (a couple of other projection sites are covered in Mashable’s 12 Presidential Poll and Electoral Projection Resources) and for twitter eye candy there’s the Election Results According to Twitter.

For coverage:
Election 2008 on Current tv
“Co-hosted by Digg and Twitter, with video from 12seconds.tv, and with a Live DJ set by Diplo, Current is uniting the best of social media with a real-time broadcast of the most important results, facts and information and giving you a completely new way to experience election night.”

Leo Laporte w/ Jason Goldberg
“…if you’re looking for election coverage with a tech twist, Jason Goldberg, the founder, will also be covering the election with Leo Laporte live on This Week in Tech on Tuesday, Nov 4 @ 8 pm EST/ 5 pm PST.”

Mashable’s The Ultimate Election Day 2008 Toolkit has two links I particularly like and will be using whenever there’s no one looking:

Power Readers in Politics a feature for Google Reader users, “..it tracks things tossed into the Shared Items firehose by the presidential campaigns as well bloggers and journalists like Arianna Huffington and Patrick Ruffini.”

Youtube’s VideoYourVote experiment (in conjection with PBS) to document people’s experiences at the polls. The best videos will then be included in PBS’ election day coverage (there’s also a fantastic article on Mashable profiling Youtube’s contributions to the election that’s worth a read).

As always, CNN & USA Today blow it out the park with the visuals:

CNN Electoral Map – Not only do you get current projections, you can tweak the map to run your own scenarios.

USAToday.com – More often than not, these guys provide great data visuals. This time it’s an easy way to eyeball the the percentage of difference between the candidates.

UPDATE: AnOrangeAmerica.com is the latest election tool to join the arsenal. It would have remained “just another cool app”, but I like Tropicana’s OJ so I’ll give it the nod for coolest election app. Read more about it here. HT: Simon.

But being submersed in the drama of American politics makes it really easy to forget about what’s going on elsewhere. This month’s issue of Wired changes that with a story on what social media’s doing to slowly crack the tightly controlled structure of authority in Egypt & the Middle East:

Back in March, Maher and a friend launched a Facebook group to promote a protest planned for April 6. It became an Internet phenomenon, quickly attracting more than 70,000 members. The April 6 youth movement — amorphous, lacking a clear mission*, and yet a bull’s-eye to the zeitgeist — blossomed within days into something influential enough to arouse the ire of Egypt’s internal security forces. Maher is part of a new generation in the Middle East that, through blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and now Facebook, is using virtual reality to combat corrupt and oppressive governments. Their nascent, tech-fired rebellion has triggered a government backlash and captured the world’s attention.

The article also ends with an interesting line of thought:

But Maher isn’t tortured. No one can say why his treatment in custody is more lenient this time around. One possibility is that, lacking specific orders to beat or harm him, his captors in Alexandria just went easy.

There is another hypothesis, though, one that many people familiar with Egyptian politics have suggested: Maher’s star has risen. His real-world profile is now high enough that torturing him could backfire, inspiring countless networked young people to take action. The last thing Hosni Mubarak needs is to turn this Facebooking regular guy into a full-fledged hero.

In a seemingly unrelated event, my favorite news website online, Socialmedian, is releasing an election widget with the Washington Post today:

The http://election.socialmedian.com site aggregates news and user-feeds related to the election and enables users to join in the election coverage and discussion.  We created this site with The Washington Post to enable people to track all the election news from thousands of news sources as well as from Twitter feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and more all in one place, and (importantly) to join-in and add their own feeds from their favorite sites to provide user reports leading up to and on election day.

You can see what looks like to the right and although It’s not election day just yet, it’s never a bad thing to get a feel for what’s underfoot going into the election, so play with it (click “Join In” on the widget if you’re not a member) and let the games begin! (follow me at follow bushmanbill when you sign up).

*If the whole thing sounds “amorphous” & “lacking a clear mission” to you too, read Seth Godin’s latest book (aptly named Tribes), which is all about movements, what their made of, the things that happen to make tribes possible to begin with and how to keep them going. In what amounts to one long essay that goes by all too quickly, Godin explains the situation and then presents the opportunity:

A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It’s our nature.

Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they’re enabling countless new tribes to be born—groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.

And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?

We’re also working diligently on the alpha launch of an innovative and usable social networking website for one of our clients.  More details and a review/case study coming soon! We also have a kick-ass custom-built e-commerce website with countless customizations and innovative features launching soon. Our team is hard at work to launch both projects.  Again, more details and a review/case study coming soon.

In addition to our operational work, we’ve also been busy networking and attending industry events, interviewing for opening positions, and have been quite busy with some great client relationships.  In the coming days we’re launching a European and Asian division and website of Epsilon Concepts, we’ll be tripling our ad budget, and we’ll be looking to beef up our team more and more in the new year, despite the slowing economy.

We’re also planning a revolutionary website concept in outsourcing/offshoring that combines many facets in a unique and compelling way.  Everything is in stealth-mode now, but it’s been something I’ve been working on the details for, for about 4 years now.  We really think it will change the way businesses do business, across the globe.  More details coming soon.

Additionally, I recently posted a review of You2Gov.com here on the blog and a press release was generated out of it that was distributed though many media sources.  Check out the press release on Forbes here.

I was also mentioned by Fast Company blogger Francisco Dao of The Killer Pitch in his blog post on The Smart Show entitled “The Next Generation Of Entrepeneurs”.  Thanks for the mention, Francisco!

Finney and Sam were in attendance at last week’s Digital Drinks event here in LA at The Roosevelt and enjoyed the pool atmosphere and the great company!  Thanks to everyone who said hi!

Until next update, have a good weekend!

-Robby

Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Alan Silberberg, CEO of You2Gov.com, a former White House staffer for former President Bill Clinton, to discuss his exciting new political social networking website. In addition to discussing You2Gov’s current and soon-to-be released features for users, we also discussed the evolution of politics in the new digital era and how social media is changing the landscape – fascinating to observe a whole new era of political action develop right before our eyes!?

Silberberg explained that he built You2Gov for one reason: to empower real people by providing them with extensive political communications tools and resources on a social network platform. Silberberg’s goal is provide the tools and information that will allow regular Americans to learn more about the issues they care about; form online communities with like-minded citizens; and to take action by using the simple tools available on You2Gov’s social network platform.

Silberberg made the great point that lobbyists often represent billion dollar corporations that are able to influence politicians in a variety of ways and that You2Gov.com provides a platform that shows average citizens that they too can be influential, just like the lobbyists – and that exercising their democracy is not as difficult as one might think.

On the information side, You2Gov.com aims to provide customized, relevant and current information about what’s going in the user’s political world, whether local or national. The web site is populated with valuable timely and relevant content that is provided both by You2Gov and its users, including current news, videos, useful links, a national calendar of events, a burgeoning forum community, and a government database that allows users to connect with the appropriate elected officials. All of this information is aggregated in one place – it is very simple, giving You2Gov.com users no reason to leave the web site to accomplish the task at hand: ACTION!

You2Gov.com not only connects normal citizens like you and I, but it also connects citizens (sometimes individually and sometimes coalesced as a group) with key decision makers. In the words of Silberberg, “Collectively, every American citizen owns the government, so why not leverage our collective voice?”

With the growth of You2Gov, politicians may be wary: this website presents a platform that not only aggregates all of the important information and tools, but it allows literally millions of like-minded Americans to organize themselves and take action. You2Gov gives every citizen a direct line of communication with their Government officials, allowing Americans to hold their representatives accountable. It will be interesting to see how politicians react – will they embrace the open communications or ignore it? And if it is the latter, will they really be able to get away with it given that everything will be public?

Silberberg’s site is rolling out new features periodically and users can expect a steady stream of improvements and new functionalities. According to Silberberg, “…web applications and social networking sites are like ‘legos’ nowadays. It’s not a matter of reinventing the wheel, it’s about how good of a ‘lego’ builder you are.” Silberberg’s website represents this vision.

Though recently launched, his site is solid, comprehensive, and garnering attention in the media.

My main criticism/suggestion would be some key usability and design improvements, improving the registration process and making things even more intuitive and easy-to-use. The features themselves are great and Silberberg’s vision includes even better tools that are being phased in (like allowing users to fax petitions from the site and a mobile version). With just a few tweaks, there is tremendous potential for You2Gov to grow very, very quickly.

During our talk, we discussed how many social networking websites are struggling because they don’t provide enough value or utility to enough people. Many larger social networks are gaining new users, yet retention, frequency, and ad rates are all on a downward slope. It’s obvious that Silberberg has done his homework and has big plans for You2Gov. His core principles are:

• Content is king
• Content creates conversations
• Conversations create community
• Communities take action

Where many social networking websites miss the boat is by focusing on number 3 alone. Or, they don’t give users the motivation or ability to actually take action or take advantage of the content and community for change. Social media, in the belief of Silberberg, represents a fundamental change in power.

He said, “Fortune 1000s and politicians alike are and will continue to be grappling with how to deal with the switch in leverage from companies, PR, and “big money” to individuals and constituents united for a cause and using social media as their megaphone.”

If you’re looking to amp up your involvement in issues you care about, I recommend logging on to You2Gov.com. They are well on their way to growing the site into a powerful force in the political spectrum.

Sign up (free) here

Create & upload a 30 second political commercial and win $1000 here

This blog article was also quoted on MarketWatch and you can read that article here.

His article on the over-hyped Internet is also a good read.

Meet Monkey

BBC’s come up with the perfect way to follow the Olympics: an Adobe Air-based desktop application that lets you follow your favorite Olympic sports, set reminders, view the medal table, etc…

You’ll certainly love the art if you like the Gorillaz (same artist).

Plus, everyone loves monkeys so this is the perfect excuse to have one of the furry bastards around until you feel the need to move on to other forms of entertainment. The fact that you don’t actually have to do much is the more obvious upside to the app.

Why you should like the Gorrillaz:

NB: a definition for less is “a quantifier meaning not as great in amount or degree” so this post is still textless because it has less text than the usual blog post. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

A little known Republican presidential candidate with views radically different from the established elite took up to twenty percent of primary votes in some states. He broke fundraising records and built an unparalleled grass roots network using only the internet.

The ongoing war in Iraq provides another example of the ways our world has changed. Soldiers writing blogs on their experience in Iraq, tech savvy investigators revealing gross financial mishandling. Traditional media has proven either incapable of, or unwilling to, report material which could damage interests currently protecting their monopolies. Average people with internet connections have stepped up where news networks haven’t.

A major commercial band decided to release an album online, and allowed their listeners to pay whatever price they felt was justified. They distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of their work and made more money than they could have using traditional methods of distribution.

People download millions of songs, videos, pictures, and books every day utilizing decentralized peer to peer networks. Bittorrent, Gnutella, Usenet, and Freenet, all allow individuals to freely share any information which can be copied.

We live in a world where information is no longer expensive to distribute. More importantly, information is nearly impossible to control.

Networked computing has changed the world in a way that is many orders of magnitude greater than the printing press.

The fear this creates in the ruling elite is apparent. Corporations are no longer able to control the distribution of media. Media corporations face a future in which they cannot profit simply from control of physical distribution networks; Networks they gained control of through coercive means.

Information is, in a very real way, power. Every decision we make is influenced by the information available to us. Controlling people is not difficult if you’re able to control the information available to them.

The debate about net neutrality taking place right now is primarily concerned with service providers slowing down or blocking certain types of traffic. Allowing this to take place would practically ensure the end of the internet as a free marketplace.

Imposing restrictions on the web is not only beneficial to media conglomerates such as AOL-Time Warner, it’s also beneficial to those in political control.

The only way to reduce corruption in government is to hold ‘public servants’ responsible for their actions. The established media has shown itself to be entirely uninterested in keeping government accountable, preferring to buy favorable market conditions for themselves.

I normally am opposed to government regulation. However, if net neutrality legislation prolongs this age of free information, then I think it may be a good thing.

Whatever grace period can be bought, you can be assured that politicians and corporate interests will not be satisfied till they control our access to information. We must use every opportunity available to increase transparency in government, and to accelerate development of technology that will allow circumvention of controls imposed on the free exchange of information. The freedom enjoyed by many of us could be in jeopardy if we don’t.