Blog: Rootscamp

Talking with Bloggers, Campaigners, and Progressives about Tracking New and Traditional Media

A lot of campaigners in Washington, DC for Rootscamp just got a peak at Managing News - our news tracker and analyzer tool. If you missed the session, you can check out some videos of the tool here and contact us for a seven day free trial.

The session led into a great discussion on what people in the political realm need with a tool like this - particularly extreme media analyzers and bloggers. That there's a need to track online chatter on both a macro and a micro level wasn't in question - the people in the room knew that was necessary and it's been a recurring theme in all the sessions I've been to so far today. This in itself is really great to hear because we built Managing News to do just that, and to give a snapshot view of what’s happening online around a topic and make it easy for people to take action on it.

There was some good excitement about Managing News' ability to roll a lot of what people are already doing with Bloglines, Google alerts, and manual news reading into one shared platform, and that one that automatically adds information like keywords and locations to the news it sucks in. We also heard some great feature requests - like source exclusion, clipping reports printed in various formats, and close captioning tracking - that will be keeping us busy for awhile : ) Let us know if you have a specific news tracking or analyzing need. We're happy to talk about what Managing News and other tools can do to help.

A Few Topics We'd Like to Talk and Learn More About

If you follow our blog at all, then you know that we're excited about Rootscamp this weekend. In addition to meeting and reconnecting with many of the people running this year's political campaigns, we're particularly looking forward to hearing about what online tools have given them the best returns and to share some ideas we have. 

Being that Rootscamp is an unconference, everyone that attends needs to be prepared to present too at any given moment. So the other day over lunch we got to talking about what we could present on, which of course led to a few conversations on topics we'd love other people to present on. Here's what we came up with. If you're at Rootscamp tomorrow and are interested in these topics too, then cast your vote for them.

To Present On:

• What tools are out there to track news and a quick look at our tool Managing News
• How campaigners are reacting and acting on the news and what else they can be doing
• Using existing tools like Flickr, Twitter, etc. in campaigns to grab attention
• Intro to Drupal for developers
• Intro to Drupal for hackers
• Intranets and knowledge management - what you could be doing

To Attend:

• News tracking - what's working for campaigners and what's needed
• Deciphering social media - how campaigners know who to listen to
• Campaign wishlist - what technology you wish you had

We'll have a table at the job fair Sunday afternoon where we'll be demoing our news tracking tool Managing News, so stop by and check out what it can do. 

Come Out to Support the New Organizing Institute this Saturday Night

This Saturday after the first day of Rootscamp DC, we’re heading over to a party thrown to raise money for the New Organizing Institute. In addition to playing a major role in organizing events like Rootscamp, NOI does some great work training young tech savvy political organizers to work for progressive candidates and causes.

So if you’re in the area – and whether you're at Rootscamp or not – come on out to support a good cause and hang out with the people behind this year’s campaigns.

Details:
Rootscamp After Party
MCCXXIII
1223 Connecticut Avenue
Washington, DC
$1 from every drink goes right to NOI

You can RSVP here.

A Quick Run Down of What's Happening This Week in DC

Lately we've been keeping a better eye on what's happening out there in the great Washington, DC tech world, and what we've found is that there's a whole lot of interesting meetups taking place. Here's a quick run down of the ones we'll be at this week, along with a few we wish we could attend. For more local events, check out the calendar that Ross maintains over at DC Tech Events.

Tuesday, April 8 Second Tuesdays New Media Salon and Dot Com Networking Party: We've heard great things about this happy hour for new media professionals and are excited to check it out this week. 

Wednesday, April 9 PHP Developer's Meeting: A great chance to meet and learn from other PHP developers working in DC.

Thursday, April 10 Social Media Club Meeting, reps from the local social media platform WhyGoSolo will be presenting their product

Saturday, April 11 - Sunday, April 12 Rootscamp! We've talked about this one before, but most of us will be spending the weekend  talking tech and politics at Rootscamp. If you can't make it, read our blog for updates and head out to the after party on Saturday.

And keep Monday, April 14 open - we'll be hosting the April Washington, DC Drupal Meetup. More information on that coming later today.