LITTLE ROCK, AR (Sept. 30, 2009) — The recent intersection of social media and politics has allowed politicians to engage constituents in effective, grassroots communications-communications that have an influence on elections, policy creation and policy reform. Stone Ward believes that this successful application of technology provides excellent case-study learnings for our corporate and non-profit clients.
Blake Rutherford, Stone Ward director of public communications, was invited to serve as a featured speaker at the Personal Democracy Forum 2009, the largest conference on the intersection of technology and politics. Blake was not only able to lend his social media expertise to a national forum, but was able to learn from many industry innovators in this arena, and bring that back to Stone Ward for the benefit of our clients.
Blake was the only speaker from the South to be invited to speak.
Blake discussed the role that technology-particularly blogs, social media and mobile-is playing in state and local politics. Other featured speakers included:
- Vivek Kundra, White House Chief Information Officer
- Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City
- Steve Grove, Yahoo!’s head of news and politics
- Mark McKinnon, former advisor to former President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain
- Frank Rich of The New York Times
- Karen Tumulty of TIME
- Jeff Jarvis, author of “What Would Google Do?”
- Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
- Randi Zuckerberg, marketing director of Facebook