Thursday, August 30, 2012

Class 2 - #SocialCongress guest speaker Brad Fitch, Congressional Management Foundation

Our second #electionclass starts with our first guest speaker Brad Fitch, President and CEO of Congressional Management Foundation, Washington, D.C.


CMF's mission is:
CMF works internally with Member offices, committees, leadership, and institutional offices in the House and Senate to foster improved management practices. From interns to Chiefs of Staff to Members themselves, CMF provides services adapted to the unique congressional environment.




In preparation for Brad Fitch's guest lecture, please read the full #SocialCongress report (pdf) and leave your questions for Mr. Fitch in the comment section of this blog update. 


Please start to follow the Congressional Management Foundation on Twitter @congressfdn.


Great start into #electionclass: Social network & trending topic on Twitter

We started to teach our #electionclass today: Anthony for the iSchool undergraduates and I for the Maxwell School’s graduate students. My student started slow – setting up a Twitter account for the first time, while many of Anthony’s students had prior experience.

The students engaged with ongoing political topics related to the campaign, with each other and with some of our guest speakers. Zach Green, aka @140elect, was super fast and set up a whole page with our tweets about #electionclass: http://140elect.com/electionclass/ Zach will share some of his insights about his ongoing analysis about the campaign with our class – hopefully right after the first presidential debate.

Marc Smith from the Social Media Research Foundation has created a NodeXL Twitter network from the interactions among the students and with us:



The students’ interactions on Twitter made our hashtag #electionclass a trending topic in the US.