Click on the Video Below and Sample a Session from a previous Digital Hollywood event. For Additional Video Sessions, Click Here Politics 2008: The Media Conference for the Election of the President Tuesday, October 14 2:15 PM - 3:30 PM Session I The Candidate & the Media: Creating the Brand, Maintaining the Brand, Preserving the Brand Mark McKinnon, Vice Chairman, Public Strategies, former strategist, George W. Bush and Senator John McCain Joe Trippi, Democratic Strategist, Edwards 2008 Ian V. Rowe, Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships & Public Affairs, MTV: Music Television Robert A. George, Editorial Page Writer, New York Post Andrew Rasiej, Founder, Personal Democracy Forum Co-Moderators - Bob Safian, Editor and Managing Director, Fast Company and Ellen McGirt, Senior Writer, Fast Company Joe Trippi worked on his first presidential campaign for Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt, Howard Dean and, most recently, John Edwards. He heads up Trippi and Associates a multimedia consulting firm. Trippi appears regularly on CBS as an election analyst and commentator. He is the author of, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything. The father of three, he lives with his wife, Kathleen, on the eastern shore of Maryland. Ian V. Rowe, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships & Public Affairs, MTV: Ian V. Rowe is the Vice-President of Strategic Partnerships and Public Affairs for MTV: Music Television. His department oversees MTV's on-air, online and off-air "pro-social" campaigns that build awareness of issues of importance to the MTV audience, and that encourage young people to take action to address those issues, such as Choose or Lose which in 2004, helped to mobilize nearly 22 million young people to vote. He now oversees MTV’s new pro-social platform, think MTV that informs and engages viewers to take action on the domestic and global issues that matter most and affect their lives. The website think.mtv.com serves as a comprehensive online resource for young people to get more information about issues of concern, whether it be education, sexual health, discrimination, the environment, or global issues like the fight against preventable disease and extreme poverty. Prior to MTV, Ian was the Director of Strategy and Performance Measurement for USA Freedom Corps at the White House, the President's initiative on volunteer service. Ian is an Echoing Green Fellow and was also founder and President of Third Millennium Media, a media consulting business. Ian spent two years at Teach For America, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a degree in Computer Science Engineering from Cornell University. Robert A. George, Editorial Page Writer, New York Post: Robert A. George is an editorial writer and columnist for the New York Post. He is also the founder and editor of the blog, Ragged Thots. He was born in Trinidad, grew up in the United Kingdom and United States and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. Ellen McGirt is a Fast Company Senior Writer. She has traveled around the world covering business issues related to personal and family finance, health care, customer service, investing, and Social Networking. Since joining Fast Company in 2007, McGirt has written stories on “The Kid Who Turned Down $1 Billion” (based on Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg), “The Most Dangerous Job in Business” (based on CMO’s), and Al Gore’s $100 Million Makeover (based on how Gore’s inner entrepreneur reboot his image). McGirt has served as a guest correspondent for CNN’s American Morning, and has appeared frequently on Good Morning America, CBS Early Today, NBC Nightly News, CNN, NBC's Weekend Today, HGTV and BET. Prior to Fast Company, McGirt served as a Writer for Fortune, Money, was the lead financial columnist for AOL's Electra.com, a proprietary online magazine for women, and later became a founding writer and online personality for Oxygen Media's finance channel, Ka-Ching.com. McGirt spent two years as an on-air correspondent for the online financial network Yahoo! FinanceVision. She is also the producer of the oral history, Love Letter For America, a project for which she criss-crossed the country for over six months. Robert Safian is the Editor and Managing Director of Fast Company magazine. He joined Fast Company in February 2007 to oversee all editorial operations. Safian joined Mansueto Ventures from Fortune magazine, where he served as executive editor. Prior to that, he was as an executive editor at Time magazine and headed Money magazine as its managing editor for six years. Safian began his career with a seven-year tenure at The American Lawyer, where he rose from summer intern to reporter to executive editor. He joined SmartMoney in 1994. In 1997 he moved to Fortune to oversee its Wall Street and personal finance coverage. This year Safian was honored as a Top Innovator in Business Publishing by BtoB’s Media Business. Safian was honored in 2000 by Crain's New York Business as one of the "40 Under 40" top young business executives in New York City and was also named to New York Magazine's "35 Under 35" the previous year. Money was a National Magazine Finalist four times under Safian's leadership. He also played key roles in securing National Magazine Awards for The American Lawyer, SmartMoney and Time. A native of New York City, Safian graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a B.A. in history. He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with his wife, Mary, and their three sons, Matthew, Nicholas and Daniel. Andrew Rasiej, Founder, Personal Democracy Forum, Cofounder, TechPresident; Andrew Rasiej is the Founder of Personal Democracy Forum , an annual conference and community website about the intersection of politics and technology. He is also the co-founder of techPresident, an award winning group blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign. He has served as an advisor to Senators and Congressman and political candidates on the use of Information Technology for campaign and policy purposes since 1999. Among those he has worked with are Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Tom Daschle, Congressman Dick Gephardt, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In 2001, he addressed the United States Senate Democratic Caucus in the US Capital Building on the "Digital Divides Facing Democratic Party" and has been actively involved in the campaigns of many Senators and Congressmen. For the 2004 Presidential race he served as Chairman of the Howard Dean Technology Advisory Council. He recently ran a highly visible campaign for Public Advocate of New York City, running in the Democratic primary on a platform to bring low cost wireless access to all New Yorkers. In the aftermath of the September 11th tragedy, Mr. Rasiej helped organize hundreds of local technology professionals to provide relief and recovery to small businesses and schools in lower Manhattan. From this experience, he proposed the creation of a National Tech Corps that would act similarly to the National Guard and provide emergency technical, communication, and database support in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist strike. This idea, now called NetGuard, was approved in a bill by the US Senate by a vote of 97 to 0 within four weeks from inception and was integrated into the Homeland Security Act and is currently being built by the US Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Rasiej also maintains the position of senior technology adviser for the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington D.C. based organization that focuses on using technology to expose corruption in Congress and facilitates citizen engagement and oversite. Mr. Rasiej is the founder of MOUSE (Making Opportunities for Upgrading Schools and Education), an educational non-profit organization started in 1997 focused on providing technology support to public schools. Originally a volunteer organization MOUSE currently runs a program called MOUSE Squad which trains students to run their school's computer systems and thereby helping them not only to learn lifelong skills but also empowering them to expanding their schools capacity in the use of technology for education. Mouse is active in 100 public schools in New York City and over 90 percent of the students in its programs graduate and go to college. Mouse has also expanded to over 20 countries around the world. Mr. Rasiej has served on the 2001 New York City Board of Education's task force on technology and has spearheaded several other innovative projects that support efforts to bridge the "Digital Divide" in public education. In addition to work in bringing technology innovation to public schools, Mr. Rasiej is a co-founder of www.mideastwire.com, which is a Beirut based news service which translates opinion pieces from newspapers in all 22 Arab countries, Iran, and the Arab media Diaspora and makes them available to English speaking governments, corporations, media, and educational institutions. Mr. Rasiej is the former chairman, CEO, and co-founder of the Digital Club Network (DCN) which created the internet's largest live music archive, which is now part of eMusic. In 1996, concurrent with his involvement in music and technology, Mr. Rasiej co-founded the world's best known annual digital music conference, "Plug In," which was attended by executives from major record labels and technology companies. In 1990 Mr. Rasiej founded Irving Plaza, an internationally known concert venue located in New York City and produced concerts by well-known artists such as Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Dave Matthews Band. Mr. Rasiej was also the Founder and President Emeritus of the New York Nightlife Association, a business trade group representing major New York City nightclubs and bars. NYNA works to create strong neighborhood relationships through community oriented programs and outreach. Previous to his work in technology and the music industry, Mr. Rasiej had a successful career working in the real estate development working on several high profile projects in New York City including World Financial Center and South Street Seaport. Mr. Rasiej also provided real estate consulting services to various not for profit organizations. Mr. Rasiej is a member of the Board of Directors of Pop!Tech. He is also a graduate of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and past recipient of the prestigious David Rockefeller Fellowship administered by the New York City Partnership. Free video chat by Ustream