Social Media and Democracy

MODERATOR

Matt Fikse-Verkerk

Matt is CEO of ISA Advisors, Inc., a strategy, management, and communications consultant to enterprise and public service clients. Previously, Matt served as Director of Special Projects and Strategic Advisor to Mayor Mike McGinn. During his tenure, the office moved constituent response operations to a cloud-based solution, revamped the city’s intranet for employee communications, pioneered remote live-streaming of mayoral events, and spurred an extensive redesign of the city’s award-winning website, seattle.gov, by the city’s Department of Information Technology. Matt was one of hundreds of volunteers on the mayor’s 2009 election campaign, won by a razor-thin margin. The campaign engaged social media extensively to mobilize supporters, despite being outspent three-to-one by rivals. Since 2009, Matt has also reported and commented on politics, technology, as well as international and urban issues for the news website Crosscut.com and contributes to other local media. Matt’s past experience includes serving as CEO of a manufacturing company in the motorsports industry and leading the company from start-up through success in multiple international auto racing championships. He holds a B.A., magna cum laude, in Political Science from Carleton College.

PANELISTS

Anthony Brown

Anthony is Senior Director of Product Management at Prosodic, a first of its kind predictive social media analytics platform that enables brands and marketers to target impressions, predict when their audiences are most likely to engage with their content, and understand what content is most effective. He is responsible for portfolio management, the product roadmap, requirements management and release planning for Prosodic's social media analytics product. Prior to joining Prosodic, Anthony worked at WDCW, where he led their Seattle digital growth  interests establishing agency partnerships to yield several B2C campaigns and technology relationships. He also worked with Ascentium where he integrated their product development and engineering teams into Microsoft, which led to a mobile user experience and design team partnering with Windows Phone, Verizon, T-Mobile and HTC. While there he also facilitated the relationships between several public sector parties to engineer a carbon tracking and emissions trading platform for state and local governments. Prior to this, Anthony worked at Microsoft's enterprise business division with application lifecycle management, line-of-business management tools. Anthony pursued a BSc in Computer Science at Saint Martin's University in 2002.

Nathan Daschle

Nathan is the Founder and CEO of Ruck.us., a social network connecting politically like-minded people to share ideas and take action. He also serves on the advisory boards of Americans Elect, EverFi, and Rubicon Public Sector, as well as the faculty of Public Squared. From 2007 to 2010, Nathan was the Executive Director of Democratic Governors Association (DGA), managing a $50 million budget.  Previously, he served as DGA’s Counsel and Director of Policy. His resume also includes serving in the legislative affairs office of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and the Natural Resource Defense Council. In October 2010, Nathan was recognized as one of Time Magazine’s “40 Under 40” rising stars in politics. He was also profiled in the September 2010 issue of Details Magazine as one of the “16 game-changers in the worlds of entertainment, politics, fashion, and technology” in a piece titled “Mavericks”. In 2006, Nathan was named as Washington’s “40 Top Lawyers Under 40” by Washingtonian Magazine. He received his J.D. cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2002 and his B.A., with distinction, from Northwestern University in 1995.

Deb Eddy

Representative Deb Eddy is our Washington State Legislator representing the 48^th District. She was elected to the House of Representatives in 2006 and is completing her third and final term in office. Deb serves on the Judiciary, Transportation and Technology, Energy and Communication committees. She passed significant legislation promoting electric vehicles, regulating electronic data recorders, and creating a state cause of action to enforce software property rights against off-shore manufacturers. An early adopter of technology in campaigns, Deb was one of the first Washington customers of bluetopia, a full-service campaign support provider. Deb received her J.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1977 and a B.S.J. in Public Relations from West Virginia University in 1975. 

Joe Mirabella

Joe Mirabella has been leveraging social media as a grass-roots communication tools since 2008 to create change. While Joe served as Campaign Manager at Change.org, he helped empower people to start, join, and win campaigns about issues that they cared about most. In 2009, he led the social media strategy for the Approve Referendum 71" campaign to keep domestic partnerships in Washington state. Referendum 71 made history as the first expansion of rights for the LGBT community approved by voters in the United States. Joe is a regular contributor to several blogs, including the Bilerico Project, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and the Huffington Post. He recently spoke at TEDx about using your personal story to create change. Joe received a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Iowa.