Labour Conference Under Way

The Labour conference started this evening at 6:30, Eamon Gilmore was due to give the opening speech but due to the death of his mother Joan Burton opened the conference. Don’t forget that this is easily the most connected party conference that has happened here and hopefully will bring others along with it. The conference will be Ustreamed (at 19:30 this evening there are almost 200 people watching the streaming conference-far more than I expected though perhaps its the novelty factor?) and youtubed with full list of motions, speeches and debates online at their conference site. They will also be doing web questions with Joan Burton, Jan O Sullivan, Ciaran Lynch and Dominic Hannigan is you want to ask any questions.

Twitterers can check out the Labour stream and free text updates (you can add our twitter too as your at it!).

I have to say that I hope this marks a beginning of parties taking the web seriously to move their message out there. The web doesn’t strike me as being about replacement, it doesn’t seem likely to replace the role of any major media. Television was due to kill radio and print but instead changed the environment and co-existed, so it will be with the internet-especially in this country. That said it has huge potential to broaden the appeal of politics and political parties and take everyday technology and give it a political aspect.

It may well remain niche, it may not swing elections but it will alter them. It is too easy to raise money, to organise your members to disseminate policy, monitor media and attract new voters to be ignored for much longer. This is a valuable experiment for the party itself but for us bloggers and technologists too. We need to keep an objective eye on what works, what doesn’t and perhaps examine how potentialities can be tapped. Fair play to Labour and I hope to see the Greens, Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein and the Progressive Democrats follow suit in the near future though it may be a bit longer before all of them catch on.

As a side-note, I think this is a topic we will be returning to more regularly on this site as their is clearly an interest following the election in the potentials of the internet.