Reflections on #Rospars and that Fianna Fail launch

As launches go the one last night was panned universally. Far from being bloggers descending on an FF event with a scent of blood it was engaged in with enthusiasm. As Gav highlights on his blog this was a different event depending on who you were. That is the issue at heart. If you are spending cash on a web strategy you better be sure to get your money’s worth in training on pitching and tone.

As a seminar it wasn’t great. As a site launch it wasn’t much better, at least I thought so last night. However this morning that failure has lit a path of links through a much higher amount of bloggers than it otherwise would have. Yes it was a fail and no, many who attended aren’t happy at what what the event turned out to be, so they wrote about it. Far from emotion feeding itself into a frothy irrational rage it rather seemed to those of us who where there that a great number of people at the event all came to the same conclusion at the same time. This is Fianna Fail’s great test.

Do they write off web outreach as they cannot ever hope to manage it? If so just wait and see what happens when you give those tools to people on the ground. Or do you take the sliver of a silver lining from the pr fail? That being the many more communication channels are open today if you figure out what to say to attempt to make it right.
The reason this kicked off is like Gav said Obama is a pop culture deity not a politico’s property and any event tied to his operation will attract all sorts of people turned off by the thought of a Fianna Fail launch. Those people shows for the Obama aspect and got the Fianna Fail General Secretary and a hard launch of the website. Big mistake but if you are committed to the web you learn from those, learn the netiquette of building personal communications and personal channels and you try again. This weekend as the party returns to the warm embrace of the faithful burned by it’s initial attempt to hug the web generation it can make it work or give it up.

Last night they learned it ain’t just the tools – it is what you do, how you do it and the inportance of tone and frame. If last nights example were applied to the idea of a video Q&A then it’s doomed to hand picked questions softballed to Cowen or others.

If the lesson is learned we get a model like change.gov and the transparent questions for Obama (like but not identical to, I hope). Don’t sit back on this FF, instead get behind Damien’s effort to comment everywhere and learn to firefight. The Democrats have a huge love hate relationship with blogs as bloggers push them, call them out on issues of disagreement and often refuse to toe the line. Your experience will be worse, you’re in government.

Indeed, how can it really be all bad when you get some very clever and very clear insight into where you can improve from some of the best people in the blogosphere, political and non-political.