JDB at 'Contested Spaces' conference next week

I am delighted to announce that I have been invited top participate at a very prestigious event next week to be held at King’s College, London. Organised by Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, ‘Contested Spaces: The Third Quadrennial Global Internet and Politics Conference’, is being sponsored by eBay. I will be addressing the conference during a session entitled “The Uses (and misuses) of the internet in democratic political campaigning”.
The ‘Contested Spaces’ conference brings together key figures from the worlds of political campaigning, business, technology policymaking and academia. It will provide a high-level and substantive examination of the Internet and its impact not only on electoral politics, but also on civil society, commerce and government.
I am particularly excited that leading figures from President Obama’s re-election campaign will be present, including Jen O’Malley Dillon, Deputy Campaign Manager for President Obama, and Joe Rospars, Founding Partner and Creative Director of Blue State Digital and the Chief Digital Strategist for “Obama for America”.
The event will also be attended by Ian Spencer and Bret Jacobson from Red Edge, a digital advocacy group for conservative causes that was recently featured in the New York Times challenging the Republican Party establishment to see the failures of its online strategy and execution in 2012.
Members of British, German and French political parties, leading academics and media players will join them to comment on the lessons that might be learnt from the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. Because of the enormous impact the Internet has had on political practice, from radical movements in the Arab world to elections in Africa, the conference theme will encompass how governments may seek to shape and regulate the Internet in ways that might limit its political and economic value. In addition, the event will look at what policymakers might be able to learn from commercial uses of the Internet.
It will doubtless be a fascinating event and I am delighted to be involved. Watch my presentation HERE and click on Breakout Session 1