Even as the last session of a Friday conference, attendance was impressive and the dialogue, thoughtful. Billed as “An examination of how disintermediation, social media, “crowdsourcing”, e-campaigns, and other tools could impact the legislative process and evolve the role of the lobby,” the session educated lobbyists and other professional advocates about the increasingly pivotal role played by social media in policymaking.

Panel topics ranged from demonstrations of how to take full advantage of twitter streams while watching a candidate debate to the possibilities of full real-time online transcripts of hearings and floor debates.  The panel shared several tools for monitoring how people and groups are talking about, and buying advertising around, particular policy issues, as well as touched on strategies for using online intelligence tools to develop an understanding of influence patterns and players for an issue.

Elyse shared her research comparing lists of influencers generated by assessments of online influence to lists of people generally agreed to have the most real-world influence.

Special thanks go to Allison Small and Jack Gullahorn for organizing another top-notch PAAT conference!

This year is the 25th anniversary of Coats for Kids, an annual community event that collects and distributes winter coats for children in Central Texas. The Junior League of Austin, Jack Brown Cleaners, KASE 101 and KVUE partner to make this event possible each year. Last year more than 35,000 new and gently used coats were distributed to children in our community.

If you would like to help give back to our community we encourage you to donate new and gently used coats for the children and teenagers that are in need of a warm winter coat. You can donate a coat at any local Jack Brown Cleaners location through Wednesday, December 7. To find a location near you, click here.

It takes more than 2,500 volunteers to make Coats for Kids happen each year. If you are interested in volunteering during sorting week or on distribution day with Coats for Kids, click here. I would love for you to join me!

-Selena Booth

Texas State facilities assistant director Jay Cody gives a tree planting demonstration.

In the last few months, I’ve had the the pleasure of working with The Arbor Day Foundation – the largest nonprofit dedicated to the planting and caring of trees that oversaw an astounding 14 million new trees planted just last year. Particularly, I’ve been doing media relations around their Tree Campus USA events at universities across the nation, a program that instills pride in the students, faculty and community by honoring their environmental initiatives.

This morning Emily and I made it out down to San Marcos to join the celebration as our alum Texas State University-San Marcos was recognized as an official Tree Campus for their year-long program, Common Experience, on sustainability.

Texas State University Sports Club Women's Lacrosse team members Sarah Cryar, Katelyn Guinn and Megan Honea

It’s incredible how much the campus has grown since the two of us have been out of school. The ceremony took place in a newer area on the west side of campus where students and volunteers planted the 71 trees behind the Speck Street Parking Garage.

Some of the most beautiful urban forests are located on college campuses around the country – and now I can say that for Texas State too.

- Lauren

(Above photos by Chandler Prude)

I&O Staff Lizzie Laster and Lauren Tuttle with Mary Widhelm from the Arbor Day Foundation

Launching Art Night Austin E.A.S.T. was a blast. Although it seemed like the night flew by in an instant – we had the chance to take a sneak peek at some of the featured artists of the East Austin Studio Tour this year, which is currently going on through Sunday, November 20.

Kristin Freeman, pictured with her artwork. She is showing at Pump Project during E.A.S.T.

The event featured six gallery spaces including Domy Books, Fisterra Studio, Peacock Salon, Studio of Denise Prince, Okay Mountain and Delta Millworks. Part of what is so cool about E.A.S.T. is that it features traditional gallery spaces, but also opens up non-traditional spaces on the East side to feature art works and installations during the week-long event. Each gallery space featured different artists, eats and drinks. Our favorite eats of the night were Takoba and East Side Showroom /Homegrown Revival.

The after party was definitely an event to remember. The large indoor space, which used to house a Goodwill sorting location, was transformed into an amazing gallery space holding artwork from artists featured at other locations during E.A.S.T.

We had such a great time planning the event with the committee and cannot wait to do it again next year!

This weekend is your last chance to not miss out on E.A.S.T. The studio tour ends on Sunday, November 20.

- Selena Booth (Volunteer Chair) & Christa Berry (Co-Chair)

I&O team members: Emily Torgerson, Lauren Tuttle and Selena Booth at Art Night Austin

This past Thursday was the culmination of Austin Registry Week with an event at City Hall kicking off Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week and announcing the registry results.

ECHO Chair Ed McHorse on camera for KXAN and I&O's Lauren Tuttle on the scene

And there were some startling statistics we learned from surveying 289 people.  The people who are vulnerable and at-risk of dying on the streets have been homeless for an average of seven years. Two of those surveyed were Kevin, a Vietnam veteran, who has been homeless in Austin for 45 years, and Cory, a 25-year-old, who has been sleeping on the streets for three years.

Sharing these and other statistics (here’s the full report) will hopefully have an impact on Austinites to help spread awareness of how we can make a difference in the lives of our neighbors.

The 100 Homes Campaign is just getting started and we are looking forward to the next steps in working to house the vulnerable homeless individuals in Austin.

- Selena Booth

After three months of planning and prepping, it was so rewarding to see this inaugural luncheon raise more than $800,000 for the new Family House that will offer a specialized program for mothers to bring their children with them into residential treatment. It was unbelievably heartwarming to listen to the women tell their story about how the program has impacted their lives.

And Rob just as dreamy in person. After seeing him weekly in NBC’s “Parks and Recreation” and in so many films (remember him in “The Outsiders,” “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “Wayne’s World,” “The West Wing”?) it was exciting to watch him charm a live audience in the same way. He spoke about the positive impact sobriety has made on his own life, as well as that of his family – and touched everyone.

At the end of the event, Rob did a book signing for some of our guests of his recently released memoir, “Stories I Only Tell My Friends,” for event sponsors and key donors—an amazing book and we highly recommend putting it on your must-read list.

Artists on Recovery was so successful and we can’t wait for the next luncheon in the series. Talks have already started happening for who the next keynote speaker will be and we know you won’t be disappointed.

- Christa Berry and Lauren Tuttle

Every year this event showcases the most cutting-edge art being created and exhibited/performed in Austin paired with the East side’s culinary culture—and this year will not disappoint.

There are several talented artists and collaborations we can’t wait to see, but one that stands out is Haircuts by Children hosted by Fusebox. This artistic performance puts scissors in the hands of at-risk 5^th graders to empower them through the trust of an adult stranger who bravely lets the child cut their hair.

These performances will take place Thursday night during Art Night Austin at the Peacock Salon from 7 to 9 p.m. Additional performances during E.A.S.T. will happen this Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.

The event will also have tasty bites and bevs from some of our favorite spots to eat at on the East side including Eastside Showroom/Homegrown Revival and Buenos Aires Café.

We hope that you will join us at the event this year. For more info or to buy tickets to Art Night Austin E.A.S.T. or the after party click here.

See you Thursday!

- Christa Berry (Co-Chair) and Selena Booth (Volunteer Chair)

In other words, they are not just opinion leaders they are decision makers. We’ve been developing ways to establish the relationship between online visibility on key issues and real world ability to impact policy on those issues.

What we are finding is that there are powerful ways to use social media analytics, pay-per-click results, and search metrics to gain a deep understanding of an issue, product position or brand quickly and inexpensively.

But while the tools available to assess the position of a person, Twitter handle and Facebook page get better everyday, they are still prone to miss key elements.

One tool that gets close enough to be initially intriguing but misses the mark enough to be, well, kind of funny in this case, is Klout.

I’ve been watching my ranking on Klout, somewhat obsessively, for the last couple of months. I wanted to see how the overall score mirrored my activity and how it evaluated the content of what I tracked and shared. (OK, yes, I also wanted to see it get higher and higher…)

Klout tracks my activity – and whether others find my content compelling enough to comment or pass it along – very well. When I post or tweet regularly and am entertaining / insightful enough to illicit a response, my Klout score goes up. When I’m quiet or no one responds or engages me, my Klout score goes down. So far, so good.

But in Klout’s “expert” designation, things get interesting.

A little about me: I am a mother of two daughters, 9 and 20. I founded and run a full-service communications firm. I worked in democratic politics and technology prior to opening the firm and my mother, father, husband and brother are all working musicians. What I post or tweet about is almost always tied to public policy, news, entertainment or my family – most specifically my kids.

So, does Klout reflect that? Not exactly.

Influential about

• Kanye West
• Congress
• Stephen Colbert

The Klout list reflects my interests in music, public policy and entertainment news, which is accurate… from 35,000 feet. But the specific list topics are at least misleading. While I am an avid music fan and share regularly about specific artist and shows, I very clearly lean toward Americana, folk, singer-songwriter, old style country, rockabilly and bluegrass. Kanye (though I have nothing against him) is nowhere in sight. I did once tweet something funny about Twitter’s suggestion that I follow Kanye; and that was re-tweeted. But should it have overshadowed tweets about other artists?

The Congress leap isn’t justified either—I do care deeply about public issues and post about them sometimes—but I mostly engage at the state and local levels, not often posting on national issues. As for Stephen Colbert, I think he is a genius and one of the most fearless humans alive, but it’s Jon Stewart I DVR and who I finagled tickets to see… and posted about.

In an effort to see what the specific words I use say about me, we ran a word cloud on all of my Facebook postings and tweets for the last 30 days. It’s below. You can see for yourself what comes up and what doesn’t – no Kanye and no Colbert.

Like so many other things we are seeing with algorithm-based assessment tools, they are wickedly cool and very, very valuable if you know how to take the information they give you and put it in perspective.

As I’ve heard eHarmony described by my single friends, most of the time it does a good job at selecting matches that meet the basics, but it’s lunch that determines hit or miss.

-Elyse

It speaks to my demographics that I know that phrase first as an opening line to Stuart Little, but for most of the folks here at I&O, that excitement is today the iPhone 4S is in stores. And I’m reminded: I miss Steve Jobs. And I didn’t really even like him.

Sure, more than once, during the placing of computers onto the airport security conveyor belt, the person behind me has said: “Like, do you work at Apple?” I live on Apple products. But I had let myself develop a bit of judgement of Steve Jobs based on my understanding of how he managed the rules of engagement of business, and of workplace communications.

I understood him to be unnecessarily difficult. It’s not that he was demanding in aesthetic (that’s a feature, not a bug), but rather that he was rumored to be a leader who was profoundly harsh to work with or for. The kind of leader whose scorecard did not have room for measures of anyone else’s experience of the work.

It was a gossip-fueled dislike I had developed. The kind that evaporates when, for instance, the person dies. Now I really miss him, or is it the idea of him? Why was Steve Jobs such an important personality to so many of us? Sure, his autonomy is seductive; who wouldn’t want some of that? And his story – adopted, dropped out of college, fame & fortune – again, aspirational. Those are the hero characteristics, and he certainly checked those boxes.

But Steve Jobs is more than a hero. He’s more like a diety. He is more than admired; he is worshipped. Here’s my theory – he did what we like gods to do. He gave us beautiful, elegant, tidy, solutions to complicated and just kind of messy and disheveled everyday situations.

His devices remove a great deal of ambiguity about how to do things, and they add back in something very easily lost in any simplification scheme. They add back in beauty. So the Steve Jobs personality, and product style, does something effective deities do. They give us an effective, easy, and beautiful way to do things we need to get done. And in their simplicity and effectiveness and aesthetic appeal, they hold us in a comfort that doesn’t have an app for asking or answering muddy, multi-variate, awkward complex-systems questions like “Is this really a responsible product to buy?”

- Susan

But I am, and it is, and Pariser’s talk should be required reading (can a video be required reading?) for anyone who uses Google or Facebook. The takeaway is what you see online is — constantly and with increasing deftness — being geared toward not only what you’ve clicked on in the past (even if you aren’t signed in) but also to create a view of what’s available that omits what you haven’t clicked on before.

One of Pariser’s challenges to the leaders of the decider-engines like Google and Facebook is to wrestle with how to balance personalization with, well, balance, and how to integrate some sort of good – vs – bad signal with the standard popularity and relevance signals.

He wraps this in to a call for “curation,” which is one of my favorite words these days. To me it means a purposeful selection and arrangement. Here are the definitions Google comes up with:

Note Google’s disclaimer at the bottom of the page:

“The usage examples, images, and web definitions on this page were selected automatically by a computer program. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Google Inc., or its employees.”

This disclaimer brings up one of hard questions Pariser seems to want us to wrestle with. Does that disclaimer mean that this list of definitions is more or less valuable to you than if it said: “50 Google employees with doctorates in library science assembled this list after lengthy evaluation of hundreds of entries?”

What if it said: “50 Google employees with doctorates in library science assembled a list of criteria for selecting lists like these and we put those criteria in to an algorithm in the computer program that was used to generate this list.”

What if it said: “In 1998, 50 Google employees with doctorates in library science assembled a list of criteria for selecting lists like these and we put those criteria in to an algorithm in the computer program that was used to generate this list.”

What if it said: “This list was generated by selecting definitions from the most popular – meaning, with the most traffic - 100 websites offering a definition of ‘curation,’ and then presenting to you the subsection of that list that seems most relevant to the set of websites viewed by you in the past 30 days.”

What Google gets right is telling us, up front and visibly, at least a little about how they decided which definitions to show us. Pariser refers to other examples of this kind of transparency, about letting us know when personalization signals are being used to include and exclude items we see in response to a search.

That transparency seems to be the most hopeful curation, because it holds the promise of our continuing to benefit from algorithmic filtering (seriously, imagine the web without it for a moment) while informing the ultimate curation, each of our own decisions about what to pay attention to, with at least some information about how the options in front of us were chosen from the millions of options that were omitted.

It’s a good start.

Here’s the video:

Also see Eli Pariser’s new book, “The Filter Bubble.“

- Susan