In our discussion forum, there are a lot of people writing about their own experiences. In the topic "Distinction between Local & Regional or central Campaigns?" the participants collected some examples for successful local campaigns. And the topic "Online Political Campaign" was opened with a short report about the situation in the Philippines. Join the discussion and add your own experiences, maybe you have hints for the other participants concerning planning campaigns.

Today we want to have a look at a very big political campaign which is running at the moment in the US. "my.BO" is the name of the online community from Barack Obmama and they have more than a million users. The team of my.BO gives a brief tour of the community in the following video. Please notice that this video is biased in that it is made by the Obama team.

Do you like my.BO? Do you want a campaign like this for your next election campaign in your country? why? Why not? Tell us in the Forum Week 3: Social Networks.

We advance in our agenda and take a look at best practices today:
The CEO of the German Liberal Party (FDP) JÜRGEN BEERFELTZ details how he runs political campaigns online. And from Malaysia comes PREMESH CHANDRAN to us. He is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Malaysiakini.com, an independent news media organisation in Malaysia. He gives us a case study of campaigns.

We do hope that these inputs contain suggestions for a lively discussion among you in the discussion-forum.

Hello and welcome everyone to the Opening of the Track about political campaigns online. For the next four days I am your moderator and host. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to send me an email to nimmerfroh@virtuelle-akademie.de.

The internet affects political campaigns in two ways: Political groups use the internet for publishing their ideas and internet users use their own networks for discussing political issues.

Today we start with a short presentation about the essentials of political campaigns online. And tomorrow we take a look at best practices.

So - What is a successful internet campaign? What can we learn from commercial campaigns? Is it a question of money? Let´s start the discussion in the discussion forum of the track!