We’re just about ready for the second morning plenary. My boss, Chuck DeFeo is one of the presenters, so it should be interesting. I’m hoping he’ll say my name and give me my 30 seconds of fame.

11:23 — Introductions. How to build a web team, and what are the right ways to do it. The only other guy I know up on the panel is Patrick Ruffini, who is working on the Rudy Giuliani campaign.

Q: What kind of people are you hiring.

Ruffini: Seven categories. The online campaign has to be completely integrated with your traditional campaign. Your web team needs to speak the campaign language. You need to have someone who knows what the people in the field need. Integration is key.

Joe Trippi: There shouldn’t be a wall between the online strategy guys (web team) and the traditional campaign teams. Field is offline AND online.

Chuck DeFeo: Campaigns are broken down into 3 areas: Communication, Finance, and Political. Over all of those there is a strategy (like Joe in the Dean campaign). Your eCampaign has to reflect how you are organizing for your strategy. “It’s integrated with all three of those.”

11:36 — They are getting deep into political campaigns strategy, and discussing how online strategy implementation is different. I’m not a political science guy, so some of this stuff isn’t all that interesting, but some of the concepts could be related to any communications strategy.

A key point is that to execute effective online strategy, you have to have buy-in all the way from the top. The implementation of an online strategy has to be in focus with the organizational goals. This is challenging when you have higher-ups who don’t get it when it comes to technology, and “tie the hands” of their web guys.

Jerome Armstrong is talking about he got Mark Warner to let him use Second Life for his campaign. It was not well received in the political world, but it was very well received by the technical world — the bloggers, among others.

How to deal with negative viral crisis: Flood the zone. Makaca was a problem because the campaign did not respond to the video. Another example is Romney. Someone posted a negative video, and Romney responded by taping a phone call with a conservative blogger responding to the negative video. He overtook the story, and drove the message.

They are talking about political campaigns in today’s YouTube world. They all agree each candidate should have a videographer follow the candidate 24/7 and post daily video journals. Of course, you still do the more traditional “tracker.” You can also use viral “citizen” videographers to send in videos, reducing your costs.

12:10PM – We are going to Q&A, but here is a video clip of some thoughts on YouTube.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTP1uMdg3ro%5D

Also there, David All, Patrick Ruffini, and Matt Lewis (with whom I shared the video), and Robert Bluey. Check out their comments as well.