These are meeting notes from a meeting held with members of the 2014 Mayoral Twitter Debate Team. Learn more here.

2013-11-26 Meeting Notes:

  • Vision from @tdlove5: 2 debates officially sponsored by #oakmtg.

    • 1) DREAM!: a live debate at council chambers, with KTOP taping it. (most of the debates are at private meetings or at functions that a lot of people can't go to or don't know about). Questions generated from social media. Introduce ahead of time and have people vote on them. Ask most popular questions. At the same time, have livetweeters there to tweet out answers (so that even if you can't watch it on tv, you can follow online).

    • 2) a regular tweetup. Tell everyone to come at certain hour. have pre-set questions & candidates would answer on twitter. This would be purely social media. The candidates would likely have staff answer q's, so this is why the live debate is preferable.

  • How would other people be involved?

    • help get people involved/aware of this

    • secure resources like rooms, media coverage, etc.

  • Make Oakland Better Now is also interested in debates. MOBN has done questionnaires in the past, but the responses are staff-written essay, rather than hearing the candidate directly. MOBN is interested in getting some depth. **Need a way to ask follow-ups. Might want a moderator. (People agree) People on twitter can ask follow-up q's somehow.

  • Public ethics commission had a meeting where they had a person in the meeting read the twitter feed. We could do something similar. Can do thumbs up/thumbs down. not sure how to do this. One way would be through backchan.nl, but concerns that this is not tied in to twitter.

  • Open Oakland is also hosting a debate, but focused on opengov.

  • Timing:

    • Tweetchat in the spring

    • Live debate in the summer

  • TASKS:

    • Secure the format: Discussion about format will be talked about during the first #oakmtg discussion Wed. 6 pm. See below.

    • Secure the place: Tonya and Marina will contact sources within City Hall to see about securing a room and trying to get KTOP to film it. @gopublicschools will ask about securing a space a local public school if City Hall is not available.

    • Secure the candidates:

      • how to get them to participate?

        • contact their staff.  Tonya will ask a friend who is involved with the Mayor. She will also try to contact Bryan Parker to see if he is interested. Mike from  Make Oakland Better Now will try to contact Joe Tuman.

        • Impress upon the candidates that this is an opportunity for them to communicate with constituents.

    • can host regular meetings beforehand on twitter to encourage participation.

      • can discuss moderators on twitter

      • can have topic discussions

      • can have format discussions

      • once a month? first wednesday of the month.

      • first one in december (Dec. 4th at 6PM) to talk about format.

      • Tonya will contact the candidates and ask them to participate or at least follow along in the discussions.