Could we be seeing a new Obama this week? There’s no question the American public has seen a complete about-face in strategy for our young President, in only a matter of days. There’s no question that last week–filled with “Republican outrage”, a “disastrous” election in Massachusetts for the Democrats, and the “final demise” of health care reform–was a miserable week to be a Democrat. And there’s no question the Obama administration figured this out, and with the hiring of David Plouffe at the end of the week as a formal adviser, they’ve also acted on it.

This week is proof. Wednesday night’s State of the Union speech was not a complete revolution in the rhetoric, but it was far more detailed, passionate, and blunt than I think anyone really expected. And the American public seem to have received it well, with 83% of speech watchers approving of his proposals.

Thursday we saw the bold announcement of a new high-speed rail proposal, utilizing $8 billion of stimulus funds. This announcement is a huge deal for each state involved, and is a pretty well-supported investment. God knows I can’t wait for a high-speed trip to NYC from DC.

Finally, in one of the most glorious demonstrations of American democracy I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, we had a direct question and answer session with President Obama and House Republicans Friday afternoon. Not only was it pleasantly surprising to see the GOP actually invite our Democratic President to come speak with them but, to put it bluntly, he absolutely schooled them.

He shot down their accusations. He legitimized and substantiated his proposals. He took them to task for their ridiculous politicizing and demonization of his policies. He did everything right. Have you seen it? You need to. Especially if you’re a Republican. I’ll join with journalists all over the Internet calling for this to be a regular occurrence. Let’s make “question time” happen all the time. Hell, let’s put it in the Constitution. Anything to make this kind of reasoned, even, logical debate happen more often and in public.

Have you seen the video? Watch it below. Miss the State of the Union? Check out the video embedded above.

In the end, it’s been a good week for Democrats. And it’s been a great week for Obama. I don’t know if I’d call this Obama v2.0 as much as a return to Obama v1.0, after a regression to Obama v0.5.

Consider this a rebound. Obama is back in the game. Maybe it was a wake-up call from Massachusetts, maybe it was advice from David Plouffe, or maybe it was simply Obama deciding it was time to change the way he’s been doing things. Regardless, I like it. I think this is a good thing for Democrats, a good thing for Obama, and a good thing for America. And look at how quickly the past week has changed things–if nothing else, this week should teach us all that things in politics can change incredibly quickly. We’ve got about ten months between now and November, I have no doubt Republicans will have good weeks and Democrats will have good weeks. Here’s hoping we can see more “question time”-style debate, more civil debate and more productivity on Capitol Hill between now and then, too.

Edit: Thanks so much to Andi Narvaez (@andinarvaez) for the tip on “Rebound” instead of “Reboot”. Flows much better, and certainly more contextually appropriate given his appearance at today’s Georgetown v. Duke game.

As evidenced by my conspicuous lack of updates this week, it’s been busy around here! I’ll do my best to catch up quickly and get back to writing a bit this weekend.

First, D.C. Media Makers! I attended my first event on Wednesday evening at NPR’s headquarters here in Washington, and it was fantastic! Got to see some very cool people I’ve gotten to know over the past few weeks, and got to hear the amazing Jen Consalvo (@noreaster on Twitter) speak about her photography work, how to get into photography, and some tips on how to get better shots–even on an iPhone (for what it’s worth, she recommended CameraBag as excellent filter app, pretty cool!).

As a side note on DCMM, this semester I’ve obviously been trying to get out in the city and meet people, go to events, hear speakers, get involved in unconferences, etc. It’s already paying off, and in a big, big way. I’ve met some absolutely amazing people and developed some good friendships already. I feel like I can go to any event now and usually see someone I know. This city is huge, but the community is smaller than it seems, and everyone has been so incredibly welcoming! I can’t encourage my fellow students, and professionals, enough: get out there and take advantage of this amazing city. Meet some of the incredible professionals out here and say hi, get to know them. I know I’ve learned so much just in the past few weeks from these people, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Thanks so much to all of you who’ve taught me, even indirectly, and I’m already looking forward to the next event!

Now, in a more general life update, things have been pretty crazy for me lately. School is piling on the work and the reading, and unfortunately that still has to be pretty much priority number one. However, there’s a couple cool things happening in my life:

• Soon I will be contributing my first post (of many, hopefully) to shamable.com. Seeking to be the no-B.S. guide to social media, it’s a new Web site being developed by some of the best people in the business. I’m seriously honored to be a part of it and I’m hoping I can make some valuable contributions from my perspective as a student here in D.C. during this social media revolution.
• I’m hard at work on my communications honors capstone. The first of two (I’ll do my business honors capstone next year), I’m really excited about the project and overjoyed that I have an absolutely amazing professor advising me with it. The project will ultimately be a social media case study in digital form, and will be appended to this Web site. Expect plenty of updates on that throughout the semester, especially towards the latter end of it.
• Internships, scholarships, awards, oh my! Yes indeed, it’s already that time and applications are littering my desk. This weekend I hope to make a fair bit of headway into scholarship applications for my senior year (gasp, can’t believe it’s almost here already) and internship applications for the summer. Speaking of which–do you know of any opportunities (preferably paid) for a young communications professional to work over the summer? Location not a factor, let me know! All tips are sincerely appreciated!
• It looks like it’s going to be a busy Saturday for me, as I’ve already got several things on the docket. In the morning I’m hoping to get down to the Washington Auto Show, especially since it’s garnered so much buzz this year. At 1:00pm I’ll be heading over to Politics & Prose bookstore here in northwest Washington for an event with one of my former professors, Robert Lehrman. He just had his book on speechwriting published (it’s amazing, by the way) and I’m eager to say hi again! Finally, Saturday night at 5pm the AU PRSSA (Public Relations Student Society of America) will be holding a networking event at American University. If you’re a communications professional in the area and would be interested and coming to network with some eager public communications students, please let me know! We’d love to have you (and there will be free food).

And alas, I think that’s all I have time for this morning. I hope everyone has a fantastic day!

In the past 24 hours, the topic of mobile has come up in conversation no fewer than five times. It’s a big deal.

Yesterday, at the social media breakfast here in D.C., Geoff Livingston (as well as Alex Howard and Shashi Bellamkonda, but to a lesser extent) put a huge focus on mobile.

“Get mobile, get mobile now,” he said. He’s convinced mobile is the the place to be for Internet technology, especially social media. I don’t disagree. Mobile is undoubtedly where everyone is heading–the Apple iPhone, Google Android, BlackBerry and even new Nokia phones are putting more of a focus on data, Internet usage, and apps than ever before. It’s what customers want. They want easy access to all the world’s information everywhere, all the time. The development in smart phones over the past three years gives us that.

Now there’s much talk about the upcoming Apple event tomorrow. The topic even came up just a few minutes ago on MSNBC’s morning talk show, Morning Joe. Everyone–even non-geeks–is excited about the announcements Apple will make tomorrow. Will it be the tablet? Almost certainly. Will it be new iPhone software? Maybe. Will it be the iPhone announced for multiple carriers? Well of course, since AT&T’s exclusivity contract runs out this year… right? Why wouldn’t other carriers want the iPhone on their service? Why wouldn’t Verizon want to drive millions and millions of customers to their stores to pick up the newest, hottest iPhone to use on their theoretically better, faster service? Same with Sprint.

I’m not about to suggest the iPhone will stay exclusive to AT&T–I don’t think AT&T wants it exclusive anymore. They got the first boost, it gave them what they needed to keep up with Verizon, and that’s fine. In fact, I think that Apple most likely will announce support for multiple carriers tomorrow. I’m just not so sure that’s a good thing.

Look at it this way. Before Apple released the iPhone on AT&T’s service, were there ever any major complaints about service quality for AT&T? Maybe in rural areas, as with all carriers, but never in places like New York City or San Francisco (two of the most common cities with issues for AT&T). Never were there problems with network overload, never did you hear about concepts such as a carrier simply not being able to handle the amount of usage it’s getting. Ah, the consequences of an unlimited data plan.

I think Apple set off a ticking time bomb in the form of unlimited data with their mini-computer, ultra-connected, always-online little smart phone. The iPhone has destroyed AT&T’s reputation for service, and created seemingly unreachable demand for bandwidth. There’s no going back now; a return to limited data plans would send customers away from any carrier who tried it in droves, especially current iPhone users.

“This app cannot be accessed, you’ve reached your data limit for the month.” Ha, right, like any of us geeks would deal with that kind of message popping up while we try to access Tweetie or Evernote? Not in a million years.

But my point is this. What happens with Apple releases the iPhone on Verizon’s service? On Sprint’s? On T-Mobile?

This could be bad, folks. Not doomsday scenario, end-of-mobile-service-in-the-U.S. kind of bad, but it’s not particularly good for the consumer. I’m certainly in favor of competition, but at what cost? At the end of the day tomorrow, will every customer in the U.S. be on a carrier with horrendous service because of overeager iPhone users sucking up the bandwidth from dreadfully under-equipped telecommunications companies? Will there be 18 million New Yorkers walking around cursing their service, as opposed to the few million AT&T customers now who do it?

Maybe the people in mid-size, midwestern cities will sit back all smug and laugh at all the hi-tech geeks on the east and west coasts trying to compete for data. Maybe in the end we’ll look back and all blame Apple.

Are other carriers ready to take on the iPhone burden?  What do you think? I have no doubt all the carriers will eventually upgrade their infrastructure enough to handle the increased demand for data, but it could be a while. As long as more people keep switching to smart phones–the iPhone isn’t the only one, by the way–there’s going to be more demand for data. It’ll be a while before this trend levels off.

Anyway, there’s your morning musings, folks. Have a good day.

AKA The Washington Post. This morning a number of articles caught my eye. Instead of posting them all through successive Twitter posts, I figured I’d list them here for you to check out if you’re interested. Even now, the newspaper provides value for me. It doesn’t come anywhere near the essential role that the Internet plays in my news-gathering, info-centric life, but I still enjoy picking it up and flipping through the pages in the morning, sometimes there’s some hidden gems to be found that don’t make it onto Twitter.

• “Web sites let online lives outlast the dearly departed” – This one caught my eye just because I’ve heard of this before. It’s a unique form of “social” media (in the most indirect sense, I suppose) that uses technology to fulfill a role that was previously complex, often messy, and never enjoyable. This doesn’t necessarily make the process any easier emotionally for those losing loved ones, but it should make it easier in a logistical sense.
• “D.C. auto show gets higher profile this year” – This interests me just because I like cars. Also, it’ll be interesting to see how much media coverage this gets when it starts on Wednesday. Will it actually be as big of a deal as the Post says it will be, because of the auto bailouts? Or will it be mostly overlooked, as the D.C. auto show often is? I might try to go by on Saturday if I have time.
• “The Internet war” – This editorial lays out the situation right now between the U.S. and China re: Internet freedom. I think this is a great, great thing and I hope the Obama administration continues to pursue it heavily. The open nature of the Internet in the United States has, in my opinion, brought us closer to a full democracy (an almost unattainable concept, really) than anything in history. China is obviously not a democracy, but open Internet could be a step in the right direction for it’s still-repressed over 1.3 billion citizens.
• Horoscopes - I’ll be honest I’ve always gotten a kick out of horoscopes; I’m not really a believer, but they’re fun, anyway. Today’s print horoscope (for some reason they are different online, so no link for this one), seemed especially fitting for today: “You have so much work to do and no clue how you’re going to be able to accomplish it all. The answer is in using your support system. That’s what it’s there for, and loved ones will be eager to help.” Some context–today I ‘ve been to the Social Media Club DC breakfast, had five class (one block), one meeting with the AU Web Communications Manager, one meeting with a professor, written two blog entries, and I have an eco-sense meeting this evening. All while tweeting (naturally). But it’s been a fantastic day.

That’s all for now, folks.

This morning was Social Media Club DC‘s first ever Social Media Breakfast, and it was great! Held at Teaism here in downtown DC, we had great food, great conversation, and some excellent speakers. I’d never even been to Teaism before, but if this morning’s breakfast was a good indication of their normal food, I’m excited to go back.

The speakers included Geoff Livingston (on Twitter, @geoffliving), Alex Howard (on Twitter, @Digiphile), and Shashi Bellamkonda (on Twitter, @shashib). They had a lot of great things to say, and I even had the great opportunity to continue into a conversation with Geoff Livingston at our table after the speakers had all presented. Unfortunately, I had to jet a little early because of class, but here’s some of what I gleaned from the speakers.

Geoff Livingston had a simple message: “get mobile, get mobile now,” he said. Appropriate. I think most people in the social media and technology world are well aware now that mobile is certainly the next big revolution in communication and media tech. The iPhone and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have led the way to a more digital, more mobile, more connected life–24/7, wherever you are. He said that this next evolution in the industry is “your opportunity to be a visionary” and if you want to lead then “load up [your] reader” with every tech blog you can find. Thankfully, I’m well-covered on that front–Mashable is like the gospel for social media tech, and I must subscribe to at least 10 or 15 other big blogs, in addition to all the smaller, more personal format ones. There’s lots of info out there. Always learning.

Shashi Bellamkonda had much the same message–it’s all about mobile, it’s all about staying on top of trends, and it’s all about staying connected and active in the social media sphere. You can’t read about this and know it, you have to use it to know it.

Speaking of trends, Alex Howard rounded out the group and gave us a great list of what he thinks are the biggest trends coming for 2010. They are:

1. Search – traditional search engines being replaced by social media
2. Niche networks – using OAuth to log on, individual networks, platforms such as Ning
3. Privacy – much discussion on the “privacy is dead” controversy spoken by people like Pete Cashmore, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg; Howard disagrees, says there will be a big debate both in social realm and in congress this year
4. Social gaming – games like foursquare, “Farmville” on Facebook, etc. becoming huge players
5. Security - key: “STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER 6″
6. Open web - no more locked into platforms
7. App as the new Web site – quoted from Mathew Ingram, making mobile apps for revenue; es
   timated $7 billion in revenue
   for mobile apps in 2010
8. Geolocation – Twitter integrated geolocation, games like Foursquare, etc.
9. Online video – continuation of the growth seen since 2006, more mainstream content online, CNN streaming, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, Boxee; also, organizations like CNN and the White House using Facebook, YouTube as outlets for online video

And that about wraps it up. It was a great morning–I’m already looking forward to the next event!

Update: I’ve added Alex Howard’s presentation from the event to this post. It’s embedded below the jump, check it out, it’s pretty awesome! He uses Prezi, which has been one of my favorite tools since early last year.

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