NPI at Netroots Nation 2022: Talking utilizing technology in organizing with Brian T. Smith

Wel­come to the sixth install­ment of NPI at Net­roots Nation 2022, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series record­ed live from the David L. Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh. NPI staff jour­neyed to Steel City this past week to par­tic­i­pate in the nation’s largest annu­al gath­er­ing of pro­gres­sive activists.

As part of our con­fer­ence cov­er­age, we’re bring­ing you a series of con­ver­sa­tions with key move­ment lead­ers and elect­ed officials.

In this install­ment of NPI@NN, we’re hon­ored to be joined by Bri­an T. Smith, Direc­tor of Strate­gic Part­ner­ships with Uni­fied. Press play below to lis­ten to the audio, or read the tran­script below.

Listen

Read the transcript

(Note: this tran­script has been edit­ed light­ly for clarity) 

CAYA: Wel­come to NPI at Net­roots Nation ‘22, a spe­cial lim­it­ed pod­cast series from the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, record­ed live from the David Lawrence Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia! I’m your host, Caya Berndt. We are glad to have you with us. For this install­ment, we are excit­ed to be joined by Direc­tor of Strate­gic Part­ner­ships, Bri­an T. Smith. Welcome! 

BRIAN: Thanks Caya. It’s great to be here. 

CAYA: So, can you tell us about your orga­ni­za­tion? What do you do? What’s your orga­ni­za­tion all about? 

BRIAN: Yeah, absolute­ly. So, I’m very proud to be work­ing with Uni­fied, the new social net­work for com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing and activism. At the time that we’re record­ing this, it’s in devel­op­ment right now, and we’ll be launch­ing it very soon.

The key thing about Uni­fied is, like many social net­works, it pro­vides com­mu­ni­ty build­ing around things like chat, shar­ing, and lik­ing com­ments or lik­ing posts. But Uni­fied will have an addi­tion­al fea­ture where you’ll be able to add spe­cif­ic actions that fol­low­ers will be able to engage with, and you include those in your posts.

CAYA: You sent me a Pow­er­Point pri­or to this inter­view, and from the looks of it… it kind of remind­ed me of a Face­book-style plat­form, but just expand­ed to activism in gen­er­al. Is that accurate? 

BRIAN: Yeah, that is. I think if you com­pare social net­works today, [there’s] a lot of chat and oth­er social fea­tures, but they’re lack­ing spe­cif­ic ways that peo­ple can take actions. At the same time, there are real­ly well-known tool sets on the left that cam­paigns and advo­ca­cy groups use, but many of them lack the social fea­tures. And so, for that rea­son, we’re build­ing this new platform. 

And there’s anoth­er the­sis that’s real­ly impor­tant as to why we’re doing this, is that dig­i­tal orga­niz­ing, in our opin­ion, is large­ly bro­ken. It’s become a spam­my, harass­ing process where you’re get­ting inun­dat­ed with text and emails from can­di­dates, and groups ask­ing for mon­ey. It does not pro­vide the abil­i­ty to build that com­mu­ni­ty. A lot of peo­ple are turned off by those process­es and those meth­ods. So we think there’s a strong appetite for some­thing new and different.

CAYA: Thank you. So, do you have a back­ground in dig­i­tal advo­ca­cy? How did you get start­ed in this field, and what moved you to want to devel­op Unified? 

BRIAN: I’m actu­al­ly a twen­ty year-plus vet­er­an of the pro­gres­sive move­ment. I got start­ed… was real­ly called to work in pol­i­tics after the 2000 elec­tion. So many of my peers obvi­ous­ly were very affect­ed by the 2016 elec­tion, but for me, it starts much ear­li­er than that. I grew up in Austin, Texas. I watched George W. Bush get elect­ed pres­i­dent in my back­yard. So I was very moti­vat­ed to get involved. And I worked in Wash­ing­ton [D.C.] for over fif­teen years as a cam­paign man­ag­er, con­sul­tant, and also as a lob­by­ist. I then got out of that, I tran­si­tioned into tech, worked with a cou­ple oth­er tech com­pa­nies, and then this oppor­tu­ni­ty became avail­able to work with this team around tech and pro­gres­sive activism. It was a per­fect mar­riage of my inter­ests and skills. So, that’s how I got involved.

CAYA: Thank you. So, you said that this plat­form is in devel­op­ment – when can we expect to see it launched? 

BRIAN: Hope­ful­ly ear­ly next year, in 2023. Right now, we are sign­ing up indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions who want to par­tic­i­pate in a pilot pro­gram that we’re launch­ing this fall. It will be lim­it­ed. There’s some lim­it­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pate, so any­body lis­ten­ing to this can go to our web­site, which is joinunified.us, to sign up and become an ear­ly adopter. But yeah, ear­ly next year we hope to be able to have it ful­ly avail­able and open to the public. 

CAYA: Thank you very much. And I will include that infor­ma­tion for those who are lis­ten­ing, who are inter­est­ed in becom­ing involved with this project, I will be link­ing that infor­ma­tion in the post on The Cas­ca­dia Advocate. 

So I just wan­na wrap up. This is my final ques­tion that I like ask­ing, is what are some of the three pieces of media… this could be a book, this could be a movie, this could be a pod­cast, that have made the biggest influ­ence on you lately?

BRIAN: So, grow­ing up, I was very influ­enced by the films that were, sort of clas­sic films around pol­i­tics and polit­i­cal sus­pense. All The President’s Men, obvi­ous­ly, is very well known, and films like that genre. That has always been of inter­est to me. I actu­al­ly went to film school in college. 

CAYA: Really!

BRIAN: Yeah, I have a media back­ground before I got into pol­i­tics. But I’m real­ly inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about your pod­cast, and I plan to sub­scribe to it after today. I’m embar­rassed to say, I first learned about it today!

CAYA: It’s okay! We’re all here to learn and meet each oth­er. We’re all here to learn new things and meet new peo­ple. That’s how we learn and grow. 

BRIAN: Absolute­ly. And I def­i­nite­ly encour­age your lis­ten­ers to check out what we’re doing at Uni­fied. I imag­ine that we are also work­ing with oth­er media groups to get them onto the plat­form. So for any­body lis­ten­ing to this who has a pod­cast of their own, and is inter­est­ed in ampli­fy­ing their audi­ence, they can def­i­nite­ly chat with us about how Uni­fied can help with that.

CAYA: All right. Thank you!

To learn more about Uni­fied, lis­ten­ers can learn more here.