Unique Opportunity to Focus International Leaders on Tech4Dem

Every four years NDI hosts hundreds of political and civil society leaders along with diplomats from more than 100 countries to observe the US nominating process at the Democratic National Convention - which starts next Tuesday. Our guests include legislators, cabinet ministers, leaders of civic organizations and over 100 ambassadors from the diplomatic corps based in Washington. NDI puts together an entire daytime program of interesting panels and events for our international guests that complement the official evening convention speeches and activities.

This year NDI's International Leaders Forum (ILF) program has a tech4dem thread running through it that provides a unique opportunity for tech leaders to introduce key themes and issues to the global group of political leaders. We've partnered with Google to host a series of three "Democracy Spotlights" that will highlight important trends and ideas in technology and politics, and a panel discussion - called 21st Century Campaigns - that will feature digital strategists from the Obama, Romney and successful online issue-based campaigns. 

The 15-minute Democracy Spotlights will feature Marietje Schaake from the European Parliament, Google Senior Vice President David Drummond, Tim O'Reilly from O'Reilly Media fame and David Eaves. The campaign panel, moderated by Riz Khan from Aljazeera, will include Mindy Finn from Twitter (and former Republican campaign strategist), Andrew Bleeker (Democratic digital expert) and Gigi Sohn, founder of Public Knowledge.

All of these events will be live streamed next week here: http://ndi.org/live, and join the conversation on twitter, hashtag #ilfndi or on Google Plus at the NDI G+ page.