Coronavirus has changed our lives including how we come together to create change. Although we couldn’t meet in person for this year’s Netroots Nation #NN20 conference, virtual attendance was at an all time high. With over 2,000 virtual participants and over 500,000 Keynote views, we were excited to be part of one of the largest Netroots Nation conferences yet. Here are some of our favorite highlights:

Kicking off the event, I had the pleasure of opening the EMILY’s List/Netroots Pre-Conference as the first Black Board Chair of Netroots Nation with EMILY’s List team members Stephanie Schriock (President) and Natalie Cone (Community Engagement Director). The theme this year couldn’t be more fitting: Bold and Courageous Women Leaders in Times of Radical Change. Our team at DBT has seen firsthand what bold female leaders are capable of. We’ve supported many female candidates as they run for office through our work with clients like Lauren Underwood, Amy McGrath, Supermajority and VoteRunLead, among others. 

Later in the week, we were incredibly proud to carry the torch by highlighting some of the bold women leaders here at DBT. DBT’s SVP Digital Ads Ryanne Brown, Director of Digital Technology Avery Lord, and Content Director Janani Sreenivasan led a breakthrough masterclass on “How To Launch a Campaign That Pops On Day One.” View the deck here and watch the full training below:

I later had the opportunity to lead a masterclass with Upfluence’s SVP of Sales, Paul Kahn, on the benefits of utilizing influencer reach to bolster causes and campaigns. 
View the deck here for our training “Influencer Engagement: the Future Of Online Organizing is Already Here”, or watch the full video below:

Stay tuned for the full recordings of our training sessions, which will be featured on the Netroots Nations site.

I also had the pleasure of being a guest judge for the legendary annual Pundit Cup semi-finals, where aspirants showed off their political commentary skills and squared off in a heated mock TV debate for a grand prize of $500 and ultimate bragging rights.

On the final day of #NN20, as Netroots Nation Board Chair I had the honor of closing out the week with Netroots Nation’s closing keynote.Over 200,000 people tuned in to watch special guests such as Reps. Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, Alicia Garza, Color of Change’s Rashad Robinson, our client Dorian Warren of Community Change, leading immigration and Native activists and more.

Watch the full Closing Keynote below:

At the beginning of the NN keynote, we launched our cutting-edge police reform study with Swayable in community with our clients at The Advancement Project, a member of the Movement for Black Lives. Using new tech like AI, NLP and RCT, we conducted a pro-bono sentiment and message test of language associated with the call for police reform online. We learned what messaging works online now with certain audiences with ideas on future trends. Read the full report here. 

A big thank you to Netroots Nation for a spectacular event, and thank you to everyone who joined us along the way. If you watched either/both of our training sessions and wanted to learn more, reach out!