Around 2003, after Democrats were walloped in the midterms and the big left-leaning organizations in D.C. proved unable to register any victories against President Bush, the professional left was desperate. So desperate that many Dems and lots of orgs actually hired a bunch of bloggers and technology geeks to try something new – anything new. I was one of those strategy outsiders.

I always brought my background in entertainment to the table, stressing the need for a coherent story with respect to “the battle of narratives” element in politics. However much I stressed story stuff like identify the bad guy, or choose conflict, the essential challenge for us digital narrative strategists was to figure out how to use the nascent internet to do good in D.C.

Some established players in the professional left held a narrow view that the web should be used as medium for advertising. A lot of marketing folks were okay with that role for the internet. But as McLuhan said, “the medium is the message,” so we outsiders pushed back with a counterpoint that the internet is an interactive platform for tools, including collaboration tools. We also realized that the internet is experiential, and that it was teaching people to expect more responsiveness from their world. At the end of the day, marketing did happen online, but so did all manner of political organizing, from first I.D. all the way through GOTV. It worked, in 2006 we took Congress and in 2008 we elected a president because the new field of online politics that we invented.

For a while it was like building a plane mid-flight from random spare parts. Everything was new. Most people were still trying to wrap their heads around what the internet even was. Yet my colleagues and I had concrete things to accomplish: We needed to influence newscycles, raise money, signup new supporters, organize them, lobby electeds, stop bad things from happening, push for good things to happen, and win elections. To make matters worse, we were working in a very old industry and needed to constantly reassure the old guard that we were contributing to traditional departments and we were not a waste of effort, nor as some feared, out to destroy D.C. altogether.

There was no vernacular for this mysterious and multi-pronged problem. So in order to arrive at a working model for our system of actions, people like me borrowed theoretical constructs from disparate fields and found where they were harmonious and applicable. I spoke at conferences about how ideas borrowed from Actor Network Theory, plus others from Educational Psychology, and some marketing techniques, seemed to fit together to constitute one way to conceptualize online politicking. Cycle by cycle, and race by race, methods were solidified, and metrics were established to turn it all into a science.

Currently I’m developing a working theory on transmedia or multidimensional (multi-screen) storytelling across film, television, podcasts, and print. In one way, it is narrative universe building. The practice incorporates components from a few robust sciences. The goal is to use the new media forces that some perceive as a threat to old industries like Hollywood, and instead, use this tech to our advantage. I’m really excited by how well these ideas are starting to fit together.

#1) Why does Hollywood need this?
* channel choice * piracy * cord-cutting * second screen ubiquity * streamers * ad avoidance technology * time crunch

#2) What is keeping Hollywood from doing this?
* a lot of marketers have convinced industry bosses that the internet is for promo and that everyone will keep going to the movies forever.
* unlike the professional left (circa 2002), Hollywood hasn’t hit rock bottom…yet

But I believe there are some people in LA who get it, see the writing on the wall, and are willing to go big in order to stay afloat – so I’ll keep writing about this and searching for executives in LA who aren’t delusional and want to win the future of Hollywood. Stay tuned.