IPOLITICS: Calling all politicos: Next Campaign Summit to feature speakers on electoral tech and tactics

iPolitics caught up with Brett Thalmann, co-founder of the Next Campaign Summit, a one-day nonpartisan event devoted to all the latest tech and tactics used in election campaigns across the world.

In two months, the Canadian political world will congregate in Toronto for the Next Campaign Summit, a one-day nonpartisan event devoted to all the latest tech and tactics used in election campaigns across the world. 

To tee up the summit, iPolitics chatted with Brett Thalmann, a founding partner at Nexus Strategic Consultants and one of the event’s organizers. Thalmann spoke about how the event’s origin story, the impressive list of speakers, and why it will be a can’t-miss networking opportunity for Canadian politicos. 

I wanted to start with the backstory for this event and how you got the idea to organize a summit devoted to political campaigning. 

The Next Campaign Summit was the brainchild of three experienced campaign strategists: myself, Hasneet Singh Punia, and Harneet Singh. The three of us were actually on a municipal mayoral campaign a year ago and we had challenges with technology and a lack of infrastructure, so we realized there’s a need out there.

There was nowhere for us to find advice on campaign technologies. Most of what occurs in Canadian politics is each party or political faction will organize a policy conference, but there isn’t a traditional nonpartisan gathering space to discuss political campaigning and technology, so that’s how the idea was born.

The three of us have been working on it for about a year and decided to start with a one-day conference, and so far the reaction has been super positive. We think this could become a regular thing and we’d like to build out more events to keep building these spaces where people can come together, share ideas and best practices, and talk about the impact of technology on the democratic process.

Do you feel the art of campaigning is sometimes under-discussed in political circles? Is that part of what spurred this idea?

Yes. In recent years, the media coverage of campaigns tends to be the horserace numbers and polling, but there hasn’t been a public conversation about the tools and tactics that parties and advocacy groups use to try to shift public opinion and mobilize voters. With the rise of AI tools and sophisticated targeting on social media, we felt this was the right time to have that conversation in a nonpartisan forum.

I’ve been involved with Liberal politics for many years and the conversation is happening within the parties, but there isn’t really anything nonpartisan like that.

I wanted to ask about that because, when you visit the event website, it emphasizes the nonpartisan nature of the summit. Why was it important for this event to be unaffiliated with any political party?

To start, the founders are all from different political backgrounds and we really wanted to create a space where people could learn from different practitioners from different political stripes.

We see a lot of Canadian political operatives going down south to learn about the technology being used in the U.S. and we just saw an exciting election in the U.K., so we want to create a space that could bring together strategists, politicians, technology vendors, thought leaders, regardless of partisan affiliation.

It’s a bit of an experiment because we will have people ons tage that have worked on different sides of various battles over the years, but we’re hoping to create that space where people interested in Canadian politics can learn from our speakers and the programming we’re doing at the conference.

The summit will take place in Toronto on Sept. 12. Was that timing intentional considering the upcoming U.S. election and the looming possibility of a federal election in Canada?

Yes, we were pretty intentional about the timing. We wanted to host it before the House of Commons returns in Ottawa, so people could actually attend. The U.S. election is a great tie-in and there’s going to be a lot of focus on the current presidential race, so we want to lean into that. We actually have a few U.S.-based practitioners coming up to talk about the race.

We also have three provincial elections this fall in B.C., Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick, so we wanted to get this in before those take place. We have speakers from all three provinces coming to give us a preview of those provincial elections.

And, there’s media reports that Ontario Premier Doug Ford might call an early election, so the timing has a nice confluence of political activity and elections coming that gives people a lot of interest in having this conversation.

You mentioned the list of speakers. There’s a long list of confirmed attendees, including Liberal cabinet minister Rechie Valdez, Conservative MP Jasraj Hallan, and Gerald Butts, former principal secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. However, it also teases more speakers yet to be confirmed and I was wondering if you can reveal any other speakers who will also be in attendance?

I can tell you that Zain Velji, who was recently on Naheed Nenshi’s campaign for the NDP leadership in Alberta, is going to speak about advertising because he led advertising for former Alberta premier Rachel Notley and the provincial NDP for the last two elections.

We also just confirmed that Conservative Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman will be a speaker at the summit.

Is there anything else people should know? What can people planning on attending the summit expect?

They can expect an amazing lineup of speakers and panel discussions throughout the day. The conference is at Hotel X in Toronto, which is a great location. We’re going to have some great food and there will be a lot of networking sessions, so people will be able to meet a lot of practitioners in political campaigning, as well as vendors. A lot of non-profits have bought tickets and are coming in to learn about various campaign tools.

I think people are going to be able to walk away with a lot of new connections and contacts, as well as ideas for tactics in their campaigns.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

iPolitics is a media partner of the Next Campaign Summit 2024.

This is a repost from iPolitics. Check out the full Q&A here.