I'm at today's discussion (thanks to Verizon for the great meeting space), and will update here and there with any notable comments and links...

12:35pm: David Almacy of Waggener Edstrom is the first speaker, talking about the early evolution of the White House web site. Interesting stuff on trying to measure impact and negotiate government regulations -- PLUS the inside scoop on the genesis of the BarneyCam.

12:38pm: Almacy -- who was Internet & E-Communications Director in the Bush White House -- talks about the ad hoc syndication efforts as they tried to get outside WhiteHouse.gov. Getting iTunes to create a government podcast section, getting RSS feeds into Google News, etc.

12:40: Tivo distributes podcasts. Who knew?...

12:46: Predicting where .gov goes from here: More video, both live and recorded, the Twitter/franking-regulation kerfuffle being a watershed for government officials learning to use these tools. Talking about John Culberson using Qik to interview the press interviewing him.

12:50: Transitioning to the panel discussion -- Fleishman-Hillard's Benjamin Coffey Clark, Blattner Brunner's Ernie Mosteller, and Washingtonian's Sarah Romer, with Roll Call's Pete Cherukuri moderating.

12:56: Quick rundown of the online ad and client-services biz from the panelists. According to Romer, buys from existing advertisers is steady and even growing -- it's the new-business side that's looking increasingly grim.

12:59: Coffey Clark notes an interesting consideration for reaching Hill eyeballs: for folks whose job involves thinking about what's on the minds of constituents and "regular folks," sometimes it's MORE effective to reach them through non-political pubs. IE, catching them as their looking for restaurant reviews or reading a sports blog on the weekend can be a really effective "bank shot."

1:05: Almacy has a great term for a challenge I've long tried to explain to people: "The Plop Factor." IE, you can walk into the CEO's office and plop today's NYT or National Journal magazine on the desk to show how your message got out. There's no good equivalent for online -- "plopping" a screenshot on someone's desk just isn't the same, and it doesn't take too many screens of Google Analytics before folks' eyes glaze over.

1:16: Cherukuri poses a good question to the panel -- how do Newspapers fit into the current business landscape. Romer demurred on handicapping the Post's business model, but says that magazines like hers are still in a fairly good place relative to papers.

Mosteller is more pessimistic, noting that papers now have to compete with so many other sources of breaking, local news -- most of which have no overhead or even a profit imperative.

1:28: Coffey Clark predicting that an Obama Administration would offer a great teachable moment to get businesses to focus on technology in general, and online advertising/media inside the Beltway in particular. His point is that, fairly or not, Obama is seen as a tech guy in a way that McCain is not.

(It's worth noting, though -- as Mosteller did -- that McCain was early to the Web. And folks do forget that he was the first candidate to raise REAL money online in 2000. Of course, eight years ago, "real money" was six to seven figures, not the mid-nines!...)

1:31: Almacy notes that mobile is the under-discussed media, given how much the campaigns have used it. Of course, one reason we don't talk about it much at these venues is that folks haven't figured out how to really monetize it very well yet... :)

1:33: Turns out that a guy from the firm that powers Obama's mobile operations is here. It's a very small world.

1:37 OK, we're into the last bit of Q&A, and off to Verizon's FIOS show-and-tell.