“Donald Rumsfeld was being interviewed after 9/11, and someone in CNN actually asked him,  ‘Secretary Rumsfeld, what is going on here? Can you tell me what Muslims are thinking? Or what do you think?’ And [the] secretary said, ‘How should I know? It’s not like you can do a Gallup poll of the Muslim world.’ So our CEO actually called up our Princeton office and said ‘Can we do that?’ And lo and behold, we started what is now the largest [polling] effort in the world.”

One of the statistics showed different countries’ approval of U.S. leadership in 2008 (before the presidential election) and in 2009 (post-election).

Do you approve of the leadership of the U.S.?  (Yes/No)
2008 v. 2009 numbers
Spain: 8 percent v. 54 percent
Egypt: 6 percent v. 25 percent
Pakistan: 10 percent v. 13 percent
Palestine: 13 percent v. 7 percent

Gallup has also developed a communication index – measured by whether people have a phone, internet access and television. “What this suggests is the more connected people are the less approval they have of the United States…. It appears that the more access to information people have, the less favorable they are. It doesn’t mean that the information is making them less favorable, that’s just what it is.”

An interesting side note: The room the symposium is taking place in has a weighty history: it was the original presidential ballroom (where the President and First Lady have their first dance after the inauguration) and was the largest freestanding building in 1871.

It’s going to begin with a welcome from Ben Riley, Principal Deputy, Rapid Fielding, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and chairman of iDiplomacy. Jerome Gary, the moderator of iDiplomacy and chairman of Visionaire Media, is going to be discussing the semantics of public diplomacy.

Warren Wright from Gallup will be discussing perceptions of the United States around the world and Matt Armstrong, blogger of mountainrunner.us, will be presenting the history of public diplomacy. Although there’s good representation from government, not everyone attending has a public diplomacy background — there are screenwriters, (video) gamers, and people from the tech industry in attendance too. 

Duncan MacInnes and Rosa Brooks will be presenting the work being done now by the State and Defense Departments, respectively.

After lunch, James Fowler, author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, with whom we did a Q & A earlier, will be talking about the new media landscape after lunch and then joining Adam Conner from Facebook, Price Floyd from the Defense Department, Josh Klein — a hacker of social systems, computer networks and animal behavior — and Peter Marx from Mattel for a panel discussion of how new technologies and social media can be used as force multipliers.

The day will conclude with a breakout session to discuss projects that leverage new media with the groups reporting back to everyone at the end.

You can also see bios for chairman Ben Riley and presenters Rosa Brooks and Warren Wright under “conference information.”