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October 11, 2003

[FOO] Politics and Technology

Dori Smith and Tom Negrino have set up this session.

Doc says that the Dean campaign is the implemention of the Cluetrain Manifesto in politics. Here's a relatively random run through the thread...

Do we see the top listening to the grassroots on policy? Not so much. At the Dean campaign it's more about enabling the grassroots to connect and self-organize. Should it be more like the Open Source community in how it evolves positions?

Is the Dean campaign a real phenomenon or are we still first adopters who are miles from crossing the chasm? It may depend on how you look at it.

Are 460,000 signed up at the Dean web site a lot or a drop in the bucket? Politically it's apparently big.

Are blogs changing minds? Compared to TV? Virginia Postrel cited research recently that putting broadcast marketing together with network marketing is highly efficient at shaping opinions.

What will happen when comments on the Dean blog go from 2,000/day to 20,000? How will it scale? Ben Trott says that it will scale technologically (the site uses MovableType) but the social scaling is much harder to figure. Will it fragment into multiple, smaller groups? Everyone gets her own blog? But the commenters often don't want anything more complex than a comment box ... and they consider that their blog. Will the campaign move to a reputation system to sort the messages? You don't want your supporters to be insulted because their enthusiastic, heart-felt posts got rated as a waste o' time. Maybe you could segment it into separate boards for odd and even numbered IP addresses. Or segment by aera or interest niche. Those separate threads could bubble up. Team leaders could "recruit" posters into their threads.

Good conversation. Hard to represent in a blog entry, as you probably figured out by now.

Posted by D. Weinberger at October 11, 2003 07:38 PM


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» Foo 2.2 from Backup Brain
Camel, 3 pm. David did a thorough job of covering our session here. We probably should have maintained some more [Read More]

Tracked on October 11, 2003 07:50 PM

» Scalability from Grant Henninger
Dave Weinberger asks, "What will happen when comments on the Dean blog go from 2,000/day to 20,000? How will it scale?" In order to get comments to scale you need to have them treaded. If you look at Daily Kos... [Read More]

Tracked on October 11, 2003 09:49 PM

» DailyNotes/2003-10-13 from PukiWiki/TrackBack 0.1
FooCamp: Closed - not allowed to blog? FooCamper の一人 Jeremy Zawodny によると、 Apparently the first rule of Foo Camp is that you don't blog about Foo Camp. Too late, I guess. I noticed that Dan linked there too and figured it was okay. Oh well... [Read More]

Tracked on October 13, 2003 11:58 AM

Comments

MT Comments scale? I think not - how many people have to put warnings on their comment entry forms about having patience when entering a comment? I routinely have to prune duplicate comments caused by this. It's the one thing that bugs me about MT.

Posted by: john | October 12, 2003 08:19 AM


MT Comments scale? I think not - how many people have to put warnings on their comment entry forms about having patience when entering a comment? I routinely have to prune duplicate comments caused by this. It's the one thing that bugs me about MT.

Posted by: john | October 12, 2003 08:19 AM


I think the Dean campaign has definitely moved the political world toward the 21st century and in some ways changed the way campaigns will be conducted from here on out. Campaigns for all different offices around the country from both parties, as well as some of the other people running for president, are trying to steal a page from Dean's playbook and hope to use the Internet as effectively as he has. The thing is, it will not work for everyone, because while the Internet is a great way to get your message out, if your message is not compelling in the first place, then getting it out on the Internet won't help that much. I think that is what some people misunderstand about the Dean campaign...the Internet has been incredibly helpful, but the Internet alone has not propelled Dean from a nobody to a major player. It is the use of the Internet combined with a great candidate and an inspiring message, and without the message, the medium would be useless.

Posted by: Laura in DC | October 12, 2003 01:50 PM


I was at an interesting talk by David Rushkof and Pat Kane at the ICA in London on Friday and the conversation was heading in much the same direction

Posted by: Euan | October 12, 2003 03:16 PM


I think you should all read the technology blog, which I found, and read all the things you want to know, what is happening around the world!
You can read it here: http://www.platinum-celebs.com/technology/

Posted by: Hillary | March 5, 2004 05:01 AM


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