Phil Wolff: public policy

Rapid Response: Memetic Engineering in the 2004 Presidential Campaign

Mon, 17 May 2004 01:24:49 GMT

I wrote Rapid Response: Memetic Engineering in the 2004 Presidential Campaign, my assessment of a new project from the John Kerry campaign. It's a recap of the political Rapid Response model, an analysis of the John Kerry Media Corps version of that model, and a checklist of things for the JK campaign to work on.

Not included: the idea of the grassroots web site network.

When you blend:

"all politics is local" with
"the edge of the network has the power" and
"nobody trusts campaign commercials"

You turn to free media.

John Kerry HQ is doing it with Media Corps, but not to weblogs.

Both the Dem and GOP professional staffs are resisting publishing decentralization.

Otherwise they'd host the biggest network of blogs in the world. Blogs for each county, each precinct, every meetup, each working committee. Aggregators that tie local groups together. Both content and event/activity syndication. And promotion of those sites to the local news media, community groups, and political clubs.

The ROI? Better communication, coordination, cohesion, and collaboration. We need it as groups form, as citizens swell their ranks, as we commit time and energy to making momentum. Tools to help them follow the campaign's lead while making local sense of issues and messages.

But they're not. The people who understood and supported this vision are no longer part of the Kerry staff. Instead, we're seeing incremental marketing. 3 of 5 Cluetrain Points.

Maybe next time.

[aka public policy]

Nick Berg Tops Searches, but Why?

Fri, 14 May 2004 23:11:38 GMT

Dan Gillmor wonders about blood lust as searches for the executed Nick Berg top the major search engines.

So you're asking, why does traffic slow down at a car accident, why do people crowd a murder scene, who pays for boxing matches and hockey games? That's one trigger.

Another. We've just fought a war where none of the violence was televised. We're hearing death announcements but no coffins, high school snaps, but no bodies. This video is unfiltered truth about the conflict, our conflict. Bloody, wretched, simple.

And. We trust our federal government less than before. They admit to screening what we see, hiding "morale damaging" evidence from the general view. We trust our media less than before, wimps when we needed courage. So we scavenge for facts, for truth, for context and interpretation. For sense.

Click. Click. Click.

p.s. Almost no mention that Nick Berg is a Jew. He's not the first Jew executed on TV by Islamic terrorists after being captured working in a dangerous zone. Talk about derivative cinema.

Seven questions from Cleveland

Mon, 03 May 2004 21:50:02 GMT

I received this email from Anne Collingwood this morning.

Phil,

I am frustrated about the lack of attention the Internet is being given by the national campaign.

I see the need, but I am clueless. I am interested in your thoughts about both the following questions and about how to improve the Kerry Internet Effort.

Best, Anne

I’m working in Ohio with a grassroots organization called Cleveland for Kerry. My friend Matt is working in California with East Bay for Kerry.

The following issues came up during a phone conversation we had tonight. Would you be able to help us think through the solutions?

1. Is it too early to see the (state-of-the-art) potential of the Internet realized? How significantly can the power of the Internet diminish the need for television ads in this election? In 2008? In 2012?

2. Are bloggers more rigid in their thinking than others? Would you equate it to letters-to-the-editor in real time? Can there be actual debate online?

3. Are moderated discussions valid? Can a moderator censor some comments and still claim that they are listening to the people?

4. Did the Internet help facilitate the apparent cult of personality with the Dean folks? If so, was that kind of emotional investment wise; did it alienate folks not previously on the bandwagon?

5. Do bloggers feel betrayed if their advice is not used? Do they tend to extend trust to the candidate? How can a trustworthy candidate gain trust with new folks through use of the Internet?

6. What were the differences between young people attracted to Dean during the primary and attracted to Kerry during the primary?

7. The Internet offers campaigns the posting of data, mail, conversations, live broadcasts, tax revenue (just kidding :), and…?

There is no paid staff in Ohio. There is no staff that Matt knows of in the East Bay other than professional fundraisers. We see the Kerry Internet team working on live webcasts, fundraising drives, and the website. There are, however, "local websites" popping up all over the place, and we have no clue about what we can do with them.

If you don't have time to respond directly, we certainly understand. If you can refer us to someone or to websites, we'd appreciate it.

Thank you for your help.

Sincerely,

Anne Collingwood

What are your answers to these questions?

Google News + Technorati + Citizen Blogging = ?

Mon, 12 Apr 2004 18:31:41 GMT

Out of the millions who blog, a handful do what professionals call journalism. Would more be better? Should we actively promote citizen journalism?

We could.

Local Civic Journalism clubs.
A full blown track in public school starting at age 8.
An awards ceremony like the Pulitzer for best CJ reporting, best analysis, best thread, best catch of something missed by major media.
Grants to develop curriculum for Business, Science, Public Affairs, Sports reportage.
A professional guild helping CJers get press credentials and access like any news network.
Legal services for bloggers to protect sources, file FOIAs, use sunshine ordinances, and defend IP.

And this is just for plain old text.

What will citizen journalism look like in 2009? My wild ass speculation: (like anyone will remember this post)

Moblogging comes into its own. Photos at a campaign stump speech by attendees outnumber those taken by photojournalists. And some aren't in bad light, of the back of someone's head, of the floor, with a finger over the lens, or from 10,000 feet away. Some will capture the spirit of an event and a defining moment. Long bet: By 2010 I'd be very surprised if ubiquity alone doesn't find us with a cell phone photo (or whatever we wind up calling them in 6 years) winding up above-the-fold on a major newspaper story, featured on the evening news, and gracing the cover of Time Magazine. A generation ago, big media adapted to electronic news gathering. The public continues that trend as the diffusing technology follows Moore's Law (more, better, faster, cheaper, smaller).
Campaign coverage.

A blogger on the presidential campaign bus.
Designated bloggers at each meetup, taking photos and posting the minutes.
Campaign aggregators, by location, topic, and affiliation go up 5 minutes after the home page.
Local reporters become editors for local bloggers, compiling their accounts of the campaign.

Personal video blogging becomes a staple of the portals and ISPs, a reason for customers to adopt broadband. And buy shiny tiny new digital video cams. Even laggards will have Logitech cams delivered with their just to be in on the conference call at work or to talk with family. First evidence: surging video camera aftermarket.
Video syndication. We'll be moving more video en masse. RSS enclosures, anyone?. As we're seeing in China's blocking of weblogs and other news sources, people route around censorship. P2P news distribution offers that alternative. Even for text news, P2P distribution of RSS and cached feeds let the network scale up.
News discovery systems, like Google News, will expand reach from the thousands of traditional news publishers to a broad selection of personal publishers. At first it's to weed out P.R. pros and to find reliable streams of general interest subject expertise. Eventually, they'll learn that the sixth-grade blogger has something meaningful to say about Outkast, worth sharing.
Blog juice. TV news and online editions of newspapers will explore ways to co-opt cheap content. Bloggers as stringers? Look for a play from the Classified Advertising department to annotate listings with fresh context from blogs, especially in smaller markets. Maybe even sharing revenue with popular bloggers. Example: citizen reportage on housing, neighborhoods put in with real estate listings.
Stringer status. I'll bet hundreds of bloggers earn stringer accreditations from national news services and local news media. Not for everyone, but those willing to subscribe to journalism's standards will find this an edge.
Do you want it fast or good? Most blogging is about fast, slashing the distance between idea and paper. But video is inherently more interesting after post production. Home studio software adds polish. Voice overs, teleprompters, transitions, stock music, green screen backgrounds, titles. Nonlinear editing tools like Final Cut Pro will emerge in free/cheap format.
Extension. News isn't homogeneous, it's specific. Chess reporters have standard ways of representing game play. As do those who cover soccer/futbol. Or obituaries. Or police blotters. Or movie reviews. Watch for structural extensions to standard blogging, new blanks in the forms tailored to the application. And for clever ways to share new extensions.
History. Opposition research teams will hire specialists to comb campaign, activist, and lobbyist weblogs for dirt. Every weblog post from this election cycle is fair game. Would this help or hurt Kos's election chances?
En mi primera lengua. News translations on the fly, continuing a reverse cultural imperialism where English absorbs ideas and words from around the world. RSS and Atom will face semitic times of day and non-Gregorian calendars.
VNRs. Video News Releases will come along with citizen journalism. Citizen flackery and propaganda.
My News Station. We saw a handcrafted version of this in the Dean campaign. HowardDean.tv used DishTV, cable news, and hacked TiVos to collect news. They also collected video from the field, from students and volunteers, and cut it into a daily TV news program. That will become automatic. News aggregators (Bloglines) and discovery systems (Google News (clusters by topic), Technorati (clusters by reference), Daypop (what's hot)) will group and cut together syndicated videos based on location, time, and subject; create a montage of related footage; and stream a custom video channel just for you.
Community stations. Following Hoder's advice on regional blogosphere building, we'll see "people's news" become a trusted alternative to state and corporate media. Military professionals will prioritize community blog servers right after radio and television stations. It won't happen in this decade because John Kerry should be able to keep the peace for the next 8 years, but the next time a country fears an attack by the US, watch their blogosphere come under attack from within.
Big screens enter. What do you do with a 250 megapixel monitor? Something 5 feet tall by 8 feet wide at paper resolution? Could you create a dynamic montage of video and stills that reflected your interests over time, relative popularity and proximity of news stories. The World Wide Wall® of News: a must for every corporate Chief, political war room, and mayor.

Where do you think citizen journalism be in 2010?

[aka community]

Encouraging the sniffles to spread.

Sat, 10 Apr 2004 02:13:58 GMT

Grassroots journalism, meet grassroots fundraising. It took 1 form and about 5 minutes. Now I'm on my way to raising $10,000 for John Kerry by inviting other bloggers to join my Citizen Journalists Kerry 100 Club: 100 people at $100 each.

Take a moment to grok this.

A handful of volunteers in the beach resort of Santa Cruz, California, adopted an offline fundraising practice. Work your circle of friends. Colleagues from work, fellow students, the gardening club. Ask them to match your $100. It worked fast and easy on the ground.

So they took it to the web. A quick Deanspace installation, a little screen scraping of the JohnKerry.com donation site, some writing and graphics, and they're helping people give.

What they're not doing is just as important. No money kept; money goes straight to the campaign. No incorporation. No federal election rules to worry over. Frictionless. And two weeks from idea to go-live, maybe?

What can we learn from this?

Test human behavior before designing tools.
Free platforms that do 90% of the job speed everyone's time to market.
Open code platforms invite innovation and adaptation that create new kinds of value.
Campaign architectures can become hubs for innovators, leveraging prior financial, regulatory, branding, and systems investments. I can't wait for the DNC APIs.

While you're pondering, pull out your credit card and click here, why don't you. It's for a good cause and in a good name. Or create your own club.

Virality, anyone?

[aka community]

Open Source Haggadah

Mon, 05 Apr 2004 23:05:04 GMT

Tonight is the first night of Passover, the night when we tell stories. For the kloggers among you, storytelling is part of Jewish tradition, one way our memes propagated and persisted through millennia.

The stories we tell on Passover are as political as they are spiritual.

Speak truth to power. Moses telling Pharaoh "Let my people go" despite being young, of common blood, on bad terms with the emperor and a speech defect.

Social networks aren't new. Get the word out to mark your doors tonight. To everyone in your community. Without the Internet. Without email, or Orkut, or AIM, or SMS. Just people telling neighbors to pass the word, spare your firstborn.

Freedom is worth a fast march out of town. When we had the chance, we ran out of Egypt. We ate crackers on the go. And it was worth it. Freedom from a state favored religion. Freedom to gather and assemble. Freedom to teach your children to read, to write, to know their heritage. Freedom from state approved murder and torture and rape and all the other trappings of slavery.

Are you more free now than you were in 2000? in 1990? in 1776? Is your government broadening and protecting your freedoms?

Invest in your future, not your fears. The lifetime wandering in the desert was worth it. For their children and the preservation of all they believe in. How are we repairing the world? How are we leaving it a better place?

Some people just won't listen to biological warfare. Ten plagues. Countless deaths and deformities. And still the Pharaoh would not relent. In our time we've seen anthrax used on American soil, and other WMDs used in Iraq. So today's Paharaoh's and downtrodden have bioweapons. Asymmetric warfare with power in mankind's hands, not God's.

Remember the little guy. Rabbis of 1800 years' ago set the seder plate with bitter herbs and a sweet mixture. You eat them together. The mixture to remind you of bricks our enslaved ancestors made. The horseradish to remind you of their sweat and tears. So we make the connection between ourselves and those still in physical and spiritual bondage. And if we're lucky, we act on that connection. What are we doing to assure that every kid gets an education? What are doing to eliminate hunger in our country? How are we forcing our criminal justice system to protect a poor person's civil rights? How are we protecting women better than we did last year?

Set a place for the stranger. You leave a cup of wine for Elijah, should the prophet come calling. But you open your door to anyone who is hungry. Hospitality is the least gift we can give to a stranger or to ourselves. We don't ask for ID or check with Homeland Security.

If you're looking for a haggadah for your seder, I like the Open Source Haggadah Project, a spinoff of Douglas Rushkoff's Open Source Judaism. It helps you roll your own from traditional and modern sources. In our civilization's spirit of inquiry and dialog. Chag sameach.

Emergent disorganization: lessons from East Bay Kerry.

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 01:17:48 GMT

I've been rationalizing the 30-50 hours a week of grassroots campaigning I've been investing in the local Kerry campaign since last summer. Changing the world is great, and we're doing that. My takeaway is what I learn from it, how the work itself changes me. Here are a few lessons learned.

EQ is more important than IQ.

Everything in campaigns is about emotion. Values trigger emotions, as do symbols of those values. And emotions get you money, volunteers, votes.

Campaigns are tough on the emotions.

A local DFA leader said "Anger Unifies" at the last Democratic Unity Meetup. Lots of adrenalin. Ups and downs. I went to three Dean meetups the night after the California primary, the day Dr. Dean withdrew from the race. I saw frustration, despair, anger, denial, and loss. But I also saw resolve, support, and bonds with their fellow Dean faithful. In a race that lasts six weeks, you can turn up the emotional volume. But what do you do with a race that lasts 100 weeks?

You can't pick your comrades.

We encounter every "people problem" that HR pros prepare for, that social workers encounter, that psychiatrists commit for, in grassroots campaigning. The persistently off-topic person. Trolls. The person who thinks everything is interesting and emails you about it, and your 500 fellow volunteers. Fair weather friends. The craven mercenary. The paranoid. The narrowly obsessed (we almost started a John Kerry's Hair weblog back in September '03). The person who picks fights. The lonely. The shy. It takes centered, socially adept people to work with these people.

Burnout is a huge problem.

We're lucky to have any active volunteers survive the primary season. It's expensive to volunteer. You're giving up recreation that might have been keeping you sane. You're spending less time on friends, family, and your love life. You may even trade off time you could be working or looking for work, dipping into savings or living frugally. I know volunteers who put off graduation, that lost a job, that neglected their health. So recruiting well rises to the top 5 issues every week.

When grassroots groups pay for their own expenses, they go to jail or embarrass their candidate/cause.

My group, East Bay Kerry, is unincorporated and not a PAC and not recognized by the FEC or IRS. If we take money from an organization to print fliers or buy buttons, we're breaking the law. If we sell buttons at a table, we're breaking the law. If we keep a few bucks from a house party to pay for the party's pizzas, we're breaking the law. It's paralyzing.

We need ways to legally raise and spend money without screwing John Kerry for President or the DNC.

Hoisting: those higher on the scale of commitment recruit those lower on that ladder, and work to bring them up.

There's a clear ladder of political engagement. It runs from "I can vote?" to elected official. At each step of the ladder, we pull up those behind us. If you volunteer for 2 hours every two years, you call someone to vote this year. If you're leading a writers bureau, you recruit new members from those who were previously interested but not volunteering.

How much does that happen in the workplace?

Rarely.

Self-interest doesn't often lead to such seemingly altruistic behavior.

But if it is in the campaign's interest (or the enterprise's), how can you institutionalize pulling folks behind you up the ladder? How do you make each leader's success dependent on the growth of replacement leaders and fresh blood?

The new labor market features increased competition for great talent, increased employee turnover and shorter tenures. So hoisting becomes a competitive advantage. How well do you align incentives with hoisting behavior? How well do you incorporate

There is no organizing software that thinks of the user as the voter or volunteer.

All the commercial tools for running electoral or advocacy campaigns is top down, center out. CRM for politics. Clueless, in the Cluetrain Manifesto sense.

Keep all that stuff, though. It works.

Add new edge-powered stuff. Let anyone say "Hey, kids, let's put on a show!" Without approval from a hierarchy. Decentralized authority and the tools to act on it. And then help that nugget of energy flourish internally, and in interaction with others.

There are no tools for committee-scale organizations to be productive.

I want to put on a lecture series for John Kerry. Or host a bowling league fundraiser. Or mentor a Swing State grassroots team. Or coordinate high school students in growing Or coordinate 75 Earth Day activities.

Where are the tools that let me plan, staff, fund, schedule, coordinate, train, account, syndicate, dunn, manage, remind, and otherwise get things done?

Where are the recipes for getting things done? And the place to post my own?

We need team-scale productivity tools.

No grassroots organization is an island.

This is from some analysis I did for ActivistTech or DemTech or whatever it's called: A hypothetical bridge commission.

My speakers bureau in East Bay - West of the Tunnel works with other committees

Fundraising
Media relations
Writers
Swing state

Both ours, and those of East Bay East of the Tunnel, San Francisco's grassroots Kerryfolks, local union organizations, the Wellstone Club's speakers bureau, the official campaign, venue hosts, etc. More than 200 political and activist groups are players in the Bay Area's East Bay. Each committee in my organization needs to be able to manage the life cycle of relationships with each of the others. To get things done: events, money, recruiting, media, etc.

Where are the tools for identifying potential relationships, making them real, sustaining them, and gracefully retiring them?

Blogging remains absurdly difficult.

And the tools don't make it any easier.

Information overload is a real problem without practices or tools for managing it.

Just before the California primary, I was receiving more than 500 political emails daily. I didn't even get to look at my thousand RSS feeds.

When we got to 10 daily emails on our local Yahoo! group, people started unsubscribing faster than they were joining.

We're experimenting with multiple email channels (high and low volume, broad and niched, ad hoc and scheduled) but it's all confusing to our volunteers.

How much fatigue will the average voter feel in 200 days, if this keeps up? How can we lower the political noise? Does tuning out mean voters stay home?

Ok, so I'm off to a meeting of the Speakers Bureau.

The Well-Heeled Dean CIO Quiz

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 20:14:03 GMT

I've heard it said by Dave Winer and many many others: if only Dean had reinvested half the money raised into the Internet, then ...

OK, so you're the Dean Campaign Chief Information Officer in August 2003. The money starts to roll in. $20 million over six months, $2-4 million per month.

What would you spend the money on?

What does your monthly budget look like?
What is your application and infrastructure portfolio?
How much will you allocate to maintenance?
You're building from scratch, so what problems do you hope to avoid through wise architecture?
What are your big milestones?
Who are your key vendors?

How do you spend in consonance with the campaign strategy?

How will you use the Internet to bring offline voters into the campaign at the same numbers as radio or television broadcasts?
What is your online strategy for responding to attack ads and opposition pundits in radio, television and print?
Online community takes time to build and is very hard to organize geographically. What will you do to match the state-by-state primary schedule?
What can you do with online services to serve the campaign in caucus states?
You are preparing for Bush to launch in Spring 2004. What are your countermeasures to reach out to moderate Republicans online while the GOP uses its advanced voter email systems to barrage 200 million validated email addresses?
How will you lower the cost-per-vote vs. the GOP?

Toward a more democratic Iran.

Mon, 16 Feb 2004 02:23:17 GMT

I read Editor: Myself, Hossein Derakhsan's Persian/English weblog. Hossein (or does he go by Hoder?) covers domestic affairs for the BBC and metablogs the Persian blogosphere. I don't believe bloggers and politics mesh with each other the same way in Iran as they do here (the consequences of speaking out are a little different), but they seem of a kind.

Last week I dined with Pedram Moallemian who blogs the eyeranian. He wants a secular Iran. I asked him what he thought America's policy on Iran should be. He answered:

Respect the right of self-determination for Iran and Iranians.
Condemn any possible military action against the people who are doing a great job fighting tyranny by themselves.
Acknowledge big mistakes were made on both sides in the past and choose to move on towards a better relationship.

Tyrants ruled Iraq and Afghanistan. There was no meaningful chance for reform, no hope for self-determination. Do the people of Iran, at home and in diaspora, have enough faith in the current system and the system's ability to change incumbents?

Pedram clearly does. He and others are drafting a new Iranian constitution. This is an ambitious exercise, imagining a new government that fits a whole people. It's an embrace of liberty worthy of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. He wrote:

One of the bases for any true democracy is to accept the people’s prerogative to occasionally make wrong choices and even more often, to make choices that you and I may not like or agree with. But at the end of the day, the choice is completely theirs. By that I mean that if in a free and open election Iranians choose to keep the current regime, it would be vital for people like myself to value and honor their choice, yet reserving our right to oppose it in peaceful fashion and by non-violent means.

Back to the three points...

Kerry is more likely to negotiate with Iran's government than Bush, but no President or candidate worth anything will rule out future options.

Israel is America's friend, and the threat of American force is part of what keeps it safe. Why rule out military action against a country who is still technically at war with a US ally? Some of the terror organizations that operate in Israel are funded by Iran. So there's a lot to work out between us, more than self determination.

Acknowledging mistakes on both sides, well, sure. Why not? Moving toward a better relationship? That's Motherhood and Apple Pie (at least in America). But actions speak much louder than words. Secular government that doesn't position America as Satan; defunding and disarming Hezbollah and other terrorists and turning them in to law enforcement authorities; acknowledging Israel's right to exist; and full women's suffrage would be great starts.

P.S. It seems both of our countries could do with a little more regime change and fairer elections.

P.P.S. Check out iranFilter, a collective blog/mefi system built by... wait for it... Hoder. More links, pithy. Overall source on internal reform, student life, American policy re: Iran. Now in beta.

P.P.P.S. My conviction is much greater than my influence within the Kerry campaign.

P.P.P.P.S. I had some naan with the tandoori lamb. "akasig"

RIP Julius Schwartz, Editor, DC Comics.

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 23:36:59 GMT

TechNoir: "I met this man years and years ago and I have seen him repeatedly over the years even had dinner with him. If you really knew your comic history and you were on the con circuit you knew Julie Schwartz."

ABC reported the death of Julius Schwartz, Editor, DC Comics. He "rescued the superhero genre from near extinction in the 1950s. Revived and modernized Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern." Hawkman, Atom, The Justice League of America, and Superman too.

Maggie Thompson: This is the man who, more than any other, can take credit for the fact that we can still buy comic books today. The field continues to evolve — and maybe he’s been better equipped to handle that evolution, simply because science fiction was old stuff to him by the time he entered our field six decades ago. But — no matter how much we do admire the writers and artists who have entertained us — it’s Editor Julius Schwartz who came up with a formula that turned out to be a winning equation for our field.

This was important.

His rework of character, plot, theme, and visual design showed that each stupid little work can be reincarnated. Adapted to the times. Repurposed for other media. Giving power to authors and artists, and birth to entire media industries.

Where do you think West Side Story came from? Hollywood and Broadway made Romeo and Juliet over and over for decades. Then Julie showed that something old can be made new again.

If you haven't followed graphic novels and comics for the last twenty years, you may not know that Batman has been interpreted and reinterpreted by more than a hundred different creative teams. Schwartz paved the road so we can enjoy the Caped Crusader set in times Edwardian and apocolyptic, as a boy and an old man, broken hearted or beyond vicious, political or anarchic, isolated or a family man. All being true to Bob Kane's central character while infusing their own imaginations and visions.

So what?

When the American masses stopped reading literary classics and listening to opera, the storytellers of Hollywood and Rockefeller Center turned for stories to the franchises of the dime novel, the genres of the comic book. Westerns. Science Fiction. True Romance.

Before Disney opened theme parks, DC Comics proved even little cartoons have enormous market potential. Properties long dead can breathe new cash flow.

So we have media conglomerates. And a war for the intellectual property commons. I can repurpose Beowulf and Icelandic sagas, and Shakespeare. But when does Time Warner's Batman franchise enter the public domain? When can I put on a Batman school play or write a short Silver Surfer story without their permission, without paying for the privelege?

I love that storytellers renew and reinvigorate modern myths. So when you see Spiderman 2 and the Punisher this summer, or Hellboy, Starsky & Hutch, The Stepford Wives, Man-Thing, Catwoman, Alien vs. Predator, Astroboy, or Scooby Doo, give a nod to Julius Schwartz. "akasig"

Ingrid Jones's diary.

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 17:24:12 GMT

Delightful to see the new American politics through such insightful British eyes. Me and Opehlia. A blogger and her cat from the land of the Beatles and Disraeli. A regular read on metablogging, online democracy, and other things I find fascinating. Just a bit askew in unexpected ways.

Take Back The Streets - San Francisco

Sun, 01 Feb 2004 14:25:35 GMT

[aka propagandart]

Memes via Joi to infect Davos

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 05:37:45 GMT

Joi Ito is at Davos with the in crowd, the high, the mighty, the elite that fuel every paranoid schizophrenic's dream. But Joi is open and accessible to the blogosphere. At least more than the Prime Minister of Subcontinental Millions or the Chairman of Global Conglomerate 32.

So think of Joi as a memetic vector. What viral ideas would you have Joi spread?

What 15 second message would you send to Davos? Something that might fit on a t-shirt or a business card. If you were breaking bread the leaders of industry, of government, of NGOdom, what meme would you most like to spread?

John F. Kerry wins in Iowa. 1 down. 49 to go.

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 05:02:39 GMT

OK, I gloated for an hour.

I'm only a little surprised.

A few factors contributed to the success.

The big management change in the Kerry camp in November. Strong organization on the ground.
All the candidates spent a year turning up voter turnout. With high turnout, a GOTV machine isn't a competitive advantage.
Kerry put all of his energy behind one punch. Can he keep his balance and sustain that level of effort? Will the same tactics that worked in a 2.9 million person state scale to one with 35 million people?
The whole message thing changed then too: They Let Kerry Be Kerry. He's great with people. Great on discussing issues. Totally affirms my view that campaigns are conversations.
Bush bagging Saddam elevates warrior status. Kerry served in combat, highly decorated. Served on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee for 20 years. A long time architect of America's war on narcoterror and political terrorism.
Dean and Gephardt nuked each other. Not civil, and Iowans punished them for it. It's to Dean's credit he survived.
Kerry and Edwards have a higher Emotional Quotient (EQ) than Dean. Dean wasn't very likeable in the debates or in interviews. One long note of derision, frustration, just ready to burst out of his skin. Other candidates, like Kerry and Edwards, showed many emotional notes, in appropriate circumstances.
By process of elimination (angry Dean, babyfaced Edwards, civilian Gephardt) you're left with Kerry.

What should Dean do?

Keep on plugging, the machine was working.
Work on yourself. Get high, drunk, a massage or something so surgeons can expose your warm fuzzy side, the side that laughs, giggles, cries. Your true believers know it's in there.
Go two weeks without mentioning Iraq. It'll scare the bejeezzus out of Clark.

What should Kerry do?

Franchise your HQ. Start building tools so your volunteers can do more kinds of things. "Franchising" your headquarters roles lets each metro area lay solid groundwork before you come to town. (Call me. 510 444 8234)
Get six hours of sleep and keep eating your oatmeal.
Money follows support. Put supporter enrollment above donor armtwisting.

All said, I'm proud of my local team. Our small crew has five people on the road in Iowa and New Hampshire. We're actively working on our campaign craft, studying from old hands. We're doing the basics badly but learning from each experience, better each week. We're communicating well with each other, despite our circle growing.

Slowly those of us who were afraid to commit are becoming true believers. We can say things like:

John Kerry is the Real Deal.

We're sending a president to Washington, not a message.

He's the one we want on the podium opposite Bush.

and believe them.

And we have the nerve to ask people to join us.

Come to a Kerry meetup this Thursday night.
I'm shopping for a media relations strategist for the Bay Area, to help us take back the White House.
I need a team that understands precinct, CRM profiling, and direct marketing software, so all Americans can have health care at least as good as Federal employees.
Curriculum developer wanted, so we can build the Opportunity America we all deserve.
Speech communications professor, to give voice to the average American instead of powerful interests.
I need a conversation with someone who can coach newbies on project templating, so 20% of our children don't go to bed hungry.
A digital artist, to bring sunshine and transparency back to government service.

Call me. Or write: phil@dijest.com.

You're not seeing a lot of me here. I'm doing most of my blogging over on EastBayKerry.com (all politics is local). And spreading myself thin in bulletin boards, other people's blogs and doing campaign related stuff. My apartment flooded, throwing off my schedule and keeping me away from my computer for a week. Small stuff.

"akasig"

Emergent Democracy and the Digital Divide.

Wed, 07 Jan 2004 05:34:35 GMT

Wealth Bondage's The Happy Tutor wrote:

So no computer, no emergent democracy for you, right? Who here speaks for the illiterate or the working poor?

Is being informed a right or a responsibility? How about being connected? Must literacy be prerequisite to choosing your representative? Considering the role statistics play in election and governance, how about numeracy? Computer literacy? Geomancy?

Democracy emerges whether we like it or not, or so it appears; pluralism will out. The process looks like sausage grinding, even with digital five-spice powder. Its arrogance may even be bitter to the taste. But emergent democracy is a morphed hybrid of shadow people and meatspace. Our virtual selves make connections, our flesh selves makes them solid, enduring, and actionable. It's as though a spirit world guides us to meetups, to churches, to union halls where we speak in tongues in praise of lesser gods, of devils to apagenate, of evangelical congregation leading to personal and collective salvation. Watch as democracy emerges from our phones and explodes into the world of bad breadth, parking karma, and baby kissing.

I worry less about the digital divide. After all, the digital divide will be over when we can vote by Nokia, around 2012. I worry about the many millions of adults stripped of their right to vote because of a felony record. Of the children who have no say in the legislation and budgets that define their health, development, and safety. Of long term residents become second class non-citizens. What would happen if the more than ten million ex-cons in the U.S. population had their votes restored? What would happen if we enfranched children, parents voting their proxy? Could this give us our second black president (Clinton being the first)? Would schools and food for kids get parity with pensions and healthcare for seniors? "akasig"

Bush in 30 Seconds finalists

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 21:07:51 GMT

An entry from the Bush in 30 Seconds contest.

Back from Rushville.

Fri, 02 Jan 2004 17:25:17 GMT

I just had an Out Of Oakland experience. I went to my folks' home for the holidays, up in Whatcom County, Washington. And I discovered that everyone in my family is a Republican. And always has been. Not just the parents but my siblings and in-laws too. Now I know what it feels like to be told you've been adopted or that your parents had another name before they entered the witness protection program. They've tolerated my commie pinko leanings, hoping I would come to my senses in the way that parents hope teens will give up atrocious fashions or develop taste in music. I just had to move to that disloyal Barbara Lee's district and Zenmaster Jerry Brown's city, birthplace of the Black Panthers, a Molotov cocktail's throw from the People's Republic of Berkeley. Oy vey es mir.

Whatcom's the 10,000 square miles in the northwest corner of the U.S. map, just south of the border, about 30 minutes from Vancouver, Canada. Bellingham is a 142 square mile city (think 12x12) of about 92,000, mostly Dems, boosted by the Western Washington University's young liberals. 74,790 people, largely conservative farmers and loyal Republicans, occupy the other 1977 square miles of the county. There's a huge cultural divide. One is density: town people live on 1.4% of the land, 650 people per square mile, while country people share a square mile with 38 other folks (17 times more people). Another is the culture of self-reliance and community. My folks, who live in an unincorporated area between the town of Ferndale and the Lummi tribe, actually know all their neighbors. This is impressive since a walk around the block is 2 miles. Other folks who live in more rural parts of the county are far from basic civic services, like paramedics, fire and police. They depend on themselves and each other, not so much on government.

The county has growing pains. The population is growing faster than they can fund infrastructure. The county jail is at capacity, as are schools. State and federal funding have dropped across the board.

Whatcom County has one hospital, huge, private, part of a charitable not-for-profit. Canada's wealthy bypassing healthcare rationing, drive across the border to St. Joseph's new cardiac care center. No waiting time for top surgeons and fresh equipment. Canadians may soon account for half the hospital's revenue. Folks around there see that as evidence of a failed single payer system. At the same time locals pooh-pooh the new Medicare law that make it illegal to cheaply buy expensive medicine in Canada. I'm afraid that lots of people my father's age or my grandmother's will be arrested along with the other drug smugglers, and with mandatory minimums...

Whatcom's border location also means they have the same law enforcement problems as San Diego. Narcotic smuggling. Illegal aliens. Biker gangs. Much of the police, jail, and court costs fall to local cities and the county sheriff. But federal reimbursements don't come close to covering those costs. So they wind up cutting or underfunding local services.

Compared to Oakland, there is little gun violence in Whatcom's countryside. More guns, but the outdoorsman culture is the rule. Handguns protect against wild predators like coyotes, wild dogs, and snakes, and against those who walk upright. The lines between right and wrong are unambiguous, cleanly drawn, simple and authoritative.

The GOP has an active mailing tree there. Hierarchical and effective. The latest good news from the party, the latest horrors by those who don't understand values and America's place in the world.

Lots of technology skeptics. Show me the relevance and five neighbors who're using it. Computing and communications adoption typically lag the Bay Area by a few years, but the lag is shortening. Part of the resistance is a strong desire to have real things. Authenticity matters. In politics they like that our President is direct and speaks plain. In the arts they like the handcrafted over the assembly line, the local over the import, the traditional over the avant garde.

It's winter there. Snow, rain, black ice, rain, sleet, rain. But the rurality is Rush Limbaugh country all year long. Rush is a primary source of news and opinion, Fox News a close second. They feel about both the Clinton's the way we feel about Dubya: angry and betrayed by moral failings where America can least afford them. They like The President, even think he's been doing fine. Lots of folks have family or friends who are serving in Iraq and are proud of our men and women in uniform. Showing the flag isn't just OK, it's downright patriotic. They have yet to hear one good idea from the Democratic presidential candidates, no vision for the future, no real response to national security issues or the economy. And the candidates all seem to be bashing each other instead of defining themselves. They can't imagine any of the Dems beating Bush.

All in all, it felt like falling into a mirror universe.

I love my family and it was more than heartwarming to be with them. But I clicked my heels three times and stepped onto that prop plane. It's good to be home.

So, what did you do for the holidays?

My local campaign blogging is coming along.

Mon, 27 Oct 2003 22:49:57 GMT

The domain came in over the weekend: EastBayKerry.com. Strong resistance by getting the local committee to blog. "I've never blogged before" is common. It's a little scary before it becomes routine. It helps when I explain (a) nobody's reading us, (b) it's just writing, like email, and (c) it's OK to muck it up.

They are coming aboard. More folks are reading, commenting, and signing up to be authors, a hierarchy of comfort. For example, see today's The Dems best hope in '04, a fantastic analysis by Harold Lowe, running for Oakland's city council. He explains why pairing John Kerry with Clark or Gephardt to win MidWest swing vote states could tip the scales.

Right now we're communicating via phone calls, email, a Yahoo! Group, the blog, and frequent meetings. I'm overly optimistic about my SMS announcement service, but hope it will become useful as we continue to reach people who have cell phones but no email. Everything remains too hard, including TypePad. I put the blog together myself but I can't imagine non-IT people doing it.

Cam Barret, Clark's blogger in chief, is earning his pay. Beyond the official Clark blog, Cam's folks rolled out local web presence en masse. East Bay for Clark is a feature-rich generic site. Good strategy. Like the Kerry camp, they have to populate the local blogs, but that's manageable.

The local Kerry team is growing, more than doubling each month. But how fast can you activate and ramp up a political network proportional to the 2.4 million people in Alameda and Contra Costa counties? The California primary election is in 126 days (18 weeks). Not much time to organize.

The centralization challenge is non-trivial. Headquarters staffs in most of the campaigns want to control the message through a network of volunteer flacks. To date, only the Dean campaign has

Longer term, after the elections, what are the lessons of mass produced weblogs? What motivators worked best to attract newbies into using mailing lists and blogs? How fast can people learn the blogging mode: the observe, write, feedback loop? What accelerates that cognitive shift? What sustains blogging through a long campaign? How important is visual design to creating a sense of locality? of affiliation? What does political blogfodder look like? And how do we make all this work for the offline? For the mobile phone user? "akasig"

Arnold should communicate.

Sat, 25 Oct 2003 14:56:22 GMT

Kevin Drum, the CalPundit, has been following Arnold's first reality checks. A cautious meeting with the incumbent, a sobering briefing by the State Treasurer.

The more I think about it, the less I think the recall was about fixing things. Arnold's strength is in communication and he should roll with that. The Davis office communicated infrequently, ineffectively, without passion, often delayed, and without making its points relevant to listeners. And they couldn't get on the evening news without a whiff of scandal or blood. Like most folks, Californians can take bad news and accept harsh choices. But you have to prepare us, keep us in the loop as it goes forward, and steadily report status. Davis surprised the electorate, repeatedly, with bad news, and paid for this sin.

Arnold would do well to amp up his communications office, both with headcount and funding. I wouldn't mind a progress report monthly, maybe in the form of a 1-page letter. Maybe a chart of the month with an explanation of the choices we face. The new executive needs to communicate via a wider range of channels than ever before. Television, radio addresses, emails, an Office of the Governor Weblog (hey, anyone want to be Arnold's Blogger in Chief?), and versions tailored for the millions of citizens who are more comfortable in another language.

The executive branch is not enough. My state senators and assemblymen must spend more money, time and effort communicating with their voters. A problem with that: half the senate and a third of assembly are term-limited lame ducks; those have no incentive to communicate with the electorate except to maximize future opportunities, duty no longer tied to reelection. All the same, every elected official must have a weblog, staffers that post to it, and constituents that comment. In a time when everyone is subject to recall, this means job security. In a time of public concern, this means transparency.

I asked Dean's blogger in chief, Mathew Gross, what happens to DeanForAmerica and BlogForAmerica after the primary and after winning the presidency.

After the primary it becomes the platform for the Democratic party.
Once in office, some of the team and the web site moves into the White House communications office to help the president engage the electorate for the next eight years (a positive bunch).
Other parts of the team and site go to the DNC, to support the party.

The more I learn, the more I'm convinced of the value of "The Bloggers Platform". "akasig"

How much of a journalist are you, blogger?

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:10:50 GMT

Dave Winer says that all bloggers are inherently journalists. I concur but that begs the question, how much of a journalist are you? This may affect your ability to get a press pass, to invoke press shield rules, or get into one of those fancy reporter bars. Mostly, it affects how much readers and sources can trust you. One of the Berkman lawyers said state laws define a journalist many ways, each modified by local case law. Two of the factors many of the laws consider is how much you behave like a journalist and whether you identify yourself as a journalist.

So that leads me down a path shown by Lessig's Creative Commons licenses: you should be able to pick and choose among the characteristics of a journalist or publisher.

What's on the menu?

From my blog's 1999 Editorial Policy.

1. Accuracy. Anything that purports to be non-fiction should be true. Which means it should be accurate in fact and in context.
2. Labeling and Sourcing. If we are not certain that something is accurate, we should either not publish it, or should make that uncertainty plain by clearly stating the source of this information and its possible limits and pitfalls. To take another example of making the quality of information clear, we believe that that if unnamed sources must be used, they would be labeled in a way that sheds light on the limits and biases of the information they offer.
3. Explicit Conflicts of Interest. The content of anything that sells itself as journalism should be free of any motive other than informing its consumers. In other words, it should not be motivated, for example, by the desire to curry favor with an advertiser or to advance particular political interest. On the other hand, much of the content of this site has at least one point of view. We reserve the right to let our contributors opine, so long as author biases or conflicts are explicit and on record.
4. Accountability. The contributors to this site hold ourselves as accountable as any of the subjects we write about. We are eager to receive complaints about our work, will investigate complaints diligently, and correct mistakes of fact, context, and fairness prominently and clearly.
5. Caveat Lector. Information contained here is from sources believed to be reliable. This information is not necessarily complete

And I should have a Corrections Policy.

We always publish corrections at least as prominently as the original mistake was published.

We are eager to make corrections quickly and candidly.

Although we welcome letters to the editor or discussion group posts that are critical of our work, an aggrieved party need not have a letter to the editor published for us to correct a mistake. We will publish corrections on our own and in our own voice as soon as we are told about a mistake by anyone -- our contributors, an uninvolved reader, or an aggrieved reader -- and can confirm the correct information.

Our corrections policy should not be mistake for a policy of accommodating readers who are simply unhappy about a story that has been published.

Information about corrections or complaints should be directed to Phil Wolff at my email address or through comments on the weblog.

As a publisher I have a Privacy Policy.

We don't collect any information that you don't volunteer.
We will be clear about what information we expose.
Cookies may be used to create a better user experience on this site if you opt in.
We will not distribute your contact information (or other personal data) to third parties without your consent unless compelled by our hosts at Userland, compelled by law, or as needed for the operation and conduct of this site (service, repair, fact checking, etc.).
WebTrends. "dijest.com uses WebTrends Live to analyze traffic to this web site. WebTrends Live does not create individual profiles for visitors. Unlike some tracking services WebTrends Live does not have a database of individual profiles for each visitor. WebTrends Live only collects aggregate data. "

I also have a Syndication Policy (a handy place to stick your Creative Commons license):

My home page is available in several formats for syndication. If you're interested, thanks! [list the RSS and other urls and describe them]

Terms of Use
You don't need my permission to use this material provided you:

Do not charge for my content (You are charging? Call or write me first.)

Do not change what I say.

Link back to my home page: http://dijest.com/aka. The latest version of this is included in the Channel Link element.

Include "Copyright 1996-2003 Philip Wolff. All rights reserved." with the feed. This should be in the Channel Description element anyway.

Questions? Problems. Call me.

Does that make me a complete journalist? I don't think so.

Maybe if I subscribe to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists? They say that journalists should:

Seek truth and report it. Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Minimize harm. Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.
Act independently. Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.
Be accountable. Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

That code lists 37 behaviors that constitute professional conduct. Looking at them, you can tell that each one has shades of gray.

Now I'm not the first to think about this, certainly not the best. Dave Winer got me started thinking about this. Microcontent News' John Hiller also thought about this along the way. His April 2002 essay Are Bloggers Journalists? On the rise of Amateur Journalism and the need for a Blogging Code of Ethics and his brief Blogging Code of Ethics ("Amateur Journalists are inherently biased. Caveats are critical online. Blogging doesn't magically make you immune from Libel and Slander.") are great starting points.

So I need a policy generator.

Something like an online quiz that runs through each behavior and prompts me to pick some variation, then spits out the appropriate boilerplate. Anyone care to help me?

Companies needs these for their intranet and public blogs too. I want them from government operated weblogs too. Policies and blog-specific codes of ethics help readers understand how, when, and how much to trust a given weblog. As blogs become more important to our understanding the news and our institutions, we need that added context.

Bill O'Reilly can't spin his glass jaw.

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 05:25:01 GMT

Following up Andrew Grumet's post on Gross's interview of Bill O'Reilly.

There are lots of things I admire about Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News talk show host. But he's incapable of taking the same kind of interview he dishes out. Go on his show if you want to be interrupted, verbally abused, have your facts and opinions twisted and spun to fit Bill's world view, your thoughts interrupted, your words taken out of context.

Terry Gross, his Fresh Air interviewer, tossed Bill easy lobs so he could set the record straight, a prelude to exploring the man and his vision. He never let Terry get where she was going. He started calling her names, invoking grand conspiracies of public radio and the liberal left, and refused to be responsive or accountable for his own statements and accusations. In his eyes, anyone with the temerity to question his record is a liar out to get him. He walked off the show.

He may be a hard hitting host but he has a glass jaw. When he doesn't control the venue and he isn't surrounded by sycophants, he's just not up for the job. I'm with Andrew in hoping to learn more about the guy, but he's his own worst enemy.

Again, being interviewed is a different skill than interviewing. Maybe Bill and I can take the same class. "akasig"

I'm a suspected terrorist.

Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:09:28 GMT

Rick Klau writes about our Department of Homeland Isolation in response to a thread on Joi Ito's blog. Amen, brother.

I sometimes talk with Europeans about their generation-long fight to reduce border controls. They're not sloppy. They realize that border controls are a customer service and visitors are "the customer" as much as the citizens.

Failing to take the pain out of the average visitor's experience changes the customs and immigration process from one of "Welcome to our country! Enjoy your stay" to one of suspicion, hostility, and ill will. This is a numbers game; say one in a thousand people are offending in a material way. Do we need to expose all thousand to a cavity search? Clearly not. So this is about throttling down intrusion and ratcheting up smiles and helpful conduct.

Free traders should be all over this, advocating for markedly less painful visitor experiences. Disney and the entire tourism industry should be up in arms. Universities should be launching student and faculty protests over heavy-handed security that interferes with vital research, quality education, academic freedom, and creating America-friendly elites around the world.

I no longer tie my shoelaces when leaving for the airport. I'm just going to have to take them off at the screening, even for flying within California. We don't perform searches in the US without cause, so it stands to reason that I must be under suspicion, at least a little bit. Maybe I should buy the Suspected Terrorist button inspired by John Gilmore? Or join FreeToTravel.org? What can I do?

Is this coming up at DigitalIDWorld?

House of Warwick interviews Phil Wolff.

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 20:20:10 GMT

Steve Kirks is nuts. Very nice, a strong blogger and an effective interviewer, but with misplaced values. Otherwise, why would he interview me? Here's our interview from the "BloggerCon" reception. I'm in exceptional company. Steve interviewed Social Dynamx' Stephen Dulaney about the blogging user experience , Blogware's Ross Rader about wholesale blogs , Scott Johnson about Feedster , and Adam Curry about about syndication and Dutch blogging .

Interviewing and being interviewed require different skills from blogging. Things to learn... "akasig"

German bloggers hit hard by Octoberfest blogging.

Sun, 12 Oct 2003 06:16:46 GMT

Martin Röell warns that blogging kills. The hazards include second-hand blogging. More on the Don't Blog weblog.

Logan on terrorism and blogging

Thu, 09 Oct 2003 14:47:50 GMT

Coming back from "BloggerCon", I flew out of Boston's Logan airport Tuesday afternoon. While waiting for a flight I talked with an Israeli businessman. What an education for me.

He no longer employs Palestinians because he doesn't know who to trust.
Police are sometimes hostile to religious Jews, citing them for walking off the sidewalk, shoving them off the sidewalk to do so.
That a horse typically won't move forward if you cover its eyes with your hands.
That foreign money remains the lifeblood of Arafat and the terrorists.
That America's airports still have no security compared to El Al. 100% inspection of bags, carry-on and checked. All passengers are profiled and vetted. All passengers are frisked. Stronger perimeters around the airport.
Unlike Israel, America has yet to harden factories upwind from Boston, so someone with an M-16 and a grenade could cause chemical gasses to destroy whole towns. Take down energy suppliers.
That 80% of Palestinians want peace. The current Palestinian president is Arafat's puppet, so don't expect movement on peace negotiations. You can't kick Arafat out or kill him without making things worse.
You can't give the West Bank to Jordan or Gaza to Egypt; they won't take them because of all the terrorists.
That most Iraqi's love America.

His view. I'm still making up mine. Israel has always been Rashomon Nation. The blind men need to talk to each other to understand the elephant.

It's good to hear the many voices unfiltered by American big media. I hope more Palestinians and Israelis blog. Maybe an aggregator just for them? Rebeccah Blood argues that blogs and moderated bulletin boards foster the understanding, exchange of ideas, and empathy prerequisite for peace. As important, they increase the information we have in common.

Then again I don't live in a hardened culture. How would I feel if, having blogged my favorite cafe, another blogger blows it up?

Oh, yeah. The TSA guy who inspected my bags? Reads blogs for fun. "akasig"