Personal Democracy Forum 2008
Note by David GalielDavid_Galiel:
(Note by DavidGaliel, not jonmandell, sofware apparently reset after I changed author, some notes took as me, some as jon - please don't blame jon for my editorials - galiel)
Unfortunately, holding a plenary like this in the middle of a campaign season results in speakers being too aware of wanting to promote their candidate and being "on message," rather than feeling free to talk about the common lessons we can all learn - from what went well as well as what did not. Everyone, predictably, is talking about how wonderful they are, and promoting how Net-aware and hip their candidate is. It is a little early to get meaningful introspection and analysis of what worked and what did not, and how things evolved over the course of the campaign.
Aha - at the end, Micah actually read a question from the live tool - question about what tool from a different campaign were you most impressed with. Consensus across the board about the value of the Obama call tool and the effectiveness with which it was implemented, and some comment about Romney social networking and MyObama.
Tracy talked about how current government sites are not set up to accommodate civic participation online - or even to facilitate offline participation, and how important it is to push the bureaucracy to transform the way it represents itself publicly online.
Peter asks if the tools are really transformational in terms of the dynamics of power and conversation, or are they just incrementally increasing the reach of controlled message. Micah makes the point that this campaign season has been more affected by voter-created content than any other in the past, which suggests fundamental transformation rather that just more of the same.
Unfortunately, holding a plenary like this in the middle of a campaign season results in speakers being too aware of wanting to promote their candidate and being "on message," rather than feeling free to talk about the common lessons we can all learn - from what went well as well as what did not. Everyone, predictably, is talking about how wonderful they are, and promoting how Net-aware and hip their candidate is. It is a little early to get meaningful introspection and analysis of what worked and what did not, and how things evolved over the course of the campaign.
Aha - at the end, Micah actually read a question from the live tool - question about what tool from a different campaign were you most impressed with. Consensus across the board about the value of the Obama call tool and the effectiveness with which it was implemented, and some comment about Romney social networking and MyObama.
Tracy talked about how current government sites are not set up to accommodate civic participation online - or even to facilitate offline participation, and how important it is to push the bureaucracy to transform the way it represents itself publicly online.
Peter asks if the tools are really transformational in terms of the dynamics of power and conversation, or are they just incrementally increasing the reach of controlled message. Micah makes the point that this campaign season has been more affected by voter-created content than any other in the past, which suggests fundamental transformation rather that just more of the same.
