Olympia Time

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Author: Emmett O'Connell (Page 91 of 176)

Old advice on social media and Mark is dumb

June 9, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Some oldies but goodies about TVW from when I was at Washblog:

I think TVW can do better with social media
TVW is thinking about doing better with social media

My suggestions back then:

1. Put someone in charge. This is something completely different than what you’ve usually been doing. Even though you’ve had a robust website for years, it operates as if its a website for a TV network (which obviously it is). There is no interactive content, no blogs, no sharable video or audio, just streaming video that is almost impossible to capture and share. There are some podcasts (that I enjoy weekly) and I can download a slug of mp3s, but these aspects of the site are aimed at simply providing the content, not really at facilitating the sharing of it.

So, you have to think about this not as part of a a TV network, but rather as a website in and of itself. At a certain point, TVW will actually be more of a website than a TV network. I already don’t watch TVW at all. I am on a dish, and most of my TV is recorded from a DVR anyway. But, I would consider myself a TVW addict, but solely through the website. Putting someone in charge of “online communities” can be a good start.

2. Don’t put everything into a social media format, at first. Start yourself off slow, let the person in charge of your online social stuff pick and choose (and have suggested to them) content that can be put out there as shareable. And, encourage conversation online. There is a real need for somewhere in Washington State politics, outside of newspapers and blogs, for people to come together and talk. TVW has the unique and powerful potential to quickly become this place.

3. Remember the kind of double standard that already exists between the “news media” and citizens using your content. It already kind of miffs me that in your copyright you carve out an exception for bona fide news broadcasters, and as more people get used to being able to share video and audio, more people will get miffed at this double standard. More and more, we are the media.

Also, Mark Gardner can only think about this issue in terms of partisanship and a congressional race. What really is at issue here is a pretty old distrinction between “bona fide” media and the rest of us.

While some folks may want to continue to believe that there is a difference between folks who write and folks who write, there really isn’t.

Mark, you’re a blogger now. Not “bona fide.” Do you think if this was Darcy Burner saying something silly you wouldn’t want to post it. Well, maybe not, but I would want you to be able to, and I’d rather vote for her.

The quicker TVW learns the same lesson the C-SPAN learned last year, the better.

TVW prevents you from embedding their content

June 9, 2008 / / 0 Comments

This is stupid.

A while back when TVW was changing over their site to include new sorts of media files, including flash, I figured out a way to embed TVW content. Sweet, now folks can share and push along what TVW produces, exactly as TVW intended it to be used.

Since then, TVW has blocked easy access to their flash files online, making embedding pretty freaking hard, if not impossible. I haven’t been able to find a way, and I probably won’t.

Why this is bad for citizens and TVW:

Ok, fine, you don’t want people like David Goldstein who aren’t employed by a media outlet to be using your files and changing them. But, why cut off people from easily pushing your content?

What TVW does (in the large sense) is only as good as how many people are using it. If I can’t use TVW’s content in a very limited fashion like embedding (not editing mind you), then the millions that TVW pours into its work is useless to me. And, I’m a person who is really interested in what TVW has to produce.

And, for christsakes guys, can you get a podcast to work? I’ve been subscribed to Inside Olympia through Itunes for over a year and it hasn’t downloaded a single episode.

When did TVW stop considering social media?

June 8, 2008 / / 0 Comments

David Goldstein gets an email from TVW, stating they’re trying to enforce their social media unfriendly copyright.

Which totally reminds me of something.

Before she left TVW, I had a fascinating email exchange with their former president Cindy Cindy Zehnder, talking about social media. I encouraged the network to think more broadly in terms of their copyright and how people could use their material.

Right now, if you aren’t bona fide media (whatever the hell that means) you can’t touch their material aside from just linking to it. That doesn’t mean that people don’t (I do it every once in awhile), but I’m wondering when they stopped thinking about it.

Last fall, as part of the TVW board’s process to write their 5-year strategic, they brought together a group of media folks in early September to talk about this very issue. I emailed the organizer of the focus group to see what happened during the discussion.

Zehnder left right after that meeting to become the governor’s chief of staff, so I’m assuming the 5-year strategic plan process hit a road bump.

The new president, Greg Lane, only came on board in late April, so here’s hoping they start thinking hard about this. And, that the Goldstein incident is only a bump along the road. TVW is too valuable a resource for citizens to keep it locked up.

Here’s the funny part, Lane has already made a point of saying he wants to change the focus of TVW to engagement:

“The second part of the mission is to really engage the public, to get them to participate in the process. And that’s where we want to shift the focus,” he said.

Engagement isn’t sitting back in your chair passively taking in (through t.v. or internet) what TVW has to offer.

Engagement is taking what TVW has and remixing it, editing it, for discussion and commentary. Exactly what Goldstein did.

Also on TVW:
How to embed TVW content onto your blog
Small victory of the day, flash embed of TVW content
Terry Thompson doesn’t know blogs
Dog as Partner Episode

Filing week notes in Thurston County

June 7, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Full results here.

There’s a handful of Democratic candidates that are describing themselves at preferring the “Democrat Party,” Which no self-respecting Democrat.”ic candidate would actually do. I think the blame falls on the online form.

But, that doesn’t explain why the two non-Democratic candidates for the open house seat in the 35th LD (just north of here) couldn’t say Republican. Heck, they couldn’t even say G.O.P., which seems to be the popular alternative.

Once, Herb Baze, just said R Party. Yeah, OK.

The other one, Randy Neatherlin, described his preference as “Prefers No Gas Taxes (R) Party.” I guess, “Prefers sunshine and lollypops and everyone being happy and stay off my lawn (R) Party” wouldn’t fit.

Back in Thurston County, there are four candidates for an open PUD seat. The Thurston PUD has a very limited scope, providing utilities to an urbanized, but not incorporated area of Thurston County called Tanglewild. The PUD has had a grander vision, becoming the water supplier of Thurston County, but the cities haven’t liked that idea at all. They also run a handful of other water systems across the South Sound.

Anyway, two guys from Rochester, Lowell Deguise and John R. Blacklaw, and two guys from Olympia, Chris Stearns and Terence Artz, are running. I’m assuming the PUD also runs a water system down in Rochester, so those folks see an interest in having a say.

re: Rural elitists

June 4, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Reacting to a quote from a rural resident saying they define their area by there being “less government” and “more family,” Jon goes (just have to quote the whole thing):

Until, you know, there’s a natural disaster or other calamity. Then they come running for a government handout, leaving the kids home alone to keep the varmints out of the double-wide, unless their blood is so full of Curs Lite they can’t see to drive.

But usually the prospect of pork rinds will get them to focus just long enough to make it to the Wal-Mart, where they wander around the aisles in their NASCAR shirts, looking for 8-track tapes while their children run around the entire place screaming. The kids can’t find what they are looking for either because school funding got slashed again and they seem to have a wee bit of trouble um, reading.

The road to Amboy is maintained by magical forest sprites, who patrol it and keep the pure and noble woodsman safe from highwaymen, trolls, ogres and bandits. No need for pesky road crews and deputies there! Like Daniel Boone, all the resident of Amboy needs is a Kentucky long rifle and some pemmican.

Now, that is a rant.

I too, like Jon, get tired sometimes of the rural self definition of them some how being rugged individualists while us city-folk cower at the site of (oh, I don’t know) anything rurualish.

That said, there really is less government in the hinterland, because of the simple fact there are fewer people. This doesn’t mean that rural people somehow have more control over their own lives (which I assume is implied), but that where there are fewer people, there are fewer government services.

The police roll by my house more often than in rural areas simply because I have more neighbors in one block than a rural resident does in ten miles.

I live closer to a library (a much larger library) and I can walk to the store (most of the way) without feeling like a truck is going to come over the next rise and send me jumping into a ditch.

Depending more on your family doesn’t make it any more safer to go walking down a rural road at dusk. Having sidewalks does.

The kind of government that I have more of in Olympia is not the kind of government that people from the corner of two country roads are afraid of. Rather, its the kind that makes me want to live in an urban area. But, we each have our tastes, so there is no accounting for that.

But, if I lived out in the sticks, I’d like a bit more government, thank you.

Larry Seaquist endorses both Democratic candidates in the 35th LD?

June 4, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Well, it seems to make sense when I typed out the headline, but it seemed weird last night when a fellow from Tumwater emailed me the apparent weirdness.

Both Daryl Daugs and Fred Finn, who are running against each other for the same state house seat in the 35th LD, are claiming an endorsement from sitting legislator Larry Seaquist from the neighboring 26th LD.

Did someone fudge an endorsement or is Larry just not picking sides by saying both fellows are good by him?

UPDATE: See comments.

Andrew on: His thoughts on the Top Two

June 4, 2008 / / 0 Comments

If there was any question at all about how Andrew from Redmond feels about the Top Two primary, that’s all cleared up. The guy hates it.

And how.

Ok, so he writes a very long post about how the Top Two is very bad, so I’m just going to wade into this and see where I end up. It looks like we’ll just go rant for rant.

One of the problems with how the Top Two is rolling out is that the parties are asking local organizations to hold nominating conventions. I’ve said, and others as well, that these conventions are a tool to be used later when the parties move to have the Supreme Court reconsider their decision.

Andrew is much kinder to the state Dems intentions, saying rather they are “gamely fighting to ensure that there will be somebody carrying the party’s banner.” Oh, I’d say they’re creating an official record for the court that the Top Two hurts their freedom of association.

Later on, Andrew writes this:

Meanwhile, the 36th Legislative District has refused to even hold a nominating convention. The two Democrats running there are John Burbank and Reuven Carlyle. Its leaders, who aren’t giving their district’s precinct committee officers much credit, argue that having only PCOs pick the nominee isn’t democratic.

I enjoyed reading that local party leaders thought giving a decision over to PCOs would be undemocratic. Which, it really would be. If the 36th LD holds to the average of King County, their PCOs really weren’t elected in a Democratic fashion. Last time I checked, less than a third of the possible PCOs positions across the county were elected and less than 2 percent of all the positions available were contested. The rest of the PCOs now serving in the 36th and across King County are appointed.

I wish it weren’t this way, but handing a decision over to PCOs to decide is necessarily undemocratic because of the lack of participation in PCO elections.

There is a central question that I run into when I talk about this issue with folks who aren’t involved in party politics. They wonder why the state of Washington should pay for what party activists argue is a private party function.

Andrew:

The choice belongs to the people of our party. It’s too expensive to hold special caucuses in every jurisdiction every year. And they don’t attract the numbers that a presidential caucus does. That is why we really need the open primary.

The choice belongs to the people of the party, but we can’t pay for it. We need the state to pay for our private party function.

Well, I’ll agree, we don’t have enough money to pay for precinct caucuses every time we want to nominate someone. We also don’t have the volunteers. We do have enough money (collectively) to run campaigns, put televisions ads up and pay consultants.

What we don’t have the structure, resources or people to actually get people involved in our organization. We may sound grassroots, but we’re not. Very few people actually participated in our caucuses as compared to voter turnout in other elections, and we barely had the capacity for that.

I can see why people don’t like the open primary, or any system that gives too much control to parties in Washington. They don’t trust us because they aren’t part of us.

Washington Dems do good job on reminding PCOs to file

June 4, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Giving credit where its due. Last Friday I hyperventilated, pointing out that the Washington Democrats seemingly weren’t doing anything to encourage people to run for PCO. Of all the two faced…

Anyway, I got a letter tonight not only reminding me to file (since I’m already a PCO), but providing me with the right form. Well, good on you.

But, before I give them too much credit, it would have been better to send letters to everyone who attended a caucus, to ask them to run as well. Its one thing to remind folks who are already PCOs (even though they might have been appointed in the past couple of years), but its another thing to get new folks into the fold.

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