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Category: Cluetrain (Page 10 of 10)

Cluetrain not for Washington Democrats

December 14, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Willis Reed from a comment at HA yesterday:

You’re still ticked off that there isn’t an offical Wa Dems blog? You’ve had that in your craw since April? Really? Aren’t there bigger things to worry about? Remember, those that don’t blog tend to underestimate their usefulness, those that do blog tend to overestimate their usefulness.

Yes, I still have that in my craw, though it isn’t as simple as an “official state party blog.” Truth be told I could go forever with the state party never having a blog. I’d be as happy as I’d ever be without one, because that sort of band-aid approach to the internet isn’t at all what I’m talking about.

(By the way, I was going to title this post “Cluetards,” but that, I thought, wouldn’t be very nice. Actually would be insulting. But, I do like that word, so I’d thought I’d mention it).

Willis was responding to my linking to this post at Evergreen Politics, which describes an idea Ken Camp had last spring to cluetrain the state party by establishing, among a ton of other things, a state party blog.

In addition to Dwight Pelz’s initial rebuff of the idea, I think that we had an election this year pretty much killed any chance Ken’s ideas would be heard. As Willis would probably say, there were bigger things to worry about.

And, well, right now, there aren’t those big things to worry about for a little bit. So, why not worry about getting the party on the cluetrain again? We have just over one year before our Presidential cycle caucuses bring tons of new people into the fold for at least a few hours, why not be prepared to give them something to hold onto?

This wasn’t something I was going to get over. This is exactly how I got interested in politics as participant, rather than a cynical observer. Some campaign “got it” in a very deep sense, and hooked me.

MySpace as Civics Class

June 14, 2006 / / 0 Comments

A while back I had an idea of creating a school based civics/democracy program using a social network like Myspace (withouth the iritating music though). My thought was that while kids aren’t familiar with the how to be a citizen (who among us is?), they do know how to work in an online community.

But, the difference between being a citizen and a member of a good online community isn’t all that different. The skills learned at MySpace, how to make friends, how to communicate and discuss, are all skills needed to be a good citizen. We can teach these skills by holding on to what is working right now.

Anyway, looks like Tom Regan has the same idea:

Twyman says the idea that understanding the rules of association online can help you understand the rules of association in the real world has more potential than reality at the moment. But as 13- and 14-year-old members of social-networking communities and MMORPGs grow up, we could see that start to change. These young people may relate back to what they learned online.

In England, the government has decided that all new citizens must take a course in what it means to be a British citizen. The idea is to fight the alienation that many immigrants feel – young Muslims in particular, but all young immigrants in general.

Lectures, videos, and classes are one thing, but what if an MMORPG or online community could be developed to help young people learn more about British history and their duties as citizens? I’m not talking about some Pollyanna version of history: I mean a real game that young people would not see as a chore to play, a game that would also tell the story about Britain and how it came to be.

Twyman agrees that this could be done – he points to a highly successful game developed by the US Army to show young people what it’s like to be a soldier – but he says the determining factor would be the quality of the game. “Most people in the industry tell me that motivation is really not relevant to young people,” he says. “What matters is how good the game is. The Army game was successful because it was fun to play. You could create a game to help young people learn to be citizens, but it would have to be a high-quality game.”

Take that Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick.

Online money and small donations

June 13, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Turns out we’re better at raising money that Republicans, online. Kari Chisolm down in Portland points out that MyGOP really didn’t do all that well:

…the Republican Party’s MyGOP portal — intended to be a social networking and activism site — has completely fallen flat.

Apparently, the RNC ran a promotion in which the top five participants who raised money from their friends would win an iPod. Well, the top five are:

GOP Bloggers – $498 Brian Bridgeforth – $426 Melissa Nolen – $150 Hank Gill – $100 Matthew Larvick – $50

Wow. Even a little bit of promotion should have helped the site pull in more than $1224. Looks like the RNC has some work to do to catch up on the online side of things.

This could be because the GOP really has no interest in connecting online (a large blog convention in Nevada populated by progressives with no conservative equal would support this supposition), but it would also imply that we’re getting better at raising money in a very important post McCain-Feingold way. Since soft money was outlawed, small donations, especially small donations online, are becoming more and more important.

Who cares if you can put together several big bundles of money, when a good online operation can bring in both money and actual support from actual people.

And, it is good to know that this is getting us somewhere:

A surge in small, individual contributions is lifting Democratic campaigns this year and is slowing a Republican fund-raising advantage that has existed for years in national politics, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Democratic House and Senate candidates, and their two major campaign committees, are enjoying stronger grass-roots support than at any time since the GOP took over both branches of Congress in the 1994 elections, according to strategists from both parties.

The strategists have reviewed the most recent Federal Election Commission data, which were released this spring.

In the meantime, Republican campaign committees are stumbling. The Republican National Committee is lagging behind its totals from two years ago, though it has a financial lead over the Democratic National Committee.

Let them eat blogs

April 19, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Ken Camp has an idea that he passes on to the chair of the state party, who writes Ken back:

One point that concerns me is to have an official Party blog. Invariably some comment will be posted there, and then attributed by someone as being from “an official State Party publication”. A scandal is then born.

There is currently a very good network of liberal/progressive/Democratic blogs.

Thanks again.

Dwight

Ken is right that the party needs to invest in the netroots.

What Dwight is telling me is thanks but no thanks. What Dwight is telling me is that he’s happy to keep the Washington State Democratic Party in the Stone Age, while 21 out of 50 state Democratic Parties have blogs and have moved into the 21st century. And Dwight goes on to say that there is currently a good progressive online community in Washington, implying that we bloggers can do the work for him. I’m happy to help, as are my fellow bloggers, but the Party needs to engage in the discussion too.

Open source county party platform

January 9, 2006 / / 0 Comments

Maybe open-source is an exaggeration, every party platform is usually pretty democratic. But, there is a point to where people don’t get involved or engaged in writing the platform of the party they identify with.

This year, the Thurston County Democratic Party is holding a series of open, public forums ahead of the precinct caucuses to start the conversation about what our platform should say.

Each in-person forum will also have a parallel online forum. While most of the topics have already been lined up, one of the in-person forums will have its topic determined by online comments.

Usually, folks show up to the caucuses and talk, over a few hours, about what the platform should include. Every four years, we also talk about who should be President, but this isn’t one of those years, so all we’re talking about is the platform.

This year, we’re getting a kick start on that conversation.

Each of the five forums (except one) will cover a section of the previous platform (such as healthcare or the economy). So instead showing up on a Saturday morning with a few ideas, we’re going to be talking together over, hopefully, a couple months to publicly brainstorm a platform.

The one open topic forum is in Bucoda, a small community in south Thurston County. Instead of limiting the topic of that forum, we wanted people to feel as welcome as possible to discuss any part of the platform they’d like.

My hope is that folks that wouldn’t ordinarily go to a weekend caucus would come to a public forum offering the opportunity to talk about what we should be fighting for. Or, others might feel more open to do the same thing online. Either way, the ideas generated online and in the forums will be forwarded to each of the caucuses for consideration. They have to be approved there, and then they’ll proceed through the traditional platform process.

I’m a citizen, that is what I do

December 22, 2005 / / 0 Comments

David over at Horsesass.org has a good point about the next Washington State Dems chair that gets started with this:

..I finally got a chance to confront a top Dem communications staffer, and used the opportunity to plead with them to find some money to spend on radio ads and direct mail to combat the GOP misinformation campaign. The response? The staffer turned towards the surrounding throng and incredulously asked, “Is he telling me how to do my job?”

Yes I was. I’m a blogger. That’s what we do.

I’d change it up just a bit: I’m a citizen, that is what I do.

He continues:

What I want from the new chair is the understanding that the party’s success depends at least as much on communications as it does on money and lawyers, and that the media doesn’t quite work the same way it used to. I want a chair who embraces innovation, and who is able to see beyond the next election towards the media and political landscape of a decade from now. I want a chair who will support the efforts by the current communications staff as they explore new media ventures.

But mostly, I want a party chair who is willing to at least listen to bloggers like me tell him how to do his job, without incredulously dismissing us out of hand.

Basically, listen to us, we’re out here, we’re smart, we want to help. I would change the word blogger in David’s analysis to something more general. Something to reflect those folks that aren’t now involved in politics. But he’s going in the right direction. The next party chair needs to listen to people and give folks not already involved in the party open avenues to be engaged.

Change already happening at wa-democrats.org?

December 9, 2005 / / 0 Comments

Earlier this morning I wrote (here and here) about how I hoped the WA Dems took this oppurtunity in leadership change to move down the social software road. Maybe a Growohio.org for Washington (well GrowOhio before Sherrod Brown started running for Senate). Looks like our guys are already moving that way (from Democrats.org):

As part of the “50 State Strategy,” the organizers from individual states hired by the DNC make the journey to D.C. for a series of training sessions. They normally come in groups of three or four–last month, it was Utah, Indiana, Alaska, and New Hampshire. The sessions are distributed over the course of two very long days, and include an opportunity for the Internet team (normally Josh or Joe) to head down and talk about using their own website, email, and blogs as an organizational tool.

The organizers from Washington arrived last night, and they asked to spend a bit of time talking with the Internet team, apart from the standard class, about the use of blogs–both internally on their own website, and externally on blogs both in their own state and nationally. Naturally, we agreed to spend the time with them.

Unfortunately, this kind of comes off like “tell me about these internets that the kids are talking about these days” or “we want it bloggy, but not too bloggy.” But, at least we know that good old broadcast style wa-democrats.org is on the way out. I’m tired of being behind the Kansas Democrats and their fun civicspace based website.

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