History, politics, people of Oly WA

Category: Cluetrain (Page 6 of 10)

From Republican PCO to Democratic delegate in an afternoon

One story from over the caucus weekend continues to intrigue me. It starts out with the crashing sounds of web servers at the Thurston County Republicans. I assume because the state party website was sending all interesting parties to county party websites for caucus locations, the Thurston Republican’s website crashed.

So, if you were an interested party on the morning of caucus Saturday, looking for your Republican location, you were sort of out of luck.

This includes on Republican Precinct Committee Officer from Olympia 15.

Now on the Democratic side, if a PCO didn’t know where his caucus was weeks before, we would be screwed. Not only did we depend on that PCO to know where the caucus would be, but to bring with him or her a manila envelop full of paperwork so he could run the caucus. No so strict on the Republican side I guess.

But, this particular Republican PCO for Olympia 15 didn’t let the failure of the internet stop him. He just went to a Democratic site and became a delegate for Obama:

I was all revved up to attend the Republican caucus as the PCO for the 215. Only I couldn’t find the place. The Thurston County Republican Party’s website was down all morning, and the information I had written down ahead of time–that I should go to the Madison Elementary School–did not appear to bear itself out in reality. I could not find the caucus’s location.

So I went with D to the Knox Administrative Center for the Democratic caucus instead.

Because there website failed, the Republicans lost a PCO who was “revved up” for the Republican caucus.

Granted, this is a guy who became a Republican PCO through the Ron Paul campaign, and then disavowed Paul because of some of the Texas Congressman’s more… uh… weird stands. Someone who probably should have been on our side anyway. But, a failure on their side nonetheless.

KOUW the Conversation using Facebook as a sort of blog for a radio show

A while or so back, the Conversation opened a Facebook account in preparation for a show about how the different generations use media differently. Then it sat there.

Then today, they imported a bunch of new posts into their Facebook account using the note application, seemingly setting up a blog for their friends. This would seem to be a way to generate a nice online conversation in addition to the email and phone traffic they already get.

Here’s a feed to their notes.

And here’s hoping. Apparently, their next show will be on sobriety checkpoints, so if you have an opinion, go over to their account and chime in.

RSS feeds for bill information

Cool note on the bottom of a press release from my rep Brendan Williams:

The Legislature now features RSS feeds for all bills. Using RSS, people will be able subscribe to bills and track changes using their RSS software readers. As bills move through the Legislature,interested RSS users can get almost instant updates on the status of bills. The feeds can be reached via the bill summary page for any bill, through the Bill Information section of the public website (http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/).

Since this is the last thing they mentioned in the release, after mentions of two mobile sites and after the House Dems new blog, you would assume it was the least important. But, I’d say its the most.

RSS feeds on bills allows anyone to track whats going on in the legislature without them having to turn over their email to the state. Makes bill tracking much easier. Not that I’ve tried it yet, but I’ll sign up for a few and see how it goes.

KUOW’s Conversation gets a Facebook page, not a conversation yet (but they had one once)

I emailed KUOW Conversation this morning about their show on how the generations use technology. I made the not so original point that they should set up a blog for their show, and they ended up setting up a Facebook page.

I’ve tried to friend them, but I’m wondering what a Facebook page is going to do for them. In my experience, Facebook is one of the least transparent of the social networks. Great if you want to keep in touch with friends, not so much if you’re trying to reach out.

I did find something really weird, that the Conversation did at one point have a blog. Its most recent post is this ominous one from about two years ago:

ConBlog temporarily down

The KUOW management is trying to decide whether they want staff members to do blogs.

So, I’m guessing the answer was no?

Conversate on the (KUOW’s) Conversation

I was thinking about my post from yesterday, and I was thinking about what a KUOW’s Conversation blog would look like.

It would be not at all like this, but this is as close as I could get for free in a couple of days.

The Conversation already kind of blogs because they send out an email with the day’s topic and a handful of links on the topic. This takes that email and adds a comment thread.

And, of course its actually a wiki, so if I miss a day to add the email of the day, someone else can come along and add it. I’ll try to keep up though.

You can also suggest and discuss show ideas, which is kind of pointless right now because no one actually reads this blog/wiki.

KUOW’s Conversation, get thee a conversation

So, Radio Open Source is back. But, all I’m saying is that it’s not really back. Its a podcast with a blog, sort of like Jesse Thorn is Chris Lydon.

But, I’ve been thinking: what’s to stop other hour long recent topic public radio shows from posting their topics and possible guests on a blog five or so hours before the show is supposed to begin?

Why can’t say, KUOW’s the Conversation have a blog? So, instead of asking us to email in or call to “join the conversation,” we could post up and have a conversation on our own, justl like ROS 1.0?

Gregoire’s people get back first (another reason telldino.com sucks)

In response to this:

So, who is actually reading these emails?

The governor’s office sends me this:

All emails to the Governor sent through her website are first viewed by employees of the Constituent Services Department within the Office of the Governor. These emails are coded with subject information and then routed within the office or to individual agencies for follow-up. All communications to the Governor are made available to her executive policy staff who use this information when helping the Governor as she moves forward with issues important to the residents of Washington State.

I hope this answers your question.

What I was looking for wasn’t a direct email from govchris193@hotmail.com, but rather some sort of indication that my email wasn’t going into some black hole. I’m not totally sure that if you do send anything to Dino at his email address collecting website that you’ll get anything back at all.

Either way, the governor’s office seems to be taking this more seriously.

T.J. Johnson’s old plan for a City of Olympia blog

I knew I remembered this from back in the day:

TJ Johnson, who will be sworn in tonight, said he compiled the list after hearing residents say they wanted a more receptive council.

“It’s the sense that we need to do a much better job of communicating and engaging the public,” Johnson said Monday. “That’s the spirit in which this is offered, to rebuild trust, to rebuild the partnership with citizens and the city.”

Johnson plans to discuss the proposal tonight and ask the council to set the wheels in motion.

All e-mail communication between council members should take place in a “chat room” accessible to the public via the Internet.

All written and electronic mail sent or received by council members in their capacity as council members (i.e., not personal e-mail) should be copied to a central repository operated by the office of the city manager.

That sounds a lot like a blog. I don’t really remember the details of what happened to T.J.’s plan, but you can assume he never got the blog going.

Council vows to consider efforts to draw in public
Olympia City Council told what to change

PDC issues new hands off rules regarding bloggers and campaign finance

For some reason, TVW didn’t cover the last Public Disclosure Commission meeting. So, I emailed over the PDC, wondering about last week’s meeting where they were supposed to cover their rules interpretation regarding bloggers and the internet.

Lori Anderson wrote back:

from Lori Anderson
to Emmett O’Connell
date Oct 30, 2007 11:13 AM
subject RE: draft Interpretation 07-04

They made one change and approved it. They removed the reference to Interpretation 07-03 in the header section. The interpretation will be on-line later today at (here).

We appreciate your interest.

Lori Anderson
Staff – WA State Public Disclosure Commission
PH (360) 664…

I was going to wait until they had posted their new interpretation, but the afternoon went without anything going up. I think its important to note not actually a rule or WAC, but rather how they see the rules).

Here is a pdf of the draft interpretation that Lori referred to in her email. Here is a great rundown of what that draft document is all about.

And some other links:
The PDC and bloggers
Panel Discussion of Issues Related to Internet Campaign Activity in Washington State
Blogs about politics on radar of state elections officials
State Regulation of Palousitics?
PDC talks about regulating internet activity
PDC contemplating Internet regulations

I’ll post up the new interpretation when it goes online.

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 Olympia Time

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑