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Sunday, February 8, 2004
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 Sunday, February 8, 2004
started 2/9/2004; 8:39:23 AM - last post 2/9/2004; 12:58:26 PM
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Doc Searls - Sunday, February 8, 2004 
2/9/2004; 12:39:23 PM (reads: 6481, responses: 2)
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Teach on 
| | The name of the Digital Democracy Teach-In changed a couple times in the womb. It was Emerging Democaracy, then Emergent Democracy... But since it front-loads what we've come to call eTech, it has inevitably come to be called eDem. That's what I was hearing in the hotel lobby last night, anyway. |
| | My favorite commentary leading into today's sessions is Britt Blaser's Hive Minding the Store. It's the story of the continued fundraising successes of the Howard Dean campaign, in spite of all the premature calls for autopsies on a living patient. Regardless of its outcome, the Dean Campaign will be a paradigmatic smart mob story for many years to come. |
| | Those of us most interested in how social networks form are trying to figure out why Dean can attract so much money but hasn't received more votes. I'm more interested in how we can use this ideal laboratory, before the urgency dissolves in 9 months, to answer that question. The answer will be the rosetta stone of politics, whether or not it's discovered in time to save the Dean candidacy. |
| | But the attempt to bury the internet is like the attempt to write off the internet in economic terms after the dot.bust. The internet is a technology, and to some extent a medium. To write a medium off because one form of it dies away is foolish. The technology is still there, and it will be put to use, just as the embarassment of having the Southern Delegates walk out in 1948 did not kill television and the conventions. As I write this, Dean looks like he is about to snag second place in Washington State's caucuses - so clearly someone out there still believes in his candidacy. |
| | Which turns us to the deeper force - the way that the internet is still defining this election. Has it occured to people writing the obituary of the internet that the internet is the defining reason for the anger of the professional classes? How are jobs from the professional class being exported? By the power of the internet. It is the internet that is making the knowledge worker boom in China and India possible. Where the internet goes, a channel for information follows. To say that the internet is not going to define the election is like saying that magically the process of outsourcing jobs is going to stop. |
| | The other deep force is, as Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York would say - "it's gonna happen, there's no choice there" - is that the universe that made Dean happen is going to grow, not shrink. As the price of gasoline goes up - and with massive dollar devaluation, it must go up - the pressure to eliminate commuting to as great a degree as possible goes up. It saves on gas, it saves on road construction and repair - which cash strapped states will like. It saves on electricity for air conditioned buildings. Dean happened because there is a world of work that happens on the internet, and a growing sector of the economy that is e-conomy. |
| | Dean happened because hunting information down over the internet, making a decision based on the e-conversation, and then paying for it over the internet, are now a way of life. It is how I buy my plane tickets, and when it doesn't work, as it didn't work on delta.com for me a few weeks ago, the company hears about it. Dean happened for the same reason radio happened - radio became the conduit to the outside world, evn though 1924 featured a disorganized world without networks and all of the accoutrements of buying national advertising that we now take for granted. |
| | I've been thinking about what I'd like to ask Joe Trippi after his keynote this morning. It might go something like this... |
| | Seems to me there are a lot of variables in an election campaign, but just one independent variable you can't factor out, and that's the candidate. You've been involved in a lot of campaigns. You've seen a lot of winners and losers. You know a lot about what makes both. How will that change in a networked democracy? What must candidates do in the future that they haven't done before? What must they be that they haven't been before? |
| | The Dean campaign's Internet strategy didn't just reverse the broadcast metaphor, so that messages flow from the bottom to the top. Instead, it allowed the people at the "bottom" (citizens and supporters) to connect directly to one another. It thus became not about messages but about relationships. |
| | Lots of people are blogging the event (going on now — Joe's speech is really good). I'll be writing about it over in Linux Journal. Same for the Emerging Tech conference over the next three days. |
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Mike Warot - Re: Sunday, February 8, 2004
2/9/2004; 4:39:25 PM (reads: 362, responses: 1)
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Dean's real failure in Iowa was misleading the troops (people like me). We expected him to Win, hands down, and he comes in third? He was expecting this, but didn't let us (his base) know about it? How an I trust someone who misleads like that?
Now I find out that Joe Trippi may have made a few million bucks off the advertising, and Dean doesn't seem to want to address the scandal?
Cluetrain violations all over the place... it's going to catch up with him.
--Mike--
PS: I'm actually going to be in San Diego starting Wednesday... what are the odds of actually meeting people?
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Doc Searls - Re: Sunday, February 8, 2004
2/9/2004; 4:58:26 PM (reads: 497, responses: 0)
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Joe is answering the question right now. My bad transcription...
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I don't know what's more offensive.. the implication that I'm a thief, or the implication that I'm a really bad thief. I made about 160,o00 on the dean campaign in 2003. But that's not 7.5 or 7.2 million dollars.
How do you stop this movement dead in its tracks? Make people think this is a Trippi get rich quick scheme. It's the worst, meanest thing I've seen all year. Since... whenever.
First, I didn't have, for a bunch of different reasons, I had no contorl of budget and spednding. The governor put int in the hands of Bob Rogan, his chief of staff.
If we had raised 45 million and I was the scheming media advisor, I would have done a much better job. We put about 7.2 million on television. Steve McMann my partner had been doing Howard Dean's media for 12 years. Whether or not I had been involve, he still would have b een the media guy. Had I been golfing for 2003 I would have gotten 160,000.
I was managing the campaign for nothing.
this is not about hitting me. It's about stopping people. Getting people to say "the hell with it."
It's not what happened.
There is normally a 15% commission. In fact it was 7%. I didn't want to know and told the governor I didn't want to know.
This isn't about assigning blame. But I really think this is about getting people to buy this notion that this was some kind of get rich scheme.
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There ya go...
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