Friday, August 29, 2003

Dave Winer: Tips for Candidates re Weblogs. 4:09:22 PM    comment []

Which campaign will be the first to really understand weblogs? Maybe it will happen in this election, but I’m starting to doubt it. Dean has made a great start, but it’s only a start. The next step is to turn the bloggers loose. Don’t limit them to commenting on stuff written by the campaign staff, let them write their own weblogs for the campaign. Let unaffiliated bloggers on the bus and on the plane – recognize them as journalists. Build your weblog community to be as accessible as possible (word that the promised Edwards campaign weblog is based on software called Slash is not encouraging). A campaign is not a campaign staff. It should encompass all of the people who want to support a candidate. Weblogs let the grassroots speak. Sometimes people would say stuff the candidate doesn’t like – criticism, bad taste, off-message opinons. It will be worth it. I’m impatient, I know. It was only a year ago that Tara Grubb began the first campaign weblog. Campaign strategists are part of the infotainment-industrial complex that is baffled by weblogs at every turn. Somebody will get it. Soon, I hope. 1:00:14 PM    comment []

The Edwards campaign emails to say that its new Internet stuff is being previewed only by a "small handful" of campaign volunteers, and I'm not invited, even though I offered to abide by any disclosure limitations they requested. I can see their logic. Here you've got a reporter who's written about weblogs for some time in one of North Carolina's largest daily newspapers, in Wired, and online. Since June I've been banging on the Edwards campaign to improve its Web presence. Hell, I even cornered the candidate himself last fall and bent his ear about weblogs (I know you don't remember me, Senator, but I'm the guy who introduced you to the rich lady hosting the Brad Miller fundraiser here in Greensboro -- your people had forgotten to bring you over -- and I complimented you on that great speech you'd just given on foreign policy, although I'm not sure you thought it was funny when I joked that "gratuitous unilateralism" was a lot of syllables for a guy from Robbins.) So why would you show me what you're doing? I mean, geez, you've got campaign volunteers to critique this stuff for you, and we all know how objective they should be. Who cares what a cranky old journalist with no reason to be kind would say, or what he might (gasp) report back to North Carolina and the rest of the country? Weblogs are all about opening up multi-dimensional communications, breaking out of the old command-and-control information hierarchy. If you treat them as just another media outlet, your weblogs will suck. The Edwards campaign doesn't need to duplicate what Dean is doing, it needs to leapfrog it. But I'm sure they understand that. Right? 8:51:37 AM    comment []

Mayoral candidate Bruce Ashley flirted with the idea of starting a weblog, but has not done so. He did update his website with a “more ideas” section dedicated to the proposition that he didn’t stop thinking up great ideas for the city upon launching his site in July. He has not, apparently, had any new ideas since August 6. And what’s up with the “Mr. Ashley” stuff? Was he worried that voters would not view him as stuffy enough? 8:29:38 AM    comment []

Buried in this article about the new chairman of the UNC-G board is the interesting news that funding is still expected to materialize for the genomics research project announced by UNC-G, Duke, and MoCoHo. They’re talking $2 million to $4 million, which would be a good start. 8:19:31 AM    comment []