The following is a post I made in comment to some thoughts by Marc Canter.  The potential for blogs is much greater than an interactive journal!

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Right on! I am looking at blog applications on two fronts. First, I think it would be cool for candidates to use blogs to communicate with their supporters (and those wondering the web learning about candidates). My wife is working for a candidate for state school superintendent (yea, we still elect ours). The candidate has a decent website (for pols) that she uses to coordinate her county and school district grassroots (www.friendsofchristmas.com)[Full disclosure: my father-in-law has been diddling with aggregating political information ever since he was employed by Pres. Carter and this site is one of his products)] Anyway, making it easy for folks to interact, to actually feel as though they are engaged in a responsive form of communication (tough for politicians, I know) would be such a trip. We've got to find a means to replace the courthouse square as a place where folks exchanged political ideas, gossip, etc. de Tocqueville would be very perplexed with the lack of community as compared to his original visit in the 1830's (BTW, I am outlining a book based on the idea of what would Tocque see and write should he explore the net using the same analysis used in the "good ole days".]

The second app is more fundamental to any business. My office coordinates information and instructional technology for 34 institutions of higher ed. Each has an IT director of some level (CIO, director, manager, etc) -- Believe it or not, listserv is the vehicle of choice for communicating. Once I conquer a bit more of the learning curve -- I'm going to apply blogging as a pilot -- it is interactive, it archives (where's the search function???) so blog tools seem to have the right fundamentals to be successful.

Course, exploring this tool while tending to other real world demands certainly makes the discovery process slow going! (gotta complain about something)

And, keep up the baby pictures! I got 5 -- we should all brag about our kids!

9:27:07 AM    

Florida election highlights IT training need. Electronic voting systems cause problems [InfoWorld: Top News]

I can't think of a more fundamental attribute to our form of government than voting.  If we don't vote for our officials, then our system of government is no different than other autocratic forms of government.  Why, then, do we relegate the voting function to such a lower priority?  Governments don't spend the resources necessary to a) ensure the integrity of voting and b) encourage participation.  And, why do the majority of people ignore their obligation to vote?  Why is it we send our sons and daughters to war to protect our freedom, yet we use any excuse available to justify our decision not to exercise the most valuable of our rights, the right to vote?

8:27:33 AM