Political Blogging Panel

3/5 of panelists agreed to join our Board of Advisors. They can't be wrong.

Doc is moderating, but rarely in moderation.

Cameron Barrett: Clark Community Network lets people create and cross-categorize their own blogs. 10k blogs, 300k comments.

David Weinberger: How suprisingly emergent this whole thing is. Anybody having a voice. Was unpredictable the attatchment between bloggers and candidates.

Halley Suitt: I read the blogs I least agree with first in the morning. Discusses her top 10 trends in political blogging: Political blogs are simply political. Regular-people-telling-the-truth-about-their-lives blogs are subversive and radical.. We have nothing more profitable than fear than fear itself. Cheney is president of the moon and wants Bush to be vice-president. Can you smoke community?

Mitch Ratcliffe: DeTocquville's valuing group forming. Recalls when he was covering the president as a member of the press, trying to break through, decided to wait to do it again until there was a new way to cover them that was closer. Political blogs are making a fundamental error to talk about the presidency as a horse race and talking too much about coverage -- this reinforces the mass media's position. If you name the press as the enemy, you give them power. We won't look back on Dean more than McGovern (who innovated direct mail). There have been populist campaigns before. Need to stop being amazed with ourselves

Noticed that all the bloggers are in the front and the political operatives are in the back. They are here, they are just relatively disconnected.

Doc: What happens to the people who are engaged will be working in politics in the future?

Cameron:Would love to see an independent non-profit create a place where people can continue the engagement

David: Political blogs are social, not just informational. Comments disappear below the fold, but this discourages flaming. Most important blogs are about group forming (but this relates to group think).

Halley: Matt Gross noted that some commentors believe they are blogging.

Mitch: Don't worry about the definition of blogging. We fetishize our candidates.

Phil Wolff: What do we do to keep people engaged after the election?

Doc: Local

Cam: Masses are asses, break it down for them

Q: What about the tools?

Cam: Tools differences are not so important

Halley: Political blogs should have a hefty About Me statement

Q: What about adding social networking or other features?

Cam: How to have a voter enter a zipcode to get a map with directions to vote.

Mitch: Don't hang you hat on blogs alone.

Q: Tactical or strategic use? Social use?

Cam: Social is comments (bah)

Q: Legitimacy of blogs vs. traditional journalism

Mitch: Correspondances.org can't get press passes or resources to cover. How to build credentials as well as resources.

Esther: Troubled by the echo chamber. There is nothing that will kill a bad product faster than good advertising. It may be that people didn't like Dean. If you are talking about what makes a blogger effective, its effective at what? It is empowering to talk about something or do something?

Cam: Once you have a blog, you have a voice, but the next step is more involvement.

Esther: What makes people listen to that voice? its not just having a blog its saying something useful.

Doc: You want it to be an echo chamber to some extent. What makes Andrew Sullivan effective is that he crosses boundaries. Valdis' echo chamber map.

David: Getting people to agree with each other is needed for building a political movement. Nothing is wrong with that unless its the only thing that happens. If you want an echo chamber, read the paper, that's the one that worries me.

Mitch: Blogs are just one thing of many. The problem is that we do things like the Dean group did last summer, organizing posse to go after people they are against. The first time Russians saw a pamphlet was one saying the Bolsheviks took power, although it hadn't happened, but it self-fulfilled, people bought it.

Doc: Blogging is the centerpiece of this particular panel.

Q: Blogs inject political dialogue into the Internet. Political is social. What are the metrics for electoral change. IndyVoter.org

Q: How to build consensus? Around a president that is so damn bad. (IRC: Bush has 58% approval at the moment)

Doc: Before the election, there was a blogging movement in support of the war. There is a bigger world out there.

Adina: Comment: Blogs are a medium and a tool and you can use them in different ways, communication to a broad group, more tactical organization using other social software, on the net or Intranet.

Adina: Question: What one step can you think of to take this emergent political activism to take it from online to the real world to cause real change?

Halley: Something happened psychologically when all the bloggers came behind Dean. As if we were reliving a giant dot com bust when it crashed. Need to keep the energy and take it to the local level. Meetups will help. Perhaps we need to stop thinking blogs are the end all be all.

Doc: There are lots of things I want to do that have nothing to do with the blog that are motivated by the blog.

Mitch: If I could use my blog to help people understand that I am valuable to America even if you disagree with me. Perhaps inviting a conservative to participate in the blog with me. Find two people in my neighborhood to go help someone get elected.

Cam: Prior project -- watchblog.com

David: Tremendous urge to connect. Trippi said the Dean campaign tried everything. We should take this technology and truely try everything to unleash that urge to connect.

Doc: Cluetrain feedback: you got it right that markets are conversations, but at a deeper level that markets are about relationships. There is a sense that people have relationships with candidates that they never had before.

Mitch: William Jennings Bryan and other prior candidates where there was the connection, but not on a global scale.

Doc: Open source values to the local government level, a relative new thing.

Adina: When not working for Socialtext, I do issue advocacy with EFF Austin. Provide mentorship for the geeks and help them provide the tools.

Halley: What motivates single mothers is money. Ads on your little old blogs or some source of revenue could be amazing.

Doc: Everything most people know me for happened since he was 50, the blogging made a huge difference, it was transformative.

David: Helps you find your voice, which is the first step.