Archive: Year: 2009

First Maureen Dowd writes a (justly parodied) silly diss of Twitter, and now Matt Bai, who covers politics for the Times Sunday Magazine, offers his own misreading of Twitter's importance for politics. Like many inside the Beltway, Bai focuses on the handful of DC insiders who have begun using Twitter to share details of their day--some inane, some intimate and some genuinely illuminating. But to him, this is most like former Senator Bob Graham's obsessive compulsive diary-keeping: "just plain weird." He adds, "it just may be the worst thing to happen to politics and its attending media since a couple of geniuses at CNN dreamed up “Crossfire” back in the 1980s." I guess some of the smart kids in the mainstream...

Looks like instead of mocking Nancy Scola, we owe her kudos for predicting all the way back in November that Obama's pick for the nation's first Chief Technology Officer would be "someone out of the small but vibrant government CTO world, like Virginia's able Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra." Well, Nancy gets the cake, as word has leaked that indeed Chopra is stepping into the post. Here's what President Obama says about the decision in his Saturday radio address: Aneesh Chopra, who is currently the Secretary of Technology for Governor Kaine of Virginia, has agreed to serve as America’s Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Aneesh will promote technological innovation to help achieve our most urgent priorities – from creating...

Organizing for America has begun hiring some state-level staff and is quietly beginning a series of "listening tours" aimed at engaging local volunteers, discussing the group's national program, and drafting state organizing plans. As some of the online invitations going out say, "The purpose of this tour is to reconnect, reengage, and reenergize volunteers to continue the mobilization of change started with President Obama’s campaign. We want to solicit feedback and comments from volunteers on the ground for moving OFA - [state] forward from both a statewide and local perspective. These events are a crucial part for laying the ground work needed to recreate a strong volunteer network designed to support President Obama and his broad agenda of change." Events have...

Sunday night, March 29, Carl Elkin posted a humorous take-off on the Passover Seder story (aka the "Haggadah"), imagining it as a series of wall postings on Facebook. Within a day his Facebook Haggadah was all over the web. It looks like David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy was the first major blogger to post about it, Monday at about 5pm, and AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill tweeted about it two hours later. Soon it was being retweeted all over Twitter, and for good reason. If you're Jewish or you've ever been to a seder, Elkin's retelling of the story is hilarious. It's also deeply in tune with a longstanding Jewish tradition of modifying and updating the Haggadah to grapple with modern...

I'm at the annual Freedom-to-Connect conference, where the over-riding topic this year seems to be "connectivity as the killer app." While we could debate that phrase, here's a great example of a project that shows, beautifully, the power and potential of universal, home-based, connectivity. The Telecare for Rural Health Project, based in Burlington, Vermont (no link, sorry!), has starting providing a two-way interactive video and audio over broadband exercise class for seniors who have fallen or have a fear of falling. It's a three times a week class that runs for one hour per class, for 15 weeks. The project is a joint undertaking with the University of Vermont’s Department of Rehabilitation and Movement Science and is funded by the National...

For the record, the top three questions by each sub-topic on WhiteHouse.gov today are listed below: Education (465,858 votes on 13,737 questions from 28,425 people) -"The Founding Fathers believed that there is no difference between a free society and an educated society. Our educational system, however, is woefully inadequate. How do you plan to restore education as a right and core cultural value in America?" Takeok, Boston, MA (6153 pro, 1029 anti) -"For students graduating from college and graduate school, many of us have obscene amounts of debt. Do you have any plans to help alleviate some of that debt, given the current state of the job market?" Am, Chicago, IL (4719-1338) -"Mr President What are you going to do about local public...

I'm writing from my iPhone so I'll be brief and fill in more late. White House new media staffer and director of citizen engagement has announced that over at http://www.Whitehouse.gov/openforquestions they are reviving Change.gov's "Open for Questions" interactive forum. Perhaps today's stories in the WashPost and Politico critical of delays in implementing President Obama's promises to make more robust use of the web shook this loose; I'd prefer to claim credit on behalf of the "Ask the President" coalition. Not clear as of this writing: how and when the President will respond to top questions. Perhaps someone will ask about it at tonite's press conference. As Nancy reports, Obama will be responding to some of the most popular questions...

Organizing for America rolled out its "Pledge Project Canvass" this past weekend, and reports about 1200 groups went door-knocking across the country seeking signatures in support of President Obama's budget priorities. Considering that OFA boasted somewhere between three and four thousand house parties back in December, when the Obama campaign was gathering information from grass-roots activists about what they wanted to do next, this is a significant drop-off. The Washington Post reported that "the organization remains skeletal, and the Pledge Project does not nearly cover the 435 congressional districts. The organization aims to develop a structure -- including at least one paid staffer in each state -- in time for larger fights over health-care, climate change and education legislation. "'This is...

[Last Wednesday, I pinch-hit for Clay Shirky (who was homebound with bronchitis) at the inaugural gathering of "The Little Idea," the spawn of Ari and Jonathan Melber, who dreamed up the notion of getting a bunch of folks together in a bar to hear one person speak for ten minutes, no Q&A, and then much imbibing. Here's a slightly polished version of my remarks.] How many of you get twitchy when you can’t check your email or your mobile or your Twitter or Facebook account? How many of you are thinking right now, I wish I had my laptop? How many of you have ever experienced losing your device, or having to send it away for repair? It feels like a lost...

Melissa Jenna Compagnucci (didn't we see her in one of the YouTube debates?) posts a YouTube video plugging "Ask the President." The Washington Times on its support for "Ask the President." EchoDitto's Michael Silberman digs deep into the Obama tech operation and how it moved online enthusiasm into on-the-ground activism. The secret? Data, data, data. The Obama team is recruiting new media directors for various government agencies. Details here. Recovery.gov is spawning a web of sites and structured data at a fast pace, writes Greg Elin....