Archive: Author: The Management

I'm in a breakout session at the New Democratic Network's daylong conference on "New Tools, New Audiences," listening to Vijay Ravindran, the CTO of Catalist, talk about web 2.0 and its development of an "Enhanced Voter File." As usual, these are my rushed notes, and at best a good paraphrase of what was said, not direct quotation. The traditional voter file, which is collected by state bodies, is just name, contact info and party registration, and past voter behavior. The enhanced voter file, something that Democrats, Republicans and sometimes other organizations build and maintain, contains commercial data, census data, historical information about your behavior, and specialized data (like lifestyle choices). (Vijay notes, later in the Q&A, that this kind of data is...

A leading indicator? Hillary Clinton's MySpace page is down .2% in the last week: Traffic to her website seems to be crashing, too: Meanwhile, the interwebs are having a fun Friday afternoon playing with this idea from Jason Kottke called "When Obama Wins":...

As the dust settles on the Democratic primary fight, I think more people are going to be turning their attention to understanding the significance of the new kind of political machine the Obama campaign has been building. Matt Stoller, one of my favorite netroots writers, has a great stab in this direction over on OpenLeft with a post he titled "Obama's Consolidation of the Party." I'm not sure I agree with all of his conclusions about Obama's dominating and remaking the Democratic Party, but there's surely huge potential in their blending of top-down message discipline, net-centric outreach, Alinsky-UFW-Ganz-inspired field work, Camp Obama trainings, Obama Organizing Fellows, and a new 50-state voter registration effort. Whether Obama wins or loses in the...

I spent most of last night watching the Democratic election returns roll in, with the TV tuned to MSNBC but the sound turned down low, and my laptop in my hands, watching for live reaction and commentary on the event as it unfolded. Twitter, which has now become the web's virtual water-cooler, was my main guide, but while it was fun and entertaining to read and trade snarky and occasionally smart asides with the likes of Andy Carvin of NPR (@acarvin), Robert Scoble (@scobleizer), Dave Winer (@davewiner), Amy Gahran (@agahran), Ruby Sinrich (@ruby), John Dickerson of Slate (@jdickerson), Patrick Ruffini (@patrickruffini), Steve Garfield (@stevegarfield), Beth Kanter (@kanter), Joe Trippi (@joetrippi), Craig Newmark (@craignewmark), Garrett Graff (@vermontgmg), Ranjit Mathoda (@mathoda), David...

Some quick takes on the three campaigns' ups and downs in YouTube-land: * Live by the shot-glass, die by the rest-stop coffee machine? Hillary Clinton may have impressed working-class voters last week in Pennsylvania by hoisting a brew, but after a photo opportunity at a gas station in South Bend, Indiana, she was caught by MSNBC struggling to figure out how to get the coffee machine to make her some cappuccino. Shades of the first President Bush's first encounter with a supermarket checkout scanner? I'm not sure who added the teasing soundtrack, but this snippet could be on its way to internet notoriety, with 14,000 views in just the first two hours since its posting. (Hat tip to Americablog.) UPDATE: This video...

I spent a few minutes in the future last night, having a late dinner at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica with Robert Scoble of FastCompany.tv and Loic le Meur of the start-up Seesmic. Both of them are tech pioneers who are working in the emerging world of the world live web. And when they say live, they don't mean simply the part of the web that gets updated often, otherwise known as the blogosphere and the news-sphere. They mean the direct streaming of live events onto the web, along with live feedback from audiences that are highly networked. You are far more likely to encounter Scoble and le Meur on Twitter, the instantaneous community messaging system, than you are to...

Will soundbite politics win out over soundblast politics? That's the question that was on my mind as I flew out to Los Angeles yesterday evening to do a couple of talks today and tomorrow at the USC Annenberg School and at the Economics of Social Media conference. As we crossed over the center of the country, I watched Rev. Jeremiah Wright's speech before the Detroit NAACP as it was played live on CNN and thought to myself, "Well, there wasn't that much that was controversial about his speech, it was mainly a paean to diversity and respecting each other's differences." But as soon as Wright's long speech ended, I could see the soundbite machine gearing up on CNN, as the...

Time for some editorial housekeeping. In our never-ending quest to cover how technology is changing politics and serve the growing community of activists, technologists, journalists, politicians, government workers, bloggers and plain old citizens who are engaged in making this change happen, we are pleased to announce two new additions to our editorial crew. Dave Witzel and Allison Fine are coming on board Personal Democracy Forum as senior editors who will help expand our coverage on PersonalDemocracy.com of how mass, networked participation in the public arena is affecting all the important arenas outside of electoral campaigns (which we cover obsessively at techPresident). In addition to blogging, Dave is going to start writing a weekly round-up on e-govt, collaborative governance and all...

About today's fundraising posts: I'm putting my faith in Peter Daou's word right now. As Marc Ambinder blogged earlier today, the only thing we have to go on when conveying information (can you call it reporting?) about the campaigns' online fundraising numbers is the word of a staffer who has been good to his word before. But given how funky this stuff is, I'm thinking that all of us should start referring to claims about money raised online with the word "alleged" as a modifier. As in, yesterday, Clinton "allegedly raised $10 million" and Obama "allegedly raised $XX." Or, the word "claimed" as in "the McCain campaign claimed to have raised $YY." Because we really don't know, and we...

So now the Clinton campaign is walking back has clarified its post-PA fundraising numbers (and I'm clarifying my post as well). As I noted yesterday, the campaign's finance co-chair Hassan Nemazee left the distinct impression with both the Washington Post and Business Week that the campaign had somehow pulled in more than $10 million "overnight" from Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary. Indeed, the Business Week story by Jane Sasseen puts this right in the lede: Just minutes into her victory speech in Philadelphia, Clinton made a plea to her supporters in the crowd—and the many more watching on TV—to head to her Web site and make a donation. "Tonight, more than ever, I need your help to continue this journey. We can only...