Adam Curry and John Welch ask the hard questions of me

We *are* spoiled by mainstream media. Once you gave us the buildup by saying “next week sounds like it’s going to be an interesting one in my life, to say the least”, yeah, we junkies are dying for a fix of information from the inside that you usually capture on the technical stories.

My favorite post from that week so far? When you told us how to taunt a journalist.

Deannie: my favorite video won’t be of Edwards at all. I took a walk down a street in New Orleans and met a guy working on rebuilding his home. That’ll be the image that sticks with me.

Now there’s an idea, photo walking with candidates on the campaign trail;)

Guy

Guy: I actually tried to get them to invite Thomas Hawk, but they didn’t have space.

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THE LONE RANGER CREED.

“I believe that to have a friend,
a man must be one.

That all men are created equal
and that everyone has within himself
the power to make this a better world.

That God put the firewood there
but that every man
must gather and light it himself.

In being prepared
physically, mentally, and morally
to fight when necessary
for that which is right.

That a man should make the most
of what equipment he has.

That ‘This government,
of the people, by the people
and for the people’
shall live always.

That men should live by
the rule of what is best
for the greatest number.

That sooner or later…
somewhere…somehow…
we must settle with the world
and make payment for what we have taken.

That all things change but truth,
and that truth alone, lives on forever.

In my Creator, my country, my fellow man.”

The Lone Ranger for President!

Transparency ROBERT.

since you specifically mentioned Newt, i would point out he does have a facebook profile and an official facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=509329910

I just watched Steve Garfield’s video of you and Chuck Olsen at the NH campaign setup. What you said about catching fleeting moments rather than trying to duplicate what MSM is doing is right on, in my estimation. Here’s what I wrote about that today.

It should be pointed out that Tom Vilsack, the former Gov. of Iowa and a Dem who announced before Edwards uses social media at the same level. He doesn’t have a blog, only a vlog, which is quite a statement. He’s on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn and PartyBuilder (the DNC online social network). He also blogs on DailyKos and MyDD.

My point is that Edwards is making much use of social media (and doing well with it), but I’d be surprised if we don’t see many of the other candidates doing the same. The question will be who uses it most effectively. That will depend quite a bit on how much the entire campaign (including the candidate, the staff, the consultants) understands the new modes of interaction these technologies afford and utilizes it appropriately.

Of course all of this really started w/ Dean in 2003-2004. So, how campaigns continue that process of integrating social media and how that fundamentally changes the way candidates run should be a fascinating narrative for the ’08 prez races. Having just worked on the internet team for a possible ’08er (Mark Warner), I can tell you that few traditional media reporters have the background to report the realities and challenges of that tranformation. At the same time there are also few campaigns savvy enough to invite tech bloggers inside the curtain. Hopefully your opportunity w/ Edwards is just the first of many to blog about political social media from the inside.

I’d just like to add that although Vilsack may have same breadth of social media, I don’t think it’s nearly as deep as Edwards. He’s made a deep investment by cultivating an active online community through a group blog. Same goes for the level of live-blogging he does on DailyKos.

Everyone knows Adam Curry is *the* authority on everything. No one could do the job that he would do. I, for one, look forward to your videos and it sounds like you did the job you were there to do.

Obama has a Facebook account and is also the most popular podcasting politician on iTunes.

Would be facinated to hear your views on the English equivalent (or British really). The current leader of the conservative opposition shows the firmest grasp of new media: http://www.webcameron.org.uk/

(not my party I’m afraid but interesting to watch the shift).

“Come on, on that front lawn was more than a million dollars of equipment. Bloggers are supposed to compete with that? No way, no how.”

What’s the point, then. I that that’s exactly what blogging was about. The ability to agilely (sp?) compete with the MSM?

I didn’t see much depth of observation from your posts, just a bunch of navel gazing. You had a huge opportunity to provide some insight as to his candidacy and his ability to distinguish himself. At the end of the day what your readers walk away with is the fact that you got to tag along on a campaign announcement from a re-run 2004 candidate offering nothing new other than a nifty neato web site with a bunch of blog links. yawn.

@9. No, it will actually depend on how much the electorate cares about candidates using social mediums to engage. We saw how effective it was for Dean (how far did he make it, again? How was his blogging able to overcome his scream?) So, they can engage in all the blogging and social media circle jerking they want, but if the people that will actually VOTE don’t care, then it wont’ matter one iota

LayZ: I never thought blogging was about competing with main stream media. I thought it was about putting things into Google.

LayZ: Dean never blogged. That’s quite unlike Edwards.

The scream was caused by mainstream media who overmiked him and didn’t supply context. His campaign was in chaos cause he had just lost in Iowa. Truth is if you don’t win Iowa and New Hampshire you might as well just quit.

The other thing, John, is you totally miss what I’m there to do. I’m not there to be a news source. I was there to study how campaigns are using technology. I will go to Newt Gingrich’s campaign stops, if he asks me along to study that.

Robert, what you think you’re there to do is immaterial. Everyone who’s read three of your blog posts ever know that the only thing you write or care about is how people use tech. You’re helpless in any area that doesn’t involve tech. What you were INVITED for was to give Edwards more credibility in the tech audience. “OOOhhh, SCOBLE likes him, he must be cool”. He could have been eating a baby for breakfast, but he dangled the right shinies, and MynaScoble jumped on cue. Good doggie, here’s a biscuit.

Go ahead and visit Hillary’s site. Or Barack’s. Or Newt’s. Or any of the others. No one else has a Facebook site, a MySpace page, a blog, a video blog team. I haven’t seen the others do live blogging like was done over on Daily Kos this week.

Robert, before you say things that don’t take a day to be proven wrong, get PodTech to hire an intern to do research for you. “Bad” doesn’t even begin to describe your complete inability to look up a fact, or run a search on anything that isn’t “Blogs” or “Scoble”.

Over the next week I’ll get up my own interviews and you’ll see the video I captured. I’m not that fast, but then, I don’t see my job to compete with CNN in speed. There’s no way bloggers are going to be able to do that.

No, there’s no way YOU can do it. But someone with some skills, and the discipline to sit down and do it? Oh yeah, sure they can.

There’s no way I was going to be able to give you more depth than Dan Balz, reporter for the Washington Post. He’s been covering politics since when I was in middle school. I needed a few days just to get up to speed on the political system.

That’s the most pathetic thing you could have possibly written, and somehow, I bet you were proud of it. Listen to yourself. You get invited to something that is a part of the most important thing this country does politically, and yet, you have no real clue as to how the process works, or what is involved. That’s inexcusable. Utterly. You want to know how some of the idiots in office get elected? Some of the scummy yahoos like Foley? Go look in the mirror Robert, you’re not only part of the problem, you’re now its public face. You have ALWAYS had the ability, as much as anyone else in this country to educate yourself on HOW YOUR COUNTRY WORKS, yet you were so busy servicing your technostiffy that you couldn’t be bothered to even re-watch Schoolhouse Rock.

Let’s go at this another way. What do you wish I would have reported? What do you want to know from me now about my experiences, and what I heard?

I sincerely wish you would have asked around PodTech, and brought someone with you who wasn’t an idiot about the American political system and government, and would have had a better idea of what the hell was going on than “Whal GOLLLL-EE, this here politikin’s reeel complikated-like”.

When he’s on the plane he discussed mundane things with his staff. His staff would give him feedback about what was being discussed on blogs and forums. They talked about questions he could have answered a little better, or impressions of the day. Pretty boring stuff. Do you really want me to get boring? I could tell you he likes Diet Sunkist. Does that really help the dialog here?

The depths of your ignorance surpass even the ability of the Trieste to properly explore. He’s a presidential candidate, NOTHING is “mundane”. WHAT does his staff tell him? To what level do they filter? Does he occasionally go look at stuff they already told him about if it sounds interesting? Jesus man, this isn’t Miss Finch’s Fifth Grade class election. It’s history, and you sat there counting RSS feeds.

Dude…get PodTech to hire someone with a clue. Anyone. The person who will fix your car will probably have more of a clue than you.

Or, does it matter that some of his campaign staff has worked on eight Presidential campaigns and they think he’s the nicest guy they’ve worked for so far? If I reported stuff like that, you’d all call me a shill anyway. Or, how about does it matter that he knows how to use a Blackberry? I mean, how mundane do you want me to get?

If I were talking to someone with a fifth-grade level political science education, I’d have some points that could be made here. In your case?

Just tell us what color the Blackberry is, and what blogger he reads the most. Maybe something nice about his hair, it’s about what you’re able to competently cover.

Christ…what a waste of opportunity.

@18. Well, talk about being pedantic. True, Dean himself never blogged (and once the campaign gets in full swing, I’ll be shocked if Edwards ever touches a keyboard, but Mr. DailyKos himself was hired by Dean as his “technical advisor”, IOW designated blogger. You think if anyone could have saved Dean, it would have been Moulitsas. As John Welch says…even an elementary attempt at research would have revealed that. Some advice: tell Edwards thanks but no thanks, cuz I gotta tell ya, you are in WAY over your head.

LayZ: I talked with several voters in Iowa about why they thought Dean didn’t win there. They told me they simply didn’t like him. No amount of blogging is gonna change that.

John: OK, I’m ignorant and an idiot. I don’t know how this gets any further discussion going, but I’m game.

>>WHAT does his staff tell him? To what level do they filter? Does he occasionally go look at stuff they already told him about if it sounds interesting? Jesus man, this isn’t Miss Finch’s Fifth Grade class election. It’s history, and you sat there counting RSS feeds.

What does his staff tell him? They sit next to him with computers and Blackberries and show him the latest stuff from press reports around the world, as well as blogs, forums, and other emails sent in from people. He also reads his own stuff. He types slowly, he says, so it’s frustrating for him to really blog, but he absorbs a lot of information.

His staff tells him both the good and the bad. What you’re seeing on his blog reflects him and his interests and not just his staff.

I didn’t see any filtering, other than they usually only have limited time. So, they cover the biggest issues. It’s pretty easy while on the road to see what the biggest issues are. The same questions about health care and education and Iraq and gay marriage came up in almost every city and every audience cheered loudly his answers on those.

Yes, he goes and looks at his own information. It’s pretty clear he’s a voracious reader and also talks with tons of people.

So, you got any other questions, or you just gonna keep calling me names? I guess you learned that from Rush Limbaugh. Make you feel better?

Well, speaking of “an elementary attempt at research”:

- A number of examples of Dean blogging can be found at http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/2003_07.shtml , from when he was guest-blogging for Larry Lessig in 2003.

- As far as Kos being Dean’s “designated blogger,” got a citation for that? I’ve never heard that description before, and I follow this stuff fairly closely. My recollection is that each of the posts on DFA said who they were written by, and I don’t believe that Kos contributed.

Personally, I think that the US primary system is currently set up as to give us lousy candidates. Not to mention that Californians don’t get to vote in the primaries until most of the candidates have dropped out, so it’s all pretty much moot.

Dori: true, only a few states matter.

Joe Trippi told me that other people wrote most of Dean’s blogs. Not sure about Kos, though. It also might be that Dean couldn’t type fast, so he’d dictate (Edwards admitted to me that’s how he interacts with people on Daily Kos during live blogging), but it sounded like in Dean’s case that wasn’t even done.

What I wanted to find out with my question is if the Edwards campaign gave ‘exclusives’ to more than one person (blogger), seeing as you were asked to keep quiet, while Andrew Baron was shooting the pre-announcement video.

@21.. “I talked with several voters in Iowa about why they thought Dean didn’t win there. They told me they simply didn’t like him. No amount of blogging is gonna change that.”

Thanks for finally agreeing that blogging will have no impact on a candidates’ ability to influence voters.

@22. At the end of the day Moulitsas was responsible for Dean’s presence on the web. Whatever the case, again this reinforces the point that no amount of blogging will help a candidate win an election.