Connected Conversations Politics, technology, et cetera

Seeking: Voter Guide Toolkit Campaign Leader

It’s an exciting time for technology+politics in general, and for me in particular. I am a volunteer manager of e-thePeople.org, and I am in charge of hiring a Campaign Leader for our Voter Guide Toolkit project. It’s an exciting project, and the job is quite well-compensated as non-profits go. We’re hitting stride for […]

Considered opinions about the European Union

I am finally back in the US. After three back-to-back sleepless nights as a global data cruncher, I have the final results of the first-ever European-wide deliberative poll. I’ll have more to say about deliberative polls and this project, but for now, here is a short summary of what we did and what the results […]

Hall of “shame” on e-thepeople.org

Wow, people can really post mean/vile/nonsensical things on e-thepeople. The good news is that the collaborative rating system ensures that this stuff is mostly buried, and that everyone who reads it at least knows that there is no need to respond to this junk. But after 6+ years, it is kinda funny that […]

Motivational speaker + civic engagement + kids = ?

I found this video in a post titled “My life in a nutshell.” Oh, too true!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIQE8t7PBbk

Some more good political resources

My brother forwarded two valuable political resources: politifact.com and www.factcheck.org. The first is especially engaging in my opinion. With a truth-o-meter, they verify that “Obama girl’s” is correct to say ‘At least Obama didn’t marry his cousin,” as Giuliani did.’ However, Guiliani is completely wrong to accuse the democrats of socializing medicine […]

Obama donor match

Obama continues to think of innovative ways to fundraise on the Internet. Today, the campaign announced a program for matching donations. They will match me with another donor from across the country who agrees to donate the same amount. It sounds really cool. They are promoting it like NPR: donor matching […]

Yet Another Video Debate site

Yahoo has launched a neat site that allows you to compare video responses of the Democratic candidates. Check it out here:

http://debates.news.yahoo.com/

Unlike the one I wrote about yesterday, this one is highly produced. Charlie Rose asks the traditional questions and Bill Maher challenges the candidates with nontraditional ones. You can make video playlists […]

Annoying student tasered

I started this conversation on e-thepeople about an annoying student who got tasered because he got angry when he was cut off at a forum featuring John Kerry at the University of Florida. Here’s the video of the incident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE

I think two wrongs don’t make a right: neither the cops nor the student come off […]

The death of televised debates? Enter ExpertVoter.org

While there has been a lot of attention of the recent YouTube/CNN debates, where citizens got to upload videos of themselves asking question, I think youtube may even have a greater impact in a less flashy way: video voter guides. Why? ExpertVoter.org shows 40 second clips from anywhere - interview, debate, web site […]

What’s going on in Anbar province?

Here is a video published by al jazeera and produced by BBC filmmakers that I highly recommend watching. The filmmakers have gotten the views of local US military commanders, local Sunni leaders and displaced Shiites. They have footage from the Anbar province that has been too dangerous for media to enter during […]

Google + elections = ???

Google has just launched an Australian election project, and I think it demonstrates some of the power that I mentioned in my post last week on political video mashups and open politics. It exposes both the strengths and weaknesses of google’s generic approach to information discovery. Here is a screenshot of a portion […]

Obama’s plan in Iraq: Devil’s in the details

Yesterday, I started a conversation on e-thepeople.org about Obama’s new plan for Iraq. I wanted to summarize the interesting feedback that I’ve gotten from these discussions.

First, I raised the question: how does Obama plan to fix the oil sharing problem? No one responded, but I think Chris Dodd has the best proposal on […]

Update: good guy wins, Viacom loses

In a post last week (Chutzpah!), I wrote about the travails of Chris Knight. Chris ran for a seat on his local school board and lost. More notably, he made a funny campaign ad that was appropriate by VH1 for one of its shows. When Chris uploaded the ad on youtube, Viacom […]

Obama’s Iraq policy

Please see a discussion I’ve started on e-thePeople.org for my full thoughts, and hopefully, the comments on it from the community. In a nutshell, I agree with Obama on Iraq (see his plan here). Our security is no longer threatened by the state of Iraq, so our military should come home. In […]