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Saturday, January 03, 2004 |
 I have a confession to make. I made an offer to the Edward's campaign back in 2002 to help them with their online efforts. In effect, to build what Dean built with weblogs and social technology. They dealt with me like I had bats flying out of my ears. LOL. Talk about missed opportunities (I am looking at K-Logs -- nearing 1,000 members and probably one of the top 1% of groups on Yahoo -- in its 3rd year and thinking that much of the groundwork was done).
9:29:46 PM 
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On a silly note. Let's talk about cars and people. One thing I have noticed is that Volvo drivers are the most unsafe on the road (a volvo SUV almost drove me off the road today). I have seen a study that confirms that Volvo drivers are some of the worst drivers on the road. They buy the cars in anticipation of when they get in accidents, not the reverse. BMW and Mercedes drivers are conservative and slow (this is not true in Europe -- or -- when I owned a 700 series and the X5 BMW, I drove those cars), despite the performance oriented advertisements. Some of the most drab people drive these vehicles, unfortunately. Nothing worse that being behind a BMW that is a slug on a two lane highway. Jaguar drivers are pushy and arrogant (particularly given that they don't have the chops to be so). Volkswagen drivers are penny pinching performance fiends. Honda and Toyota drivers are family people. Saab drivers aren't to be trusted (this is purely an observation of those few people I know that drove Saabs, there aren't that many on the road). More cars to go, what is your thinking...
9:14:24 PM
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Invincibility is in oneself, and vulnerability is in the opponent. Invincibility is a matter of defense, vulnerability is a matter of attack. Therefore skillful warriors are able to be invincible, but they cannot cause opponents to be vulnerable. That is why it is said that victory is discerned and not manufactured. Sun Tzu. This is precisely why the West is having such a hard time with global terrorist organizations. The network-centric organizational topology and stateless nature of terrorists make them nearly invulnerable (we find it extremely hard to determine where to send the bombs). In contrast, the nature of our networked economy presents a myriad of vulnerabilities by design.
1:28:07 PM
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What is the role of a campaign hub weblog in an online campaign? The simple answer is that it should serve as a source of reliable information on the campaign's activities. The more important answer is that it should serve as a way for supporters find each other. In other words: it should be a system for making introductions that lead to weak links.
How is this done? Short, punchy posts that quote and link to high-quality supporter weblogs. Bots can help, but they shouldn't serve as a substitute to editorial intelligence (case in point: the Clark campaign weblog points inward with its posts and relies on bots to help people find each other). Also, don't rely on an inside team for analysis of breaking stories in the general media. Use the community to do the analysis for you. They will almost always do a better job. Find it, quote it, and point to it. The more you drive readers to other community weblogs the better. Don't hoard your readers (all the campaign weblogs could do better with this!!).
Create synthetic weblogs that address specific issues. Draw on the analysis done by the community to populate these synthetic weblogs. Use editorial judgement on what is included (don't rely on a bot!). A Wiki-like categorization system like that on Scripting News is a good way to do this. Perhaps a simple trackback ping system could provide the raw material to populate these synthetic weblogs (or the reverse, categorized RSS feeds from supporter weblogs that are combined into a single weblog flow). Get a Google pizza box and create a search system with community-centric PageRank for supporter weblogs. Build a Blogdex or Daypop top 40 for community weblogs.
Build a system for supporters to easily subscribe to each other. Aggregate the RSS links of community weblogs into one easy to find place. Work with aggregator vendors to offer tools configured for the campaign (don't rely on an internal effort to build the tool -- it probably won't be best of breed and difficult to maintain).
That's enough for this morning's coffee notes.
8:18:51 AM
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The difficulty in building a political network like Dean is that it is extremely difficult to manufacture small-world dynamics. The weak links derived from weblogs and other forms of social technology are made via intentional actions by the network's participants. They can't be forced or planned. They also are unlikely to form without help. These intentional cross connections serve to radically reduce the average connection length of the network (the distance between any two nodes on the network). Hence the perception that the community is a small world, even if it is composed of hundreds of thousands of participants. Operationally, short connection lengths translate into a community that acts with a speed and decisiveness not seen in authoritarian or random networks.
The knee-jerk reaction among political managers looking at the Dean network would be to set up a candidate weblog, set up some meetup.org gatherings, and build some software. However, that is far from what is needed to set the process that would lead to small-world phenomena in motion.
7:19:54 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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