July 26, 2004

the last free meal at the DNC

So it's later in the evening and Al Gore is probably the first speaker here that every single person in this room has heard of. The big media folks are climbing up here to the blogger aerie to say hello, saying things like "Are you blogging this live?" Al Gore is pulling no punches talking about the mismanaged war in Iraq and the "real source" of the threat [i.e. Afghanistan, or more importantly, Osama & co.]

It's nice to hear people talking about some of the things that I wanted to hear about, like wrapping up the war. I don't intend to provide a blow by blow here but I wanted to add some notes about the breakfast this morning.

Walter Mears - notable AP reporter talked about how this convention is again, "made for TV" and more of a class reunion of sorts for politicians and the media. He started a blog yesterday, I think. His notable quote was about spending 40 years with AP learning to take himself out of the story, now he was having a hard time learning to put himself back in.

Barack Obama came in basically to give everyone a high five and asked what he could do to improve his blog. "Write it yourself" was the quick reply.

Then came special guest Howard Dean, the guy who probably gets tech and blogs more than anyone else currently running for office. He's a powerful speaker and one I hadn't heard before. He called blogs an opportunity for real person to person contact, instead of the type of access that regular old citizens usually get to their politicians [written to your Senator lately?] His line was "We empower people to talk to us by listening to them." Not bad. There was some Q&A where Jay Rosen [whose computer I fixed, or helped fix] asked about who he thought didn't want two-way communication, and Dean started talking about Murdoch and CNN. I actually got to ask a question. I asked about, of course, my library where most of the people we see are mystified by tech and consider the people who say "Oh, read about it on my blog" as smug smartie-pantses who are basically living on a different planet. I asked what his solution was for places like Vermont, how they could utilize that community if they couldn't even get online?

His answer was brief but enlightening. Basically he said that when he was governor, he decided he couldnt' wait for Vermont to wire itself, that the taxpayers wouldn't put up with more taxes and it just wouldn't happen. So he said that they basically did some "quid pro quo" with the telcos, giving them a favorable regulatory environment in order to get the schools wired. Once the kids are plugged in, the rest of the citizenry follows. Slowly, but it follows. He said the trick is patience, education and "learning it from your kids" He also had a few choice words about ClearChannel, returning to "equal time" on the airwaves [that old chestnut of the airwaves belonging to all of us still rings true] and a time when the Net is so ubiquitous that you can actually bypass the mainstream media. Posted by jessamyn at July 26, 2004 08:35 PM