You've Spoken: Common Craft and Politics

Through nearly 50 comments and 15-20 emails, you have spoken. You don't want to see politics on Common Craft. I agree that it is the right move - political discussions will not appear on the Common Craft web site. We may make videos about events that relate to government, but these will not reflect personal/partisan views.  A couple of things:

1) First, wow.  We are both so excited to see such amazing comments. The thoughtfulness is inspiring. Thank you so much for being involved - we are lucky to have people like you around us. My Mom even got involved via email (thanks Mom!)

Not Talking Politics is Hard

Sachi and I have an ongoing discussion that I want to share with you, dear reader, because I want to hear your feedback.

When I was a consultant, people would ask me what subjects are appropriate for a blog.  Inevitably I would say that it should reflect the person behind the blog and what is important to them. It should be multi-faceted and provide personality along with on-topic content.  I would also say that context matters - company blogs deserve special care, for instance.

So here I am with the Common Craft blog and there are two things that are very important to me right now:

1. Making videos

2. The Presidential Elections

Teachers Make Our Day

Hi, I am a teacher at a middle school in Ohio, I just shared your electoral college video with my kids and thy got it!!!!!  Your explanation is the best I have ever seen.  Now my kids want more of your stuff.  Just thought you'd like a big cheer from Ohio.

Here's to kids getting it! Yay!  The video is here. 

Tech President

As the US presidential election heats up, I've been more and more interested in how the candidates are shaping up, particularly on the web.  One of my daily newsletters, Tech President (blog), has recently become something I look forward to each day.  It's by the Personal Democracy Forum and focuses on, you guessed it, how technology is changing politics (or not).

Classic: Hacking John McCain

John McCain's campaign recently created a MySpace page and made a few mistakes along the way. They used Mike Davidson's (the co-founder of Newsvine) design template (without credit) and even images from Mike's server. When Mike discovered this, he switched out an image as a prank. Hilarious.

Dean uses a Blog to Announce DNC Chairman Run

I'm posting this because of the sign-of-the-times appeal. Today Howard Dean used his "Blog for America" to announce that he is running for the Chairmanship of the Democratic Nat'l Committee.

What, no press release? No news conference? I'm sure those may follow, but as usual-- the blog world knows first.

Weinberger Blogs the Politics Online Conference

I've found David Weinberger's recent posts from the Politics Online Conference really interesting. All day today he's been feverishly blogging the various goings on, including presentations from Ken Mehlman of the Bush campaign, Joe Trippi and lots of others. I think it provides an interesting snapshot of how the world of poilitics views the Web, weblogs, online communities and all. David's snarky comments are funny too.

For what it's worth, RSS is the *only* reason I can keep up with things like this.

Interview with Zephyr Teachout- Internet Director, Dean Campaign

The cyberbrains behind Howard Dean |CNET.com

This interview describes some of the goals and tactics in using the Internet for the Dean campaign.

Some of the commenters in a previous post made the assumption that the campaign is all about weblogs. I think this interview shows a side of the campaign that's much more about using the Internet to get people out of their homes and interacting with one another face-to-face via resources like MeetUp.com.

My Crack-pot Predictions for 2004

Now that’s 2004 I’ll go ahead and do my part in predicting what we’ll see in the year ahead. The predictions below are completely unscientific and highly biased…

• Weblogs will continue to grow in visibility (I know- no duh). But I think that we’ll see even more mainstream coverage- the Weblog phenomenon will grace the cover of a news magazine like Time or Newsweek- possibly based on the success of the Dean campaign.

   

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