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Monday notes

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Bloggercon was fun. I saw some old friends, met some people in person who I’d only known by their writing, and got to chew on some toothsome ideas.

I think that my panel probably could have gone on for two more hours — felt like we just barely scratched the surface — but there were lots of other people who had as much or more that needed to be said. At this sort of conference, the distinction between who’s at the podium and who’s in the crowd is pretty meaningless — a room full of bloggers is a room full of people with a lot to say.

Other people took tons of notes if you want to follow some of the conversation (though keep in mind these transcripts are pretty rough — I’ve seen a few things here and there that I know are mistaken!). Dan Bricklin took some great pictures.

I’ve got more to say but it’s going to dribble out through the week, I think. Too much other work right now…

Presidential blogging

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One of the highlights of the sessions here at Bloggercon yesterday was the panel of presidential-campaign bloggers. Here we had lead bloggers for the Dean campaign, the Clark campaign, and the Democratic National Committee — along with a bright-faced 19-year-old volunteer for the Graham campaign. These folks are all central figures in the struggle to drag the world of political campaigns, in some cases kicking and screaming, into the Internet era.

In their own camps I have no doubt that these folks are the resident idealists, pushing their colleagues toward a better understanding of how online tools can make the political process more open, direct and engaging. But at this conference, surrounded by people who passionately believe that blogs are changing the entire universe, I think these campaign bloggers were a little surprised to find themselves cast as the pragmatists, the realists.

When Esther Dyson asked whether the campaign blogs had any impact on, or even discussions about, actual policy as opposed to campaign news and promotion, Joe Jones of the Graham campaign declared, with charming bluntness, that no one cares about policy, and of course blogs were all about PR and buzz.

The panelists were asked, what real-world impact is the Net actually having? And Mathew Gross of the Dean campaign reported that, while George Bush is raising millions in big-denomination contributions from well-heeled supporters, Dean is raising equivalent millions in small donations from a much, much larger number of supporters.

Money raised is usually considered the ultimate yardstick of campaign success. But conference organizer Dave Winer pushed the speakers: Weren’t they just using the Internet to raise money to buy TV ads? Why take money from the bright new distributed world of the Net only to feed it back into the Big Media machine? Why couldn’t the candidates commit to responding to one question from blog visitors every day? (Josh Marshall gently told the crowd that they simply didn’t understand how crazed the candidates’ schedules were.) The candidates were taking from the Net, but what were they giving back?

I think the panelists were all flummoxed by this line of questioning; they are used to trying to justify their seemingly quixotic online techniques by pointing to hardnosed results. Instead, they were being charged with playing the same old political games while paying lip-service to the notion of online participation.

I consider myself about 60/40 on the idealism/pragmatism scale, but all I could think was, get real. TV still controls American politics. No one is going to get elected in the U.S. today without spending millions on TV advertising. If you care about getting your candidate elected — or you care, as all these Democrats did, about seeing Bush defeated — then you’d be foolish and irresponsible to pretend that this is not reality.

It would be great to see that reality change someday, and maybe the kind of innovation exemplified by campaign blogging will help make the change happen. That won’t occur in the course of a single election. In the meantime, money still talks, and Dean’s success raising money through the Net is an extraordinary development, worth celebrating in itself. Dean may be using his blog — and the Net — as a means to an end; he is more interested in getting elected than in making an abstract point about online people power. To me, the 2004 election is too important to be used as a
testing ground for a new theory. Pragmatism should rule.

Seybold post mortem

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Had a nice time talking at Seybold yesterday to a strangely sparse crowd (was it the bomb threat the day before? was it too late in the day? is Seybold dead? or was it just that the world is a lot less excited about RSS and blogs than we think?). Shared the podium with CNET’s John Roberts and Matt May. We agreed that RSS and blogs were highly unlikely to radically transform commercial publishing but that both were valuable, important tools.

I argued that it’s silly to talk about blogs “killing” print — that we keep getting stuck in a loop every time a new news distribution technology comes along, asking, will this “kill” its predecessor? Radio didn’t kill print, TV didn’t kill radio, the Net didn’t kill TV, and blogs won’t kill anything. Each new medium forces its predecessors to rethink what they do, and sometimes to revamp their business structures. Blogs are a fantastic way for individuals to enter the global conversation on the Net, to comment on the news and sometimes to break some news themselves. They don’t have to become Big Business to be important.

Steve Gillmor and Sam Ruby were there, and Christian Crumlish of RFB, and Steve Rhodes… and probably other bloggers who I didn’t recognize by face. It really should have just been a group discussion — when 25 people are in a hall designed for hundreds and three people are up on a stage it’s just not a very comfortable feeling.

The whole conference seemed that way — the Moscone West facility, which I’d never been in before even though it’s just down the street from Salon’s office, features vast lofty lobbies that make you feel small and insignificant, and if a conference isn’t positively bustling with energy there’s a pervading sense of forlornness. In a game effort to use some of the empty floorspace someone with a sense of humor had set up impromptu bocce courts on the industrial carpeting of the second-floor lobby. One guy was even playing, and seemed to know what he was doing.

Upcoming events

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I’ll be out and about over the next few weeks:

On Thursday, Sept. 11 (!), I’m talking on a panel at Seybold on the effects of blogging on the publishing industry. It’s at 4:30 p.m. at the Moscone Center.

On Sunday, Sept. 14, I am again getting on stage with my friend Josh Kornbluth, whose wonderfully funny and moving show, “Love and Taxes,” is now playing at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Every Sunday during the run of his show Josh has hosted these free conversations about tax policy. (At Berkeley Rep I believe the events are free to anyone who has a ticket stub from any performance of the show.) The last one I did, back in July at the Magic Theatre, with Leo Martinez of the Hastings College of Law, was extremely interesting. Josh’s new brainstorm is to start a movement — relating to his show’s insight that the taxes we pay actually support things that we need — under the banner “I. R. Us!” He’s even selling buttons.

On Saturday, Oct. 4, I’ll be part of a panel at BloggerCon, at Harvard Law School, along with Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds and Ed Cone, talking about blogging and journalism.

Of mouse and men

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Definitely, the highlight of my day at ILaw (last Wednesday — I could only get out of the office one day!) was Lawrence Lessig’s talk on public domain vs. copyright. I’d heard or read bits and pieces of this before, but here, presented in one piece and delivered with considerable passion in roving-law-professor style, it acquired weight and power — and made we want to spread the word. So here are some impressionistic notes and comments on his talk.

The good and the broken

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Last night I gave my digital storytelling talk at BayCHI and had a great time.

I shared the bill with Mark Hurst of Creative Good and Good Experience, and enjoyed hearing his spiel about the importance of thinking strategically about design and user experience — stepping back from the details of button placement and link colors and so forth and asking basic questions about what your goals are, what your relationship with the user is, and whether your design helps or hurts. The message was very pertinent to the issues we wrestle with every day here at Salon, as we try to keep our “buy a subscription or get a free day pass” model clear and easy to understand.

Mark runs a mailing list, a conference, and — most recently — has started a Web site called thisisbroken.com, for which he’s asking people to send in photos of things they think are broken. It’s interesting, sometimes funny stuff.

I’m tempted to send in a picture of the White House, but I think he’s hoping to keep it a forum for thinking about design, not making satirical points about politics…

Chair-ity

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I had the pleasure of spending yesterday ensconced at Stanford Law School at the Internet Law seminar sponsored by Harvard Law’s Berkman Center and Stanford’s Center for Internet Law. The day was devoted to enlightening, challenging discussions of the issues around digital content, and particularly, digital music, and I’ll say something about that in a second.

But first, the chairs. The entire lecture hall at Stanford was equipped with Aeron chairs! Aeron — meshy, black, cool. Comfortable. Expensive.

Back in the dotcom boom days, more than one careless reporter referred, Jayson-Blair-like, to Salon’s luxurious Aeron-bedecked offices. The trouble was, Salon has never ever had a single Aeron chair. So I’m a little sensitive on the subject. And floored to find them in a university lecture hall. But then I guess Stanford isn’t any old university. And there are a lot of liquidated Aeron chairs kicking around the Valley these days.

[I was going to post some substantive comments next, but unfortunately, I left my notes from the day on my laptop, and I left my laptop home today… So I’ll have to post my thoughts over the weekend.]

From the Digital Storytelling fest

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If you’re reading this, I’ve successfully posted to Radio using the
mail-to-blog tool.

I’m here in Sedona at the Sixth Annual Digital Storytelling Festival. I was here once before — nine years ago, on my honeymoon — so it’s incredible to be back, with my whole family now. (It must be said that attending a festival and trying to help take care of two rambunctious three-year-olds is a bit of a juggling act.) The rocks are as beautiful as ever. The town has grown like crazy; lots and lots of development. I met Mike Pence of Red Rock Blues, too.

I delivered a talk yesterday morning tracing a little of the history and the ideas behind the digital storytelling movement. At some point when I have time I will post some notes and links from it.

The festival has its own group blog here.

Bill McKibben talk

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Tomorrow night (April 30) I’ll be attending a talk here in San Francisco, sponsored by a group called the Center for Genetics and Society, by my old friend Bill McKibben, who has a new book out titled “Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.” (We reviewed the book in Salon here, and interviewed the author here.)

Bill is a great writer and speaker — if anything, his droll sense of humor comes through in a more full-spectrum way in person. Whether you find yourself sharing or questioning his critique of a future in which genetic engineering transforms our species, I think it should be a fascinating evening.