Archive for June 23rd, 2008
Perhaps the biggest-name speaker at Personal Democracy Forum this year was to be Elizabeth Edwards, blogger and wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards. Weather intervened, however, since a storm system interrupted flights and trapped her at home in North Carolina. Enter Skype, the online voice/video phone system — Andrew Rasiej was able to interview her live and in front of a large audience, with her image projected on the main-stage screen.
It was the first time I’ve seen that at a conference, and it was remarkably effective. Her projected image was much easier to see than she actually would have been on-stage, and the back-and-forth was quite natural. Of course, it was difficult for audience members to ask Edwards questions directly, but she could hear enough for the system to work. The audio did crap out at one point, but a quick “hang-up” and a new Skype call got things moving again.
Some highlights from the talk:
(more…)
June 23rd, 2008
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
A great point from Clay Shirky in the audience at PDF: if you really look at MyBarackObama, it seems like a social network but it actually contains relatively little lateral conversation. I.e., it’s portrayed as a social network, but people aren’t using it as one — it’s not as much of a person-to-person communications tool as we normally think of social networks as being. So, does that make it a top-down tool masquerading as a bottom-up tool? And if it’s not a real social network, what is it?
– cpd
June 23rd, 2008
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
Quick insight from Ana Marie Cox on a media panel at Personal Democracy Forum — she brought up instant messaging as a political tool, noting that the Clinton and Obama campaigns spent a lot of time this primary season communicating with reporters (and no doubt bloggers) via IM. Endless flurries of of behind-the-scenes emails flew around this season, as campaigns frantically spun the discussion, and IM was clearly being used in the same way. Of course, since it’s behind the scenes, we can’t see it and its ultimate influence is nearly invisible. In online politics, what you can see isn’t necessarily what matters. Update: Adam Conner caught the tidbit that Howard Wolfson (Clinton) and David Axelrod (Obama) were IM’ing back and forth during the primary season. The next Carville/Matalin?
– cpd
June 23rd, 2008
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
