Ever since I heard him present at a PopTech years ago, I've been a big David Weinberger fan. Now I've been at dinner parties with Tim Berners-Lee; hung out at tech conferences with the likes of John Doerr, spent some time with John Warnock, even interviewed Bill Gates a couple of times. They were all pretty sharp but David (pictured here) is one of the smartest cookies I know when it comes to thinking about the the way we use or could use the Web. I'll bet you'll become a fan too after listening/watching to this presentation David gave a couple of weeks before last November's historic U.S. election. The presentation, given at the University of Toronto, has been archived and presented by TVO's Big Ideas program.
Best-selling author and Harvard Professor, Dr. David Weinberger, delivers the 2008 Bertha Bassam Lecture entitled “Knowledge at the End of the Information Age”. He provides insight into the impact of the internet on how we learn and what we know. Weinberger is recognized for his critically acclaimed book “Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder”.
David is much, much more than that little bio. Among other things, he's an American who lives in Brookline, Mass. but got his Ph.D in philosophy at University of Toronto and he's admiring of us Canadians for many reasons but still proud to be an American. He's also played a significant role in the way the Democratic Party uses the Web. He was the senior Internet advisor to Howard Dean when Dean ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004. (He signed up with Edwards for 2008). You'll remember that it was the Dean campaign that really “figured out” the Internet for political parties and David was a big part of that. In this presentation, you'll hear David refer to politics a fair bit but, for him, it's not just an academic issue: He actually delivered change.
During the last Canadian federal election, I asked David to take a look at what Canada's political parties were doing on the Web. His response, in a nutshell: Not much. All major parties could take a few lessons from what David and the Democrats did in 2004 (much of which was repeated by Obama in '08). Just cuz you got a guy on your staff who knows Flash doesn't make you a cutting-edge new media organization … So with that, I hope I've sold you on this TVO-archived presentation. It runs about 0an hour.
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Hi David,
The trouble with comparing Cdn politics on the net vs. the US is that US campaigns are much longer and thereby allow a better connection with a candidate.
Baloney. The Internet is all about scale and scale works both ways — big or small. Size, on the Web, has nothing to do with it the ability to grow audiences, communicate, raise money, or mobilize groups for action.
It's not the length of campaigns in Canada it's the control. For the most part, all the parties adhere to some form of strong top-down control which clashes magnificently with newer Web 2.0 strategies. It's about listening and interacting more than you speak or manage.
I agree with the comment by BBS. Before even considering using the Internet, Canada's parties have to understand the entire approach to voters must alter. For the most part, they talk at Canadians. And essentially preach to the converted. They don't engage the population (perhaps afraid to – less control of the message) and I think this is reflected in the voter turnout numbers. If I were advising them I'd say stay far away from the Internet unless you're ready for a conversation. On the other hand, if they are ready and have faith in their positions, the Internet is the place to be.
It probably also has a lot more to do with spending limits, plus the fact that the smaller population makes a return on the investment a bit riskier. Presidential campaigns need to organize on a mass scale for votes on one ticket, which they need to win in 50 states. Canadian campaigns require that parties organize nationally, but with the objective of getting people to vote for one of their 308 candidates, in 308 different ridings at a time.
And the *length* of the campaign does matter in such things, unless you start to move to a permanent campaign model, as some parties up here now are.
So, David might be right that the scale of the population, in and of itself doesn't matter. But the complications of governance of such a project within a party up here, given our smaller population, and with more wrinkles in how to achieve the desired outcome, do make things a bit more complicated. And with fewer resources to deploy on it (at least at campaign time), it's a riskier endeavour. Getting it right is a little harder, I think.
Thanks for the link to the Weinberger talk, David.