Predicting the internet phenomenon
Here’s Newsweek‘s take on the internet back in 1995:
Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.
While the internet still has a long way to go before it revolutionizes government and education, I’m surprised at how far off these predictions are. Then again, everyone assumed we’d have flying cars by now, so maybe the human race is just awful at predicting technologies of the future. Of course, now that I think about it, so much was different in 1995. Geocities was at its peak, every middle schooler thought they were capable of making a neat website with annoying background music and animated images, and Google didn’t even exist!
November 8, 2010 Leave a comment
Higher standards in media
In recent weeks, there have been two significant actions taken by big media companies over the actions of their hosts/employees. First, there was the firing of Juan Williams by NPR after some comments he made on Fox News (although the major underlying reason for his firing was his continuing — and conflicting — role at Fox News as a commentator). Just recently, Keith Olbermann was suspended after he donated to three political campaigns without getting approval from MSNBC first (a stipulation that was outlined in his contract). After both of these events, other media outlets have gone crazy, questioning NPR and MSNBC about these “drastic” decisions.
NPR and MSNBC made these decisions because they have standards, and they follow them. Regardless of the demographic that listens to NPR, I’d say it’s one of the most non-partisan media outlets out there. Having Juan Williams doing political analysis on NPR and then having him jump over to Fox News to provide his own personal viewpoints is a conflict of interest. When people listen to NPR, they don’t want to listen to a person’s opinion about something. They want the news and then some unbiased analysis of the news. Personal opinions play no role there. But when that same host also works at Fox News and occasionally says some outrageous things (while in the company of people who constantly say outrageous things), there’s an issue there, and I completely understand why NPR got rid of him. Granted, they could have handled the whole thing better, but the end result — firing Juan Williams — was a good decision.
MSNBC, on the other hand, really can’t be considered non-partisan. It’s definitely left-leaning. But I’d say it’s only left-leaning in that many of the hosts are outspokenly left-leaning. They don’t fund political campaigns as a company. They don’t actively advertise for Democrats on their program. They simply have a lot of liberal hosts, and they try to appeal to liberal viewers. At the same time, they also try to keep some standards in place, one of which was broken by Olbermann. They have a policy that hosts can’t donate to political campaigns without first getting approval from the company, which makes sense. Hosts need to be somewhat unbiased, and interviewing someone who just received a few thousand dollars in donations from you would lead to a pretty biased interview, in my opinion.
Fox News does not have standards like these. Its parent company donated millions to Republicans. And its hosts routinely endorse Republican candidates on their programs and encourage viewers to donate to their campaigns. Many of their hosts are active Republican politicians who I’m sure will be running for office sometime soon, such as Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee. Their hosts make outrageous comments all the time, and I can only assume that they are encouraged to do so, since it seems to help their ratings. Fox is busy questioning these decisions made by NPR and MSNBC, instead of looking at their own organization and how deeply entrenched they are in the Republican party. For a channel that says they are “fair and balanced”, it’s surprising that they wouldn’t institute similar policies.
It’s unfortunate that Keith Olbermann is suspended, and I’m guessing that his suspension will be lifted sometime soon. But I don’t question why he was suspended. This is what separates the “fair and balanced” media outlets from their “unfair and biased” counterparts.
November 7, 2010 Leave a comment
Political campaigns and technology
When I worked on the Obama campaign in 2008, we had this remarkable system that did everything. It had every voter’s information, including their phone numbers. It was able to print out canvassing walk sheets, where it would separate each side of the street to make the walk as efficient as possible. It simply did all of these things that would have been a pain otherwise.
Well, that was a Democratic party tool, so we didn’t get to use that this time around. Instead, we had to figure out this stuff on our own, and I think we did alright for ourselves by using a bunch of free tools (mostly provided by Google).
I configured our website to use Google Apps to manage its e-mail. Almost everyone was familiar with the Gmail interface, so Google Apps seemed like the best option. Plus, it has a lot of great features and is very easy to use. A new user or group could be added quickly (along with being disabled, if need be). I set up certain e-mail addresses to automatically forward its emails onto multiple users. For example, any e-mail sent to info@timmccormack.com was received by three of us at our own individual addresses, in an effort to keep us all up to speed and ensure a speedy reply.
We used a Google Spreadsheet that was shared across multiple users to keep track of volunteers. This included anyone that called into the office or sent us an e-mail. They would provide us information like their name, phone number, house address, e-mail address, etc. I learned this technique from keeping track of on-campus volunteers two years ago at the University of Toledo. Google Spreadsheets keeps track of all revisions, so there’s no threat of losing all of your information, since you can simply revert back to a previous version. (Maybe that’s just the programmer in me coming out though, since it’s so similar to source control.) This spreadsheet also kept track of what the volunteer would like to do in the campaign, which was very helpful when it came to yard signs, since all of those addresses were in one place and easily exportable. Similarly, all of the e-mail addresses could be easily imported into our mailing list manager.
We used MailChimp to send out our e-mail updates. By law, you must provide a way for a subscriber to opt-out of a campaign e-mail list. Using a solution like MailChimp provided that functionality effortlessly. It also lets you manage multiple e-mail lists and templates, and after we sent an e-mail, the number of users that actually read it could be monitored. There are a number of services like MailChimp out there that probably provide the same features. I’m just glad that we chose a solution like this, because the alternative was having to BCC everyone in an e-mail, and I think that’s somewhat unprofessional. Plus, you miss out on using a nice template to class the e-mail up a bit.
When it came to yard signs, we got into some trouble. We had made a big push for people to request yard signs, and we said that we would deliver them to their house. However, when we suddenly had 200 households signed up by the time the yard sign shipment arrived, we knew we needed a way to efficiently distribute them. Driving back and forth across the county would have taken an extremely long time. We already had everyone’s address, so I tried to find the best way to geocode them. Geocoding is when you take an address and find where it’s actual location (longitude and latitude) is. That’s a pretty difficult thing to do, but fortunately, Google Labs has been working on something that does just that. With Google Fusion Tables, I was able to upload a spreadsheet of our yard sign addresses (from the Google Spreadsheet of our volunteers), geocode all of the addresses, and then map them out onto your typical Google Map. From there, we could pick out a particular region, come up with the best route, and mark those addresses as “delivered” back in our spreadsheet. Closer to election day, we used this same process to map out all of the polling locations, which helped us more effectively get the yard signs placed on election day morning.
We used WordPress to power our campaign’s website. When combined with a number of powerful plugins (and a theme that we purchased), it handled everything very well. We could accept form submissions, like new volunteers or general inquiries, and that information would be e-mailed to various people on the campaign. We displayed a form for people to sign up for our e-mail list, and that data was automatically submitted to MailChimp. New blog posts were added whenever a new article or endorsement came out. New pages were added as new content was written. Originally, as a programmer, I thought it would be good to develop my own system to manage the website. But with WordPress, it was nice to have a pre-built and stable solution so that my attention could be spent on other tasks at hand.
Political parties usually provide easy ways to accept online donations, but since that wasn’t available to us, we went with an easy alternative — PayPal. With PayPal, no one has to register. They can simply enter in their donation amount and credit card details. You can then push the money from your campaign’s PayPal account to your campaign’s checking account, which can take a day or two. It proved to be pretty effective, and despite the 3% transaction fee that PayPal takes off of each donation, it’s always best to provide some way of donating online. The extra effort to write a check, put it in an envelope, and mail it off to some address might mean no donation at all. Plus, you received the donations right away.
Keeping Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn updated individually would have been a pain. So instead, I set up an account at HootSuite and tied those three accounts together. Whenever there was a new blog post on the website or we needed to send out some other message (like asking people to volunteer or donate), I could simply log in to HootSuite, write out my message, and then send it to all three social networking sites at once.
We didn’t take too many photos during the campaign, but when we did, we uploaded them to Flickr. Flickr has a simple upload process, and once uploaded, photos could be organized into different sets (or albums). After installing a plugin on our WordPress website, a separate Photo page was made that automatically displayed any photos uploaded to Flickr. This simple integration meant that we only needed to upload photos to Flickr, without having to make any changes in WordPress.
Looking over this list, I suddenly realized how many different websites/services we used throughout this campaign. And while it might look really complicated, these websites ended up making certain processes a lot easier. It never occurred to me that this number of websites were involved because so many were integrated to work together. While there are definite improvements to be made, I think we did a good job of utilizing existing websites or services out there to accomplish whatever needed to be done in an efficient manner.
November 5, 2010 Leave a comment
Time management
One of the hardest parts of the campaign was not being able to dedicate all of my time to it. But I’m also proud of how I was able to divide up my time appropriately. During the day, I worked my full-time job, and I didn’t allow the campaign to interrupt my day. This was possible because Kevin was managing everything during the day. And then, at night, I would get everything done that needed to get done, whether it be a new piece literature, a new e-mail update, a change in mailer targeting, an update to the website, etc. If a decision needed to be made, we’d discuss it, and then set the next few steps in motion.
After a few weeks of this, I realized how much time I really had outside of my 40-hour work week. For so long, I was simply returning home, eating dinner, watching TV, and wasting a few more hours on the computer. A jog might have been thrown in there as well. Time flies when you’re doing nothing. Now that I know how much more I could be accomplishing on week nights, I hope to make better use of them from now on.
November 5, 2010 Leave a comment
It began and ended with an e-mail.
For the past 9 months, my friend Kevin and I managed the campaign of Tim McCormack for Cuyahoga County Executive. It began in February, when Kevin e-mailed me regarding the creation of a website for Tim’s campaign. We met around Tim’s kitchen table and discussed what this campaign would be all about. He had chosen to run as a non-partisan candidate, which meant that we could skip the primary, but it also meant that we would be skipping the money, volunteers, and very helpful party affiliation that the Democratic party could provide. I chose to take on responsibilities beyond the website, and before I knew it, we had declared Tim’s candidacy and were busy collecting the thousands upon thousands of signatures necessary to get Tim on the general election ballot.
This campaign taught me a lot, and I’m going to try to write down some of those lessons (so at the very least, I won’t forget them during the next campaign). It’s hard to wrap up such a long and hectic period of time, but I think it’s important to not simply walk away from this as if it were a loss. Running an independent campaign forces you to make decisions that (I’m guessing) a lot of partisan candidates don’t have to worry about. And more importantly, I was given the opportunity to be incredibly involved in a race for what will supposedly be the second most powerful position in the state, so I might as well value this rare and fortunate opportunity and learn as much as I can from it.
Last night I decided to send an e-mail out to our supporters. It’s pretty tough to write something like that, because it’s truly an admission that it’s all over. I’m guessing that’s why so many campaigns simply abandon their websites, blogs, and e-mail lists after defeat. But I think that’s a disservice to all of those that volunteered for the campaign. The candidate and staffers might be disappointed, but so are the supporters, and I think the campaign owes it to them to help provide some closure.
Here’s what I wrote:
Dear Friends,
Nine months ago, we sat down at the McCormack kitchen table and started laying the groundwork for this campaign. Running as a non-partisan candidate, we knew that we would face many challenges, including the lack of funding and resources that an established political party can provide. But we also knew that our first County Executive needed to move away from the tarnished political machine and appeal to all citizens of the county, regardless of political affiliation.
Despite the hurdles, we ran a campaign that refused to go negative. We highlighted the honesty, experience, and leadership that Tim could bring to the table, demonstrated by his years of public service. We were able to reach out to voters through people like you, who recognized the potential in Tim to successfully usher in this reformed government.
Unfortunately, the results from yesterday show that many fellow citizens of this county had other candidates in mind. While we are disappointed in the final results, we are proud of our campaign and incredibly grateful for your support. We still see a bright future for this county, and we hope that our newly elected Executive and Council can regain our trust by always acting in the best interest of their constituents, a standard that Tim has always followed. We hope that you will stay involved as this transition progresses.
Thank you to everyone that volunteered, whether you gathered signatures to get Tim on the ballot, marched in parades, canvassed neighborhoods, put up yard signs, worked at the office, or stood at a polling location on election day. Thank you to everyone that told their friends and family to vote for Tim. And most importantly, thank you for placing your trust in Tim McCormack.
Kevin Gorman, Jon Sustar, and Kerry McCormack
The Tim McCormack Campaign
November 4, 2010 Leave a comment
The results are in.
It would be an understatement to say that yesterday didn’t go my way. The campaign that I helped manage lost (which we were somewhat expecting, but the numbers are worse than I thought they’d be), Portman and Kasich won, and the Republicans now have control of the House.
On Facebook, people are quickly updating their statuses to voice their disappointment or joy with these results. Before this attention to politics quickly fades, I hope everyone keeps two things in mind:
- If you’re happy with yesterday’s results, keep paying attention to what these newly-elected officials are doing on your behalf. Don’t wait to tune in again two years from now. Don’t wait to see their accomplishments listed in a mailer or TV advertisement. A good democracy requires a lot more than voting. Make sure they’re working for you. Make sure they aren’t just out to score political points, but are sincerely working for your best interests.
- If you’re not happy with yesterday’s results, think of your contributions to this election. Did you volunteer? Did you do everything you could to get your candidates elected? If you didn’t, take a mental note, and put in that extra effort in the next election. No one likes to wake up the morning after an election and think “man, I could have done so much more”.
November 3, 2010 Leave a comment
Restoring sanity
I wish I could have gone to the “Rally to Restore Sanity” yesterday. Since this is the weekend prior to the election, though, there was stuff to be done around these parts. It’s somewhat ironic that a rally about our political process/atmosphere could only be attended by those who aren’t involved in our political process (or at least I assume), since those that are involved would be too busy doing their campaign work this weekend. I hope that those who attended will be encouraged to join the political process and bring some sanity to the table.
Here are Jon Stewart’s closing remarks:
And now I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity. If that’s okay – I know that there are boundaries for a comedian / pundit / talker guy, and I’m sure that I’ll find out tomorrow how I have violated them.
So, uh, what exactly was this? I can’t control what people think this was: I can only tell you my intentions.
This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear–they are, and we do.
But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus, and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.
The country’s 24-hour, political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the dangerous, unexpected flaming ants epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.
There are terrorists, and racists, and Stalinists, and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned! You must have the resume! Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Party-ers, or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult–not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more.
The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker–and, perhaps, eczema. And yet… I feel good. Strangely, calmly, good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us, through a funhouse mirror–and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist, and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead, and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin, and one eyeball.
So why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle, to a pumpkin-assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable–why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution, and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?
We hear every damned day about how fragile our country is, on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. The truth is, we do! We work together to get things done every damned day! The only place we don’t is here (in Washington) or on cable TV!
But Americans don’t live here, or on cable TV. Where we live, our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done–not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.
Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often something they do not want to do! But they do it. Impossible things, every day, that are only made possible through the little, reasonable compromises we all make.
(Points to video screen, showing video of cars in traffic.) Look on the screen. This is where we are, this is who we are. These cars. That’s a schoolteacher who probably think his taxes are too high, he’s going to work. There’s another car, a woman with two small kids, can’t really think about anything else right now… A lady’s in the NRA, loves Oprah. There’s another car, an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter; another car, a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan.
But this is us. Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief, and principles they hold dear–often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers’. And yet, these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze, one by one, into a mile-long, 30-foot-wide tunnel, carved underneath a mighty river.
And they do it, concession by concession: you go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. ‘Oh my God–is that an NRA sticker on your car?’ ‘Is that an Obama sticker on your car?’ It’s okay–you go, then I go.
And sure, at some point, there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder, and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare, and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst!
Because we know, instinctively, as a people, that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light, we have to work together. And the truth is there will always be darkness, and sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land.
Sometimes, it’s just New Jersey.
October 31, 2010 1 Comment
So much for global warming!
This is just a thought, but maybe people would start to understand global warming more if both sides of the argument stopped using temporary temperature shifts as “proof” that global warming is real or not real. If it’s unexpectedly hot one day, it’s not because of global warming. If it’s unusually cold, it’s not the result of the lack of global warming either. Global warming is about the entire earth, not a particular city. And it’s not about a particular day either. It’s about the increase in the average temperature of the earth year after year. This slow increase can result in both hot and cold weather. One particular day or season isn’t enough proof to prove or disprove it. But when you add up the temperatures of all of those days from all across the world and average them out, you’ll find that the average is higher than last year.
Once we all come to these realizations, I think there will be a lot fewer people saying “So much for global warming!” after the first snow fall… I hope.
Also, I think we should stop calling it global warming. Let’s use climate change instead.
October 28, 2010 Leave a comment
Life lessons from “The Wire”
I’m finally done watching all five seasons of “The Wire”. It definitely ranks in my top 5 favorite shows. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend it. The first few episodes are a little slow, but stick through it to episode 4 or 5 of the first season, and I think you’ll be hooked.
I’ve learned a lot in the approximately 60 hours I’ve spent watching “The Wire”. Here’s a few notable lessons:
- If you’re going to do something illegal, don’t use a cell phone. Changing cell phones every few days won’t help, nor will using some secret coded language. The police will wiretap you, figure out the code, and arrest you. Maybe stick with carrier pigeons instead.
- Don’t plan on going into the shipping industry. It will be difficult to get hours, and even worse, you’ll probably end up being an accomplice to the transport of drugs and dead women.
- Drug dealers are a lot more organized than I had originally assumed. They even have weekly meetings with a podium!
- Apparently every drug dealer thinks that the space underneath the front stairs of a house is the best place to hide their stash. Every cop knows this as well.
- Standardized testing hurts the education process, and it results in schools having to teach to the test. Oh wait, I already knew that.
- An incumbent mayor has a lot of advantages over his opponents, like the ability to order city workers to take down yard signs and demolish the sidewalk in front of an opponent’s campaign office.
- The ideal place for Baltimore detectives to get plastered is by the railroad tracks. Because then you can conveniently just hop in your car and drive home.
- If you work for a newspaper, it’s probably more advantageous to your career to make quotes up. Then you have a shot at a Pulitzer.
- Having a scar across your face makes everyone fear you. Also, whistling.
- Assistant prosecutors have an easy time breaking up marriages.
I’m sure there are more, but I can’t write them all. If you don’t mind having some of the plot spoiled and hearing some profanity, here are some of the best lines from the show:
October 28, 2010 Leave a comment
Pathetic little hedgehogs
Leave it to The Onion to provide some solid commentary on how skittish the Democrats are during this election season. They need to be proud of the legislation they passed, not constantly fearful that people might not have liked it. People like confidence. If you don’t talk about your accomplishments, what else is there to talk about?
From the article:
Political consultant James Carville praised the strategy, saying it was gratifying to see the party dissociate itself from what he described as some of the most useful and principled laws passed in nearly half a century.
“It’s the ninth inning now, and Democrats are finally getting serious about hiding in the weeds at the slightest mention of last year’s credit-card legislation, which put an end to predatory lending schemes that are universally considered repugnant,” Carville said. “Now that’s smart politics, right there. The chips may be down, but they’re still finding a way to curl up like a bunch of pathetic little hedgehogs and piss all over themselves the moment any sort of challenge is mounted.”
October 27, 2010 Leave a comment