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Here are the general flyers that I will be passing out as a leave behind when we walk. I’ll order 1000 of them for hand delivering in our precincts. I tried to get most of the ideas and feel of the campaign into it – let me know what you think and if you have any improvements for the next run.

CFC Walking Flyer

I did reuse that stupid womanless graphic again, but I like the feel of it, and this flyer had to be one-color for cost reasons. Later in the campaign, I may do full color flyers, but they are far more expensive.

Feedback, my friends – what do you think?

Scott

We are going to be walking soon, hopefully this week if we get the materials done in time, and I don’t want to waste any chances, so I set up a Community Captains volunteering site to record people who are interested in the program here : www.CommunityCaptains.com.

Captains Flyer

In order to recruit people who might be interested when we are out walking, I’ve created this flyer to hand out to people who sound interested. I wanted to post it here to let everyone take a look at it and tell me what you think.

I realize that of the people in the graphic, none of them seem to be women – that is not intentional, it was just the best art I could find in my price range. I’ll try to replace it at some point if I can find better art with women in it.

Other than that, is there anything you notice that could use improvement – would it make you interested in volunteering?

Let me know what you think.

Scott

Our second Micro-Goal was completed tonight, the last donation was contributed by Matt So – thank you Matt! This Micro-Goal was to print materials and voter lists for our first county for walking, and we are in the process of getting quotes right now. As soon as I get my FEC number, the voter data will be purchased as well.

When we have started the walking, I’ll publish the second report for everyone who contributed and all of our supporters.

I have posted our next Micro-Goal, which is for printed materials for our Dublin precinct walking. Thank you everyone who contributed, and if you haven’t seen it yet, please take a look at the example Micro-Goal Report linked in the last post.

In order to create an example of a Micro-Goal report, I have created one out of what was a Goal for a short time, but was then changed. This is not a real Goal report, in that no actual campaign funds were spent on the Personal Democracy Forum trip, but I created a report from the trip nonetheless.

Example Report

I am just shy of completing my second Micro-Goal, so when the work on that is done, I will submit to you all my next report, but in the meantime take a look at this example and let me know what you think should be added or subtracted. Imagine that you contributed money to a goal, what would you want to know about how it was spent or used? Any ideas are welcome.

Thanks!
Scott

I recorded this morning, yet I didn’t actually post until tonight. However, as it is 10:45pm and I am off to bed, I’ll just post the file without a whole lot of blab here. It’s mostly about the PDF conference, which you can read about below anyhow.

Oh, and I also mentioned ChicagoCrime.org, which is a pretty neat idea and application of technology to bring powerful information to citizens. Let me know what you think about that, and any ideas you might have to bring powerful information to our communities like that.

Don’t forget to call in with comments at 206-20-CHACON

mp3

Tags:
chacon, conversation, podcast, campaign, politics, political podcast, politician podcast, politician

Two things from Advocates for Rasiej today that I wanted to share. I have been continually going back to this because his election is in a few months, and is by far the most similar in tactics and certainly in spirit to mine that I’ve ever seen.

He just posted the text of a speech on his website that he delivered to us at the opening of the PDF conference that I could have written (if, of course, I were a more talented writer).

(emphasis added by me)

We see how politics, instead of being a dirty word, could be what it meant in the original Greek: the engagement of all citizens in the decisions that affect their lives.

…

We techno-politicos should instead be focusing on how we can restore health to our civic life — and in particular, how we can get more people connected to each other and their government to raise issues, share ideas and solve problems.

After all, there are lots of good reasons that most Americans hate politics. It’s been taken away from them and turned into a cynical game that is more focused on winning elections than getting things done, where tearing the other side down matters more than lifting ideas up, where people are treated as commodities, and the only ones who get any attention are the people who can pay to play.

…

We need to aggressively advocate new ways to use technology to foster a more open, responsive, and accountable government.

I used to have “government that is open, efficient and empowering” on my front page. Now it’s openness, community, conversation – but you can see why I liked this speech. It goes on, and the whole thing is both well written and exciting in what it means to us. If this is the future of politics, as I am also working to make it, then we are looking at a better future for politics.

Also from the Rasiej front, I got an email from him today (mass mail), an update on his campaign. As you may remember, he is also running a $100 campaign. Here is what the email said :

Something’s happening here.

In just two weeks, our campaign to reconnect New York signed up 818 supporters and raised $72,000. With no contributions over $100. No fundraisers. Just a powerful message about reimagining our possibilities and recharging our democracy.

This is unprecedented in New York politics.

That’s because it shows that you don’t have to chase big checks to run a successful campaign. It also shows that there are a lot of people like you who are hungry for new leadership.

…

In the coming days I will be launching a new feature on my website—IDEAS4NYC. Each week we will post a question on a different issue, and ask you to give us your specific solutions. We’ll share the results on our blog. And we’ll take the best ideas and add them to the policy agenda we are developing.

Together we are going to prove that people matter more than money and ideas matter more than influence.

So there you go – both a good idea (somewhat in the spirit of my Collaborative Bill Writer, but more structured), and also another example of a $100 campaign working.

Not enough time for a podcast today, perhaps tomorrow. Have a good day everyone!

Scott

I almost forgot – I am getting some business cards printed up for the precinct walking that will begin in the next week or so, and I wanted to pass the design by everyone. I’ll print up a limited amount for the first round, but if there are any design ideas, or ideas for other useful information to add, or possibly something that is confusing or inaccurate, please let me know in the comments.

Here you go :

I uploaded some of my pictures from the PDF conference, and added them into the previous posts. Since this trip was originally a micro-goal, I’m going to produce a microgoal report about it as a final wrap-up, and as an example of what the reports will look like. Look for that later. For now, I will leave you with my good friend, Fezzik.

I didn’t quite finish my notes yesterday, but the last forum was not incredibly useful, though it was fun to see Ariana Huffington – she was by far the most interesting part of the forum. The part that sticks out most in my mind was Chuck Defeo (Bush-Cheney ‘04 eCampaign manager) trying to convince us that the Bush campaign gave up a lot of control over the campaign to their volunteers, and then Arianna pointing out the “loyalty oaths” people had to sign to get into the campaign rallies was not indicative of an “open” campaign. Another fun part was Tucker Eskew (Deputy Assistant to the President in the White House Office of Communications) make a “strategery” joke. (in a SNL satire of the 2000 debates, when asked to sum up his campaign in one word, Bush said ‘strategery’)

An interesting experiment that they did at this conference is to have a chat room that anyone in the room could post to displayed behind the panel. This was basically used for good, and I can see this being a useful tool in some contexts, but it was not really fully taken advantage of here – I think we could brainstorm some great interactive town hall conferences with this sort of idea. However, the point is that in the last forum, this was somewhat taken advantage of – people started posting silly things, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, which just ended up distracting the panel. I have a shot of them all looking over their shoulders at the display to see what everyone was laughing at.

It would have been really useful to put the chat in the background but not on the wall, and a second chatroom on the wall,reserved for questions. Then the panel could answer any of the questions they wanted to – this would prevent people from plugging their own websites or projects in the form of a question, which is what tends to happen when people get to stand up to a mic for questions.

In the end, I think the conference was interesting, but in my case, preaching to the choir. I am already convinced of technologies role in improving and democratizing politics, of blogs role in changing media, and in the need for municipal broadband. I would have liked to hear of Andrews plans for actually running an open source campaign, brainstorming of new tactics and ideas for involving people and giving up control of the campaign in new and powerful ways, but that wasn’t in the cards this trip.

As for me, I woke up at 4:30am NY time, spent an hour and a half on the NY public transportation system (subway/AirTrain), missed my flight by 5 minutes, mostly because I missed a subway stop and had to backtrack, flew standby on a later flight that got delayed for two hours due to a broken seat, and am now in Las Vegas airport waiting for my reassigned connecting flight (that was neccesitated by the two hour delay) back to SF. Since I woke up this morning, I have been traveling for 12