I’m currently scheduled to be on a Meet the Bloggers‘ discussion of voting rights on October 17, along with Brad Friedman of THE BRAD BLOG and presumably at least one other guest. It’s a great opportunity to get the word out about the Voter Suppression Wiki, and in particular to enlist other bloggers in helping us. What to discuss in my blog post (or posts) before the show? What to concentrate on during the 30 precious minutes of airtime? Where to focus energy for follow discussions?
I set up a page on the wiki to sketch my thinking — and even more importantly, to get others ideas. Feedback welcome, there or here!
Brad’s a voting rights expert, and so if I get a chance I’d rather focus on the activism and social computing aspects of our campaign. This ties in both with my recent experiences and my multi-year research agenda of computer science as a social science — and I think will be interesting in general for the Meet the Bloggers audience, because it’s not something I’ve seen discussed there before.
Here are some very quick initial thoughts on the topics I could potentially cover:
- How we started — gives a flavor for the people involved.
- Successes so far.
- Bridging the online/offline gap
- Overall communication structure, including the role of Twitter, Facebook, myBO, radio
- Scalability as a key — how do we effectively self-organize?
- Security concerns: how to deal with interference and denial of service?
- Blogging strategy: coverage, communications
- How people can get involved
Thoughts on these, or other suggestions?
jon
PS: For my thoughts on the Voter Suppression Wiki, please see my earlier posts A wiki, Saving democracy? on Liminal States (crossposted on Pam’s House Blend) and TWO wikis, saving democracy? at the Oxdown Gazette (cross-posted on Pam’s House Blend and Liminal States). For others’ perspectives, please see the coverage page on the wiki.