Politics online conference wrapup

Politics online conference wrapup: (Updated: to fix some typos of blogging on a bumpy flight — nothing substationally new from the original post.)  I
think it was yesterday when I was at George Washington University at a
conference about online politics, but I’ve only been in Austin 12 hours
and my mind has moved onto the future. But here are some points I wrote on
the plane…think of them as my Power Point presentation of
observations about online politicians (or, at least, the folks who work for or
study them) and, in general, conferences that have sessions related to
“understanding bloggers” where there are very few actually bloggers in
the audience (or, in some instances) on the panel.

These, of course, are merely opinions. My opinions. And, unfortunately, I had to leave before Glenn Reynolds spoke:

• Whenever you hear the word “content” used by someone on a panel, it means they don’t know what they’re talking about.
• Just because someone happened to be there when some
  bigger-than-life phenomenon happened (i.e., the Dean campaign) doesn’t
  mean they knew then or know now what  happened. (I’ll give Joe
  Trippi credit, however, he admits this.)

• Some old traditional political hacks are like old journalism hacks: bloggers scare the hell out of them.
• Very, very few political experts know what an RSS newsreader is.
• The Roper people have hyped that “influencer” stuff for as long
  as I can remember…and have found a way to hype it onto the
  blogosphere.

• There are a lot of very smart people involved in online politics
  who are willing to pay a lot of money to have someone tell them what
  they could learn in about a month of blogging…and, please, reading
  blogs.

• The debate over whether bloggers are or are not bloggers is a
  circular, meaningless waste of time. I’ll quote (or paraphrase) Dave
  Winer: We’re either all journalists or none of us are journalists” when
  it comes to who should be be able to speak freely. Beyond that, who
  cares? The consititution does not set up an accreditation process for “journalists” like
  someone in the audience implied yesterday. Frankly, I don’t want to be a
  journalist (on this weblog, at least). This is me talking. I’m not
  reporting. I accept the responsibility not to libel or slander or do other
  unlawful acts or practices that will have you question my integrity or
  ethics. But, please, don’t call me a journalist for what I do here. (I
  do play a journalist in another gig, however.)

• By the way, from an integrity perception standpoint, many of the
  bloggers I know would rather be called a used car salesman than a
  journalist.

• I have a theory developing: Some people who appear on panels at
  online politics conferences don’t actually use the Internet but think
  it’s a “great tool” for helping them communicate with and activate
  those in their sphere of influence who do actually use the Internet.
  I’m not naming names, however.

• My
  admiration for certain of my fellow bloggers who appear on lots of
  panels has grown. I don’t know how they can endure appearing on a
  panel called something like, “How
  to cope with those crazy bloggers” and not jump over the table and slap
  the
  hell out of the next guy who has obviously never read a blog but is an
  expert on how blogs have already reached their zenith.

• The next time I moderate a panel (I didn’t at this conference) I
  will only call on women questioners. As much as I’m, well,
  not enlightened, I observed that moderators have a difficulty seeing
  women when they raise their hands.

•  I agree with, once again, Joe Trippi who observed that
  we’re at about the spot TV was in 1955 when it comes not only to online
  politics, but, really this whole participatory, conversational,
  citizens media movement.

• Everyone who thinks there’s just “a bunch of chaos and noise” out
  there on blogs, please, download a desktop RSS newsreader (or use My
  Yahoo or Bloglines) and figure out how to set up folders and feeds.
  It’s not about chaos. It’s the opposite. Because of blogs, I can learn
  and distill so much more than ever before because I can draft off the
  steady breeze of brilliance from those whose I can, over time, learn to
  trust.

• When something hasn’t yet been fully created, the worst thing to do is to start making rules and applying metaphors.
• People who don’t underestand the podcasting’s secret sauce of RSS
  enclosures call something that is not podcasting, podcasting. They
  apply the term to posting an audio file on a website where someone can
  mannually download it, missing the “-casting” aspect of the metaphor.

• Certain members of the FEC are nothing more than scare mongers
  who view the blogosphere’s disdane for regulation as a cog in the spoke
  of some greater agenda. Unfortunately, they are scare mongers with
  power. So, despite knowing exactly how all of this is going to turn out
  — i.e., I’m not worried about the feds cracking down on bloggers — I
  will officially cast my support behind any efforts of bloggers who want
  to crackdown on the FEC.