Why presidential candidate weblogs aren't working

Yesterday I was interviewed about presidential weblogs.

Got me thinking. I keep reading the candidate weblogs, waiting to be inspired, or even interested. So far the only one worth pointing to, imho, is the DNC weblog. It's the only one that's engaged, in gear, doing stuff. I feel pity for poor John Edwards, trying so hard, but feeling strongly that his time could be spent in much better ways.

Then I figured out what the candidates aren't getting about weblogs, and why it's hopeless for them to do their own blogs, at least for 2004. When people say they want the candidates to blog, they're not stating their wishes accurately. What they really want is to know the candidate as well as they know their favorite bloggers. If one writes publicly without editing every day for a few years, people get an idea of how your mind works. This builds trust, the kind of trust a candidate just can't build in a couple of months of stump speeches. So unless Glenn Reynolds declares (he will someday, I'm sure of it) for President, forget about voting for a blogger for President in 2004.

Candidates should use weblogs instead of becoming one. Hire one or two people to run a public information router for you, pointing to all relevant stories about the candidate and the competition. Treat bloggers like press, publish advocacy guidelines and your schedule and everything else about the campaign, and have the candidate speak about the democracy.

What weblogs are news?

Every so often I hear from a person with a weblog who has asked to be included in Google News, was turned down, and is not happy about it. I understand this must be difficult for Google, how do they decide? Some of their choices are puzzling. And it seems to matter what CMS is used. If it's weblog software, it can't be included, if they use a more expensive CMS, they can? If it's one person writing, they can't; if there's more than one they can?

Here's what they say when rejecting a site for inclusion in Google News: "Thank you for your email. We have reviewed [url] but can not include it in Google News at this time. We currently do not include news-related blogs. If there is a non-blog news site associated with this movement, we would be happy to review it. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us and will log your site for consideration should our constraints change."

BloggerCon essay about Geeks and Users

The Fatman session, the last session of Day 2, was my chance to rant about subjects dear to my heart, to talk about things we tried at the conference that worked, and some that didn't, and to hear from people about how the show met their expectations, and to talk about ideas for the next user conference for people who use weblogs.

One of the ideas I spoke about was the new role for developers when users have a voice, as they do with weblogs. How can we work better with users? First, you have to listen. And that's one of the ideas I pitched in this session. More.

Well, what would you do if you had a blog?

I would while away the hours. Inventing stupid flowers. Conversing with Bruce Tog.

With my blog I'd be thinkin I could be another Lincoln.

If I only had a blog.

Seriously, what if the NY Times Could Blog?

Or the Democrats?

Webcast audio and video

The Cambridge team is assembling bits of the webcast here on the BloggerCon site, but other people were recording audio and video at the show. I'd like to accumulate pointers to that work in the comments of this post. Also comments on the content in the webcast are welcome here too.

Look at all the laptops

Bryan Bell pic of the Day 1 meeting room. Look at how many computers are out. Most people seem to agree it was a lively discussion, lots of back and forth, but look at all the people looking at the screen instead of looking at the room. Remember what conferences were like before WiFi. Boredom without any hope of relief. Now we have our laptops and the Net to keep our minds interested even if the presenters are droning. At this conference people could speak up at almost any time. What are they doing on their laptops?  Why don't people watch the speakers and each other, why is the screen more interesting? What can we do to make conferences more captivating, or should we even try?

Thanks for the BloggerCon!

Sadly, Bob Hope died earlier this year, so his signature song, Thanks for the Memory, is a tune many of us know to hum, at the right time, of course. Now is one of those times.

At one point during Day 1, the enthusiasm so great, I had to shout loudly, "BloggerCon come to order please." Luckily I have a loud voice, and everyone had good humor, so we kept to the schedule.

We were able to do spontaneous things, and most people who had something to say got a chance to say it.

Did we figure out what weblogs are? Probably not -- but we came closer.

Did every connection get made? Sadly not, but many did.

Will there be a BloggerCon baby? We'll be watching out for that in nine months or so. ;->

This last weekend we met face to face and did a great barn-raising for a thing called a virtual community. Now we reap the benefits, of new friendships, new ideas, new flow, new new.

The purpose of this email is to thank you for exceeding my wildest dreams of what a BloggerCon would be. Thank you thank you. You're all such sweet people, I look forward to seeing you all again, very soon, Murphy-willing of course.

Finally, we're going to keep sending out bulletins, as we do the post-meeting work, we'll see where it goes. If you want to be sure to receive the bulletins, check your membership on the BloggerCon weblog and choose to receive bulletins. If you'd rather not, follow that path by unchecking the option. Either way please accept our gratitude for helping make this Con such a great event.

Thanks!

A few reminders

• Kickoff party is tonight, the Hong Kong, 1236 Massachusetts Avenue, 7-9pm.  Mention BloggerCon and they'll point you to the right room - it's on the right as you go up the stairs.
  
• Day 1 begins at 7am with breakfast and check-in (program begins at 8am) tomorrow in Langdell North.
• If you are not sure of your registration status, please contact Wendy immediately.
  
• Day 2 is open; please join us!  There will be sign-in when you arrive.

What if you were blogger-in-chief for the NY Times?

On Saturday, one of the questions we'll consider is if the NY Times should have a weblog.

Let's say you got the job -- you're blogger in chief for the NY Times. What's the first post? How would you work with the reporters? How much writing would you do? How much editing? How much independence would you have? At what point would it no longer be a weblog? Is it enough for it to follow the form, or is there more to it? What would it look like in Year Two? Year Three?

We'll have several experts on the subject, including Len Apcar, editor in chief of New York Times on the Web, to discuss this interesting subject. Who knows, maybe the future BIC of the NYT will be in the room on Saturday.

If you're travelling to get to BloggerCon..

If you're travelling to get to BloggerCon please, if you have the time, post a comment or Trackback to this post, so we can karmically (is that a word?) wish you a safe trip. We're all totally looking forward to seeing your smiling face on Saturday or Sunday or both days. Sing a song while you're traveling. When you stop, tell someone about your blog. It's a little chilly at the other end of your trip. We'll save a hot cup of coffee for you.

Packed house tonight. This is going to be something, a beta group for a new software product at a university that meets once a week. Even in the old days, in the 80s, I never had so much contact with users. Off to a great start. BTW, I'd love to read other people's accounts of tonight's meeting.

My talk at Stanford Law School is at 12:30PM on Monday. Open to the public. Depending on how it goes tonight, I may demo the new authoring system I'm working on.

Bill Joy: "Open source doesn't assist the initial creative act."

My demo list for this evening's meeting.

Chris Sells explains how Longhorn SDK annotations work.

Dave Pollard: "I'm just trying to save the world. Someone else will have to save the blogosphere."

Jon Udell: Working with Bayesian Categorizers.

Fascinating map shows where each of the candidates' money comes from.

Just the barest hint of a clue over in Jack Valenti Land. Hey Jack, people are watching first-run movies on the Internet right now. But, this is a good sign, the entertainment industry is trying to market to customers, selling a benefit. But there's no benefit to copy protection, not for people who use the stuff, in fact it's a negative feature. Yeah I know the rationales, been there done that, went to Comdex, but in the end the customers aren't that stupid.

BTW, I know I'm really rude when it comes to talking about entertainment industry execs. No, I wouldn't like it if people talked about me that way in public. When I read someone saying Dave Winer has the barest hint of a clue, I think, yeah sure, what makes him so smart. Okay, I need to express my inner-arrogance. Many apologies to Jack Valenti, who surely is a fine human being, for using him as my foil. No kidding.

Now, on the other hand, Jack dreams of modifying our operating systems, hard drives, networks, routers, servers, you name it -- so that he can tell us which bits we can copy. This rewrite makes the Y2K corner-turn look tiny in comparison. The cost is incomprehensible. Does that make him an asshole? You bet.

Five years ago today: "How much thinking goes on on the Internet?"

Michael Feldman's tutorial is a great resource for people learning how to use Manila.

It's really great to see O'Reilly embrace RSS 2.0. The power of two growing platforms, Microsoft's Longhorn and Really Simple Syndication.

Tim Bray: "Jean Paoli called last week to tip me off about the release of the MS Office XML schema-ware."

I just noticed that Al Gore looks a lot like Robert Scoble.

Yesterday I met someone who had not read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. I expressed envy. I wish I had not read it so I could read it again for the first time. A delicious book. Then it occurred to me that some of you might not have read it either. You have no excuse now. ";->"

Here's the NY Times review, published in 1969. The book came up in conversation because it offers a reasonable and highly optimistic view of existence. No one is actually dead, they're just reliving the important moments of their lives, maybe the not-so-important ones too. A philosophy that suggests that you should pack life with lots of interesting moments because you're going to be experiencing them for eternity. In this view, deja vu is a little leakage in the matrix (as it is in The Matrix).