David Weinberger lists several things that indicated how Joe Trippi had several “Clues” about how to use the Web with politics.
See Loose Democracy
Below , in my “Continue Reading…” secton for this post, I have copied the list DW gave, with the intention “filling in” some of the insights I believe can be culled by the Church if it is to catch on to some of the lessons of grassroots camapigns.
Weinberger’s list is musch like the “Cluetrain” theses, tweaked toward the political campaign rahter than business, but the themes are largely intercahngeable, and work well, as I have often refelected, as wake up calls for the Church.
I list them here, as they appear on Weinberger’s Corante article
He came into the campaign with the idea that the Internet could be used to counter big money interests.
He figured out that supporters could move the campaign forward if they were allowed to connect with one another.
He was genuinely ok with keeping the campaign out of the center, letting this campaign be by and about its supporters in a way that no other national campaign in my lifetime has.
He was ok about the loss of control that this entailed.
He let people run with ideas. He let them experiment and fail. He was also strongly opinionated and sometimes tough to work with. But those who worked closest with him on the Internet side generally loved him.
He allowed the Dean netfolks to develop their own voices on the blog and elsewhere. That is an epochal change for a national campaign.
He let the Dean netfolks keep stirring their own waters so that the site wouldn’t settle into complacency.
He headed the first national campaign ever to release open source software, much less software that could be used by the campaign’s rivals.
The net gurus Trippi admired were ones I, too, hold in the highest regard.
He consistently saw the online efforts as a way to move people into the street. The Dean campaign pioneered the use of MeetUps not as “social events” but to enable local people to organize local events. Likewise, the Dean social network is geared towards enabling the grassroots to organize events without requiring the permission of the center; in September, 1,200 events — from fund raisers to tabling to holding signs — were generated spontaneously that way.
Trippi saw the Internet as an important component of an insurgent’s strategy but told me in June that he intended to “win every game,” including fund raising (which he did) and using TV ads effectively (which he didn’t).
How much credit does Trippi deserve? It’d take someone much closer to the campaign to figure that out. I know that Zephyr and others on the Dean Net team are deep innovators and profoundly committed to the Internet as a genuinely democratizing force, but at the very least Trippi deserves credit for pulling that team together and letting them charge ahead. He did so knowing that it could transform politics.
I think in that he succeeded.
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