Support Dr. Chill

I want to thank the folks who voted for me to go to Netroots on a scholarship.
I was lucky to get a partial scholarship thanks in no small part to your votes and kind endorsements.
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I’d like to report back to you on what I got out of Netroots.

My reason for going in the first place was to help plan a project I’ve had simmering in my mind for several years. It’s to create an on-line civic resource for civic associations and other civic groups, whether they are intended to be permanent on-going efforts with a broad agenda, or one-time issue oriented groups. My intent is to create a network of such groups so they can feed each other with knowledge and experience, and have a place to organize discuss and use ‘best practices’ and tools to accomplish their civic purpose democratically and effectively.
Too often civic groups have to ‘re-invent the wheel’ and ‘start form scratch.’ They try sometimes by trial and error to plan their projects and achieve their goal.
I hope to create a framework that allows groups to locate each other within my site, organized by Physical location ( State & local geography) as well as by their civic purpose, and to find and contact other groups ‘near’ them, as measured by physical distance or nearness of purpose.

At Netroots, my intention and purpose was to learn as much as I could about civic engagement, and in particular where internet services would be helpful to civic associations, start up groups, and other small grass roots efforts. I also wanted to find out where online efforts do not work as well as other methods.

Here’s a rundown of some of the seminars, and my ‘take away’ from each.

“Integrating Offline activism with Online Mobilization”Right up my alley! It began with a well rehearsed and polished ad for the steel workers union and I ran out of there straight into:
“The Art of Email Engagement.”
Much of this was focused on managing large email data bases, but there are lots of lessons for smaller groups. Notably, you must be clear what you want the reader to do.
News letters are not calls to action. If you want a reader to click on a link and sign up, contribute, make a phone call or what ever, be clear simple and make sure there is one link or two directing them to the place you want them to go. Do not fragment your message with multiple links. Do NOT link them to a page that is not clearly and obviously about THE THING you want them to do.

If you want people to vote, ask them essential planning questions about when where and how they will get there. It seems that getting people to the polls involves a little conscious deliberate pre-planning. The results are very substantial improvements in voter turnout.

Splashy color is so popular in advertising, that BLACK & WHITE is seen as serious, official and more worthy of reading.
I did not expect that.
Throughout the convention, the most interesting things I learned were not the things I set out to learn.

Case in Point: Green Seminars
There is much that needs to be done in terms of rebuilding the economy, creating jobs creating green jobs, and using the stimulus dollars to good effect.
All of these topics interest me, and to see the intersection of them is downright exciting!

While I’ve heard lots about big projects and building windmills, I wanted to know more about retrofitting the millions of homes & businesses with green technology.

The simplest retrofits of installing weather-stripping sealing and insulating homes and installing new insulated windows, create fairly low paying jobs. These are jobs for which workers can get training funded by the stimulus dollars. Among these jobs is energy auditing, which might be helpful for people who do not have nor care to acquire, construction & home renovation skills. One woman in the audience was very keen on knowing about that.

All of this seemed to just put a fine point on what I kinda already knew. Then BANG!
I asked about financing.
Q: Okay, so states like mine have rebates for home owners switching to green technology and making energy improvements. In NY for example a $6000 installation of solar water heaters will cost $3000 after rebates. The payback will be 2 or 3 years. This is still a barrier for homeowners. How can we overcome this?

A: In some cases we have been able to fund projects using utilities as the bank. (!!!)
Say a utility bill is $100 per month, and improvements will reduce it to $70 per month. The utility then collects $90 per month until the loan is paid off!
BANG! I had no idea this could happen.Holy! $%& This is awesome. If consumers can start saving right away, with little or no out of pocket expense, then it’s a no brainer to make the investment in lower bills, lower energy use, and jobs in a weak economy!
This is awesome! I plan to focus on this and disseminate as much information about it as I can find out.

Online-Organizing:
I’ll condense a few seminars into this topic.
There are some companies offering internet services. There are some software packages ( some are free ) for managing your lists, monitoring the success of your campaign, and people’s reactions, answering questions such as: Did they click the link? When did they do it? Did they follow through? What are their demographics?
Do a test mailing to confirm your tactic is working, or to improve it.
How successful was your test mailing ( mailing to a portion of your list.) How can you improve it?

Social networking: Twitter, Facebook, Myspace. SMS ( Texting ).
With great fanfare and self importance some speakers drove home the message that the demographics of people using these services are different- not the same.

They spoke of the – over 50 demographic. HEY! That’s me! And My 80+ years MOM too! WTF !?

This particular group seemed to suggest that if one high tech service doesn’t work, use another!
Here’s a list of ways to contact people. Only some are high tech.
Twitter
Facebook
Myspace
Email – direct & to media outlets & organizations
Blogging
Texting aka SMS
Phones, phone banks, and phone ‘trees’ ( a network of people who spread the word by phone to others who in turn may forward the message. )
USPS – Mail
Flyers posters
Personal contacts- individuals, groups such as civic ,religious, clubs organizations…
Door to door and canvassing
Traditional media –
TV, Radio, newspaper

Someone asked about the “50+ old people”
50+ (ME!)
Q: But what if they’re not adopting technology!
A: Well they obviously don’t know how it will benefit them. It’s about skills training and awareness. They just don’t know about its benefits and they need training.

Double WTF !!

So use text messages email and social networks, but make sure they reach everybody by training them!!!??

I wish the speaker who said that had attended the seminar on outreach to rural areas.
The upshot was: Some people do not have phones, don’t get cell service, and some DO NOT have – MAILING ADDRESSES!
Not to mention the many people who are aware of computers, and scuba diving, and golfing, and archery and a thousand other ways to spend their time, and just choose not to do it.
Tweet THAT miss statistician who thinks the “over 50” are ignorant and unskilled, you twit. Grrr

As a 50+ demographic, I was alarmed and a little offended at the narrow-minded arrogance and bookish/internet-ish theoretical pontification of someone who obviously needs to get out more.

I could write a long rant about this, but I’ll simply say that my civic involvement began with a knock at the door, and a 2 hour conversation with a neighbor sipping our tea in our porch.

The take-away from this was – Technology provides a relatively simple and inexpensive way to get a message to many but only some people. Use technology appropriately. Know your target audience & demographics. Know the audience and demographics you are actually reaching. Know the limitations of your methods- know who you are and are not reaching. There are somewhat complicated skills and tools available to manage large scale efforts and to help you make sure you’re being thorough and effective.

A tap on the shoulder and a conversation later, I was hooked up with someone with a related project, and some understanding of web page metrics.
Metrics?
How do you measure and rate web pages?

A) You can count the hits. Huffington post is putting up more hot nudes, and no doubt getting more hits. (Hits on tits.)

B) Measure the influence. Influence is when you’re quoted, and post prior to other popular sites who may do a good & popular job of rewriting and expressing what the influential posters have already been writing about.

That new contact writes for http://newshoggers.com/

Read this for its influential and sooner-than-most, if not quite so popular posts.
Note: this measure of influence is in the blogosphere, not the ‘real world.’

Second-Life is a virtual environment that allows users to interact in a 3 dimensional environment. Your presence there is represented by a semi-realistic cartoon like avatar that can move walk run and fly through locations - “ Islands” that people construct. Commercial activities are conducted there, using a currency called a Linden. A linden has an exchange rate to actual dollars.
2nd life lends itself to virtual meetings and seminars. Our real panel of speakers was supplemented by a virtual panel of people at their computers distributed in real life across the country.
One speaker was in a coffee shop, yet his avatar was sitting with the other speakers’ avatars in a semi-realistic round-table discussion..
That was kinda cool.
The speakers were quick to point out that 2nd life is not a place for virtual sex, that gambling is no longer allowed, and it’s a place for real friendships, and it’s not at all creepy.

One women spoke about how it helps overcome the issues of personal appearance. While we heard her true voice from cyberspace, her avatar was that of a sex kitten with a virtual top that hinted that her virtual big tits were in danger of popping out of her virtual top at any moment. The choice of an avatar is a personal choice.
Her choice was creepily ironic to me.

Others made a more compelling case for 2nd life for shut-ins, the wheelchair bound, and for the sheer convenience of getting people from all walks of life and separated by great distance together into one ‘place’ at one time.

The federal government’s plans to wire the entire nation for broadband will either be a boon to 2nd life, or to actual video conferencing, in which we can see and hear real people. One wonders when the most isolated people will get broadband service when some still do not even have electricity.

Humor & Video. I got to see the screening of some short humorous videos by some comedy pros. I was taken aback by the serious sense of restraint they worked under.
One restraint was to not make fun of people, the other to remain generally un-offensive.
Why? I asked. 1 because they were hired and their client wanted it that way, and 2, they wanted to win over the people that held the same beliefs as were being ridiculed in the videos.
Their purpose wasn’t to have a wildly popular joke at someone else’s expense. It was not to just have a good laugh. It was to get their target audience to laugh away their own silly beliefs.

The videos centered around media/public relations types brainstorming about trying to get the American Public to believe crazy ideas about healthcare reform. As they concocted ridiculous talking points, the video cut away to Glen Beck or other media types and politicians saying those exact inane things.

This screening wasn’t as frivolously funny as the videos themselves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzDwXr9szxw

Keynote Speakers.
Bill Clinton was awesome. AKM at themudflats.net already wrote about that. His talk and the other keynote speakers were on c-span. (Maybe they are still showing them.)

Darcy Burner had me awed when she explained how, with a new child, and a safe job at Microsoft, she quit to run for congress, to make the USA better for her and her child.
It put my petty fears in perspective.

http://www.themudflats.net/2009/08/16/what-we-must-do/

While my first impression of the steelworkers on the first seminar on the first day had me running away, I came away with an appreciation of their commitment to some ‘progressive’ causes, and their commitment to the workplace and to Netroots. And I came away with a hard hat which I will use on my next home project.

Also on a personal level, I came away with a confirmation of a valuable lesson. One I have learned and need to remind myself of. Technology has its limits.

There is no substitute for personal contact.

I love technology. I was posting comments about electric cars over 20 years ago, on a 300 bps modem @ $21/hour on Compuserve. My next civic project will be on the internet.
And while I love what technology can do for us, I see the potential to rely on it too much and to depend on it as a poor substitute for direct personal contact.
An added note. I didn't enjoy driving around in Pittsburgh or the drive home, until I put away the GPS along with the laptop and USB issues.

Healthcare reform was a big topic at Netroots. It was everywhere, and a hot topic of discussion.
As if the cosmos wanted to send me a message, I got a call from my best friend.
Good news! The new combination of chemotherapy drugs was working much better than the previous. The bad news, the insurance company, won’t pay for one of the drugs, even though it’s on their approved list. His last treatment was without it. The insurance company told him to mail in an appeal and they’d get back to him in a month or so.
Who was the insurance company?
GHI.
The Cosmos was SHOUTING IN MY EAR NOW.
Emblem Healthcare bought GHI and HIP- both not-for-profit companies. The plan is to merge them, combine their claims systems and fire redundant employees, go public-for-profit, and make a ton of money.
I was laid off from Emblem Healthcare earlier this year, along with 100 other contractors and full time employees.

SO, when someone tells you about incentives and profit motives and the open marketplace and death panels, tell them what the insurance companies are doing to my friend and millions like him.

Baby Burke
I’d get asked – Do you blog? What do you do? and I tried out an array of answers. I blog a little. I have plans, I 'm involved in a community garden, I do this and that. My wife ran for US congress. I’d get mostly polite listening and nods. If I mentioned the Baby Burke and if they knew about it, I’d get-
“YOU did that?” a smile and a congratulatory hand shake. I guess I have to thank Sarah Palin for that.
Some day I hope to be well known for more substantial things.
Remember Metrics. Those are the measure of things that really matter to you…or not.

Enjoying (Night) life. Everything in balance.
If we lounge around we miss opportunities. If we scurry around too busily we also miss opportunities.
So I thought it notable that one of the most memorable moments was the DailyKOS after party. There were people who have done some substantial things, and so many impressed me with their bright intellect and commitment. To see them in a party like this where the underlying measure of social status is how awesome your blog is, or how have you committed your life to your cause, was a kind of ‘revenge of the nerds.’
This wasn’t about good looks, or touchdowns, or income, it was about awesomeness in a substantial way. I didn’t feel entirely out of place. The group was inviting and accepting and not judgmental at all. I felt like I wanted to measure up, and I felt I had a long way to go.

I had spent years involved in local politics and local issues, but now I saw and had a taste of something more substantial. I felt it was time to up my game.- to use a jock term.

I met friendly new people. And others I had met, like the anti-prohibitionists I had met at one of the booths. It was a great night, and I inhaled deeply the clear Pittsburgh night air.
Yes, Pittsburgh is cleaner and greener than when I was there 30 years ago.

I returned outside, and returned a phone call, minutes later I saw AKMukraker and Radio host Shannyn Moore, Alaskans of note, each on their phone, each of us strategically positioned on different street corners outside the party.
Somehow that image just stuck in my brain.
It was time to go. The cool girls had arrived, and it was time for the 50+ demographic to go home and rest.

I found a small family bar and got a bite to eat; ginger ale and a free slice of pizza, served by a girl and her Aunt. “The pizza is for the college kids who come in hungry” she said.
I finished. "That’ll be a dollar fifty."
“That was the most awesome dollar fifty I’ve had in a very long time”, I said.
I left a nice tip, got a heart warming ‘thank you’. And left with a sense that although struggling, these folks were still nice and friendly, and had something that we – the too often impersonal New Yorkers sometimes forget.

So, if we are wise we remember we do what we try to do, for people like that and the many others. And we do it not just for popularity, not for hits, and not just-for-profit, but for a life that makes sense, friendships that make sense, a healthcare system that makes sense, jobs that make sense, building construction that makes sense, land use and city planning that makes sense, communities that make sense and a democratic process that makes sense too.

I had a good time at Netroots.

Thanks for helping me get there.
DrChill Cool

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