Creating an internet presence

This post is purely narcisistic. I'm logging my internet presence here for future reference.

My Multi-person Pogo Stick talk at Ignite Seattle:
http://ignitenight.blip.tv/file/160593/
And a link to that talk on the Make Blog:
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/04/multiperson_pogo_stick_an.html

My Hacking Elections talk at Ignite Seattle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HQYBbThTBc

My linked-in page:
http://www.linkedin.com/ppl/webprofile?action=vmi&id=94801&authToken=zHdp&authType=name&trk=ppro_viewmore&lnk=vw_pprofile

Links to two of my articles on about optical nerve stimulation:
http://www.biophysj.org/cgi/content/abstract/biophysj.107.117150v1
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/10/4202999/04203014.pdf?temp=x

A video of the 'Spinning Spaghetti Monster' that Allegra Searle-Labelle, Stefan Schaefer, Sven Liden, Leo Dirac, and I created at a Dorkbot meeting in Seattle where we all created 'musical' robots.
http://www.embracingchaos.com/2008/08/spinning-spaghe.html

Who you should vote for and why

I just had the joy of reading the Stranger's endorsements (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=698013) and recommend them for the humor as well as the information. I don't agree with ithementirely, and will explain my differences of opinion below my abbreviated endorsement list. Happy Voting!

Init. 985: Eyeman anti-carpool lane initiative - vote NO
Init 1000: Death with dignity- vote YES
Inti 1029: Training for home health care workers- vote ???
Charter amd 1: Create elected position for county Elections officer- vote NO
Charter amd 2: Prohibiting discrimination- vote YES
Charter amd 3: Reducing regional committees - vote YES
Charter amd 4: Qualifications for Elected officials- vote NO
Charter amd 5: Creating economic joint task force- vote YES
Charter amd 6: More time for budgeting- vote YES
Charter amd 7: Clean up charter amendment process: vote YES
Charter amd 8: Making positions nonpartisan: vote NO
Pres and VP - vote Obama and Biden
US Rep - vote McDermott
Gov - vote Gregoire
Lt. Govenor - vote Marcia McCraw
Sec State- vote Sam Reed
State Treasurer- vote Jim McIntire
State Auditor- vote Sonntag
Attorney General- vote Ladenberg
Commissioner of public lands- vote Goldmark
Superintendent of public instruction- vote Randy Dorn
Insurance commissioner- vote Kreidler
State Rep #1- vote Pederson
State rep #2- vote Chopp
Vote for the unopposed judges except perhaps Charles Johnson since he decided against gay marriage.
Superior court #1- vote Parisien
Superior court #22- vote Garratt
Superior court #37- vote Rietschel
Seattle prop 1: pike place renovation- vote YES
Seattle Prop 2: Parks levy- vote YES
Sound transit prop 1: 36 miles of light rail and more express buses- vote YES


Places I differ with the Stranger:
1) Inti 1029: Training for home health care workers- vote ???
This is a tough call. The state would pick up the cost (~$30M) of additional training and background checks for these workers. Is that more important than something else we might spend that money on, like education or drug treatment programs? I'm not sure. I do like the FBI background checks, but don't know that the state should make that a priority. You can read arguments for and against here:
http://columbian.com/article/20081012/OPINION04/710129992/-1/opinion (SFW)

2) Sec State- vote Sam Reed
The Stranger says,"We endorsed Republican incumbent Sam Reed for secretary of state in the primary and described Democrat Jason Osgood as a "paranoid, sweaty, nervous wreck." We've changed our minds. We weren't wrong about Osgood—it's just that we fucked up when we backed that partisan sack of shit Sam Reed, who proclaimed himself "delighted" when a King County Superior Court judge ruled that Republican Dino Rossi could run under the bullshit label "GOP Party"—25 percent of state voters don't know what "GOP" stands for—instead of the more accurate label "Republican."

This sounds like the Stranger getting pissy and reacting to a single act. Sam Reed followed the rules and refused to be partisan during the Gregoire/Rossi recount, pissing off his party. He has made it possible to register to vote online. He did agree with a selection of electronic voting machines which didn't have strong testing, but that isn't very relevant with the state going to all vote by mail after this election. He has done a good job and been fair and deserves to keep his job.

3) Superior court #1- vote Parisien
I heard the judges talk and looked at their ratings by the Municipal league and the King County Bar association. Bradshaw kept going on about his political associations while Parisien talked about being a judge. Bradshaw was rated one step higher than Parisien by the bar association and equal by the King county Bar association. Parisien seemed the more compassionate, more judicial, and less political of the two. The Stranger's endorsement is thin and doesn't look like they did much research. The Stranger says,"Bradshaw stands out for his long list of endorsements and 20 years of experience."

4) Superior court #22- vote Garratt
I liked Hill and Garrat both, and they got the same ratings from the municipal league and bar assoc. Garrat talked about having non-english speaking relatives and wanting to make sure all people got equal access to justice. Garrat seemed slightly more compassionate than Hill, but they were both good. The Stranger says,"This badass former federal civil-rights (Holly Hill) attorney is currently serving as a pro tem judge in King County District Court. She's more than qualified for a superior court position."

Hope that helps you make up your mind on things. Make sure you vote on Sound Transit Prop 1 at the very bottom of the ballot and get your ballot postmarked on or before Nov 4th.

Campaigning - lessons learned in Richmond VA

I've been gone from Richmond for over a week and back in Seattle for a few days. It's great to be home, though I am really glad that I spent the time in Richmond. I have little more perspective on my time there and campaigning.

First let me say that I am very happy to have spent the time I did in Richmond. I learned a lot, did good work, met interesting people, watched history being made, was part of it, and collected a bunch of unusual memories to carry with me. I got close to the field organizers and Cheryl the volunteer coordinator in a way that only happens when you are stressed and in the trenches together. I was very sad to abandon them to the tough job of getting Virginia to vote for it's first democratic president since 1964. Good luck guys! Work hard! I'm with you in spirit and perhaps on the phone.

While in Richmond I read a book called The Tipping Point that talked about how phenomena can change from slow, linearly increasing trends to explosive fads very quickly. I looked at the campaign and tried to figure out what might make it tip, and decided that wasn't a good model for a campaign. First, Presidential campaigns are trying to appeal to many different demographics simultaneously. You might be able to find the key that tips one group of people to vote your way, but that group will only represent a small portion of the people you need to vote with you. To win, a candidate needs roughly one in TWO Americans who cast ballots to vote for him or her. That's a lot of different people. The book also talks about tipping points being reached when connectors, mavens, and salesmen start advocating for the idea. Obviously if you can find those people, you can accelerate your campaign more. Candidates already do a lot of that, reaching out to all manner of celebrity, community leader, local politician, media organizations, etc to spread the word. Again, no one connector is going to be affective at reaching a large portion of the population, so you need lots of different ones. By simply talking to everyone around them and reaching out in 10,000 directions, you are bound to catch some of the right people.

What has the Obama campaign done well to market Obama to the masses? There are TV stars and Football players stumping for him. The campaign is reaching out to churches and other local organizations to promote Obama, register voters, and get out the vote. Every volunteer that finds another Obama supporter is supposed to ask them if they want to volunteer with the campaign. On average, a person might find one new volunteer in four hours. The volunteer force is increases exponentially, thereby ramping up the total number of people it can reach. Staff are also getting creative, going to freshman lectures to register voters, going to high school football games to find undecided voters, and asking the fraternities and sororities to compete on who could make more phone calls for the campaign.

It certainly helps that Obama is a compelling candidate. I haven't seen the kind of excitement about previous democratic candidates. Many people were pissed that we weren't selling yard signs, buttons, shirts, and bumper stickers. They wanted to proclaim loudly that they supported Obama. The Obama campaign decided to only sell paraphernalia over the internet. Having seen my uncle spend half a day going to pick up orders of Obama gear and dropping it in the right places one day, I can see why. It takes a lot of time to sell all that gear, time you could be contacting voters. Then again, every person who comes in wanting gear might be interested in volunteering and each sale can add a little money to the coffers. I can see why they did it, but I'm not sure it was the right decision.

I think the Obama campaign has some inefficiencies. The field organizers get a new set of people to contact each week, selected based on some unknown criteria by the national campaign. If you are going door-to-door, only hitting the ones selected this week, you skip a lot of doors that you might go back to next week. That isn't very efficient. A few times they put a lot of effort into finding hosts and attendees for house parties with the idea that in that intimate setting it would be easy to convince people to volunteer. I don't think they were worth the effort. They are also not working closely with the democrats. Now, the democrats in VA, PA, and WA are a lot more mellow than the campaign. They only have a few people volunteering and mostly in the evening or on their own. They spend a fair amount of time meeting and selling shwag. They aren't in crazy mode like the campaign. Then again, they have been around a while, they have connections into the community, they have trained people who don't need to come in to be active. More cooperation could probably help Obama and might teach the democrats a thing or two. On another front, the office is chaotic and thrown together. Most of the equipment is donated and not very comfortable. There aren't mail boxes for the staff members. Things make their way to the correct person in a haphazard fashion and sometimes get lost. Still, it's an amazing operation.

The thing that seems most important to me in running a successful campaign is keeping track of all the details. If you are running a canvas, make sure you bring enough pens, clipboards, and forms for everyone. When someone asks you to call them back, put it in your calendar and do it. If someone needs a ride to the polls, make sure that gets entered into the data base. If someone attends an event, call them back and ask them to volunteer. Have good resource sheets for greeters so they can get people involved in any way that person is interested in helping, be it money, writing a letter to the editor, bringing in food donations, etc. There is a lot to keep track of, but if you succeed, you show a professional demeanor and make a lot of people happy.

Now lets go out and win!

approaching the end of campaigning

I have four more days on the campaign trail in Va. It's really cranking up in the office. The excitement from last week happened on Friday when all the staff was out at training for the morning. They asked me to essentially run the office and coordinate the volunteers. That was a fair amount to ask, since each new volunteer who comes in and has never been trained requires about 10 minutes of training, but there wasn't anyone greeting people at the front desk for a while, our internet connection was down so I couldn't look up who people should be working for or any other information, and didn't have anything for data entry folks to do. Thankfully there was only one data entry person who came in. I was so happy to see the staff when they showed back up at 2:00!

Yesterday I was in charge of handling all the volunteers who came in and training all the new phone bankers. I ended up just training phone bankers for about three hours straight. We had so many people, we would batch them. I'd train four people while the next group accumulated and then start on them. It was grueling, and I messed up some important things, but they got most of the idea and will hopefully come in again. It was impressive that almost every phone in the office was in use from about 1:30 - 7:30. I wouldn't be surprised if it stays like that through election day.

So, what are we doing? Last week was a big push for canvassers and voter registrations. I went out canvassing twice. Saturday was brutal, with ~90 degree weather. I was drenched in sweat the entire time. I did love the republicans who happily answered my questions about who they were voting for and then offered me a glass of water! I also love the people who ask me to pass information on to Barack. I'll get right on that! Then there were the two people who said they would come and volunteer as soon as Barack started attacking the Republicans back. And there are the volunteers who do crazy things. Some volunteers are super stars who will hit 60 doors or call 100 numbers and get 10 people to sign up for specific activities. Then there are the not so good volunteers. Rudy had four canvassers on Sunday who hit an _average_ of 6 doors. Not so stellar. Granted it was HOT. Or the volunteers who record data in a particularly interesting way, like recording someone as refusing to talk to them and deceased. Do the dead give us lip too? Or the volunteers who take up thirty minutes on the phone with their field organizer getting step-by-step instructions on how to use the internet at home.

The funniest people I met canvassing were these two white guys, on wearing a Nascar shirt, both with big beer guts. They were sitting in the living room with the door open, no air conditioning, and oil lamps lighting the room but he occasional bright flash of light from the light bulbs. Turns out, they were Republicans who hated McCain and were voting for Obama. They had strange schedules because they were bounty hunters who would go find people for debt collection agencies and look scary and try to get money out of them. They could get a call at any time that and have to leave for Montana. They were happy to host volunteers, but there was this issue with the electricity. See, the guy I was talking to had inherited half the house, and his aunt had inherited the other half. He was trying to get the utilities in his name, but it was difficult because he didn't have full ownership. I feel like there was a lot to that story that I didn't get! Needless to say, I didn't write down that they'd host volunteers.

It's also funny how many people want Barack paraphernalia - buttons, bumper stickers, t-shirts, etc. People are mad that we don't stock them. MAD! We finally did get 30 bumper stickers in and about 100 buttons. The bumper stickers sold out in five minutes. I'm not sure why we don't stock them. Perhaps we want to focus on working with volunteers instead of selling stuff, but it seems like we could make money if we sold them at double the cost on the website. That's a whole bunch of $10 donations right there. Also, we can ask each one of those people who come through the door if they want to volunteer. I don't understand the decision to not sell that stuff.

For those of you who like data, I watched a training put on by Democracy for America on getting out the vote (http://www.democracyforamerica.com/nightschool the how to increase voter turnout one). He was talking about controlled studies that had been done on what affect different techniques had on getting people to the poles. It turns out that direct mail is nearly useless, literature dropped at a door has some effect, robocalls are useless, paid phone banking is nearly useless, volunteer phone banking is somewhat useful, volunteers at your door is definitely useful, sending people mail telling them their history of voting and saying that you will track whether they vote this election is quite affective. Telling them you will track it and tell them and their neighbors is more affective. Text messages work for now, but that might lose its effect as the novelty wears off. Nobody has studied yard signs.

week #2 on the campaign trail

We are entering the final stretch of the campaign. It hasn't hit complete high gear yet, but it's cruising. The conventions are over and both candidates are out of the gates with the VPs in tow. This week was all about voter registration. People need to be registered in VA 29 days before the election (30 days in WA I think) so they need to be registered by the beginning of October. The students just showed back up at the colleges and make good fodder for new registrations. Someone came up with the brilliant idea of standing up in freshman classes before class and handing out voter registration forms and collecting them at the end. One person got 95 new registrations in one class! I am missing my voter reg outfit.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/javith/237990079/

Most people around here do voter reg by walking up to people ans asking them if they are registered. That works, but it annoys people. There are lots of groups registering voters in Richmond right now and people are getting tired of being asked. It's much more fun for everyone if you wear something eye-catching and a big sign that tells people what the person is doing. Then you don't have to go bother anyone who you can't provide a service to, but they will notice and approach you if they need your services.

I met a hilarious guy canvassing who had this slightly crazy gleam in his eyes and claimed," I wouldn't vote for him! He's a Communist. I believe in that!" He said gesticulating vehemently to the image of the constitution on his wall.

Let me tell you a little bit about Richmond. It's the capital of Virginia, has a population of about 200,000, maybe half that of Seattle. The city seems to consider itself part of the south. In 1865, the confederacy burned Richmond on it's way out of town, so there isn't much left from before then. The architecture in the city center is beautiful, all these late 19th century tall skinny brick or stone houses with balconies on each floor and pretty plate glass windows. There are some cobblestones, but most of the streets are paved. Greater Richmond is very segregated, with white people and more recently white collar foreigners living in the suburbs and a heavily black urban area. The caveat to that is Virginia Commonwealth college, which seems to own half the office buildings in Richmond and has a student body of about 30,000 undergrads. The area around the college is your typical university area, with cheap food, rental housing, bars, etc. Adjacent to that is Jackson ward, a fairly poor, very black, old neighborhood. Downtown is adjacent to that. It has some office buildings that are occupied, but a lot of vacant store fronts. If you keep going, you get to Shokoe strip and then to "The Bottom." That's the industrial looking area with highways traveling on overpasses 75 feet in the air. There are a lot of bars and clubs, with a more black clientele than the bars need the university.

The strangest part about Richmond is that the city feels empty. People ride bikes around here with no helmets, no lights, and sometimes the wrong way down a one way street, but the streets are empty enough that it doesn't matter. Restaurants close at 9:00, nobody is walking around, there are no movie theaters, not even a place to rent movies that I've found yet, few grocery stores. It's hard to find a job in the city. And there is a church on almost every corner. It's weird. The suburbs are quickly spreading across the countryside with their chain stores, community gates, and no soliciting signs. It seems like the rich and middle class fled the city and never came back. There is no business to draw people back, fund schools, or support local communities, so it has been left to rot.

I'm off to get a president elected!

I've been in Richmond, VA since Tuesday night volunteering with the Obama campaign here. We are at the tail end of convention week and it's been crazy. The campaign office is huge. There are about 25 paid staff (13 field organizers, a media person, IT, graphics person, office manager, etc.) By paid, I mean stipend. $1250/month. The field organizers are told that their hours will be 9 AM - 9 PM Mon - Fri and 10-6 on Sat and Sun. To accomplish the tasks set out for them, it's more like 9AM - 2AM weekdays and perhaps breaking at midnight on weekends. They are an interesting crew of people who think that this is the most important thing to be doing at this moment, but they are getting burned out. I see them passing out from exhaustion periodically.

So what happens in the campaign office? There are volunteers coming in constantly. There are usually 10 - 40 volunteers there greeting people, phone banking, heading out to canvas or register voters, bringing in food for the staff, entering data collected during phone banking, canvasses, and events. Virginia is a very mixed state, so they have to track each voter individually in their database unlike in Seattle where you can assume that almost everyone is democratic. They have a database called Votebuilder that is used all over the country. In that you can look up registered voters, port them to your personal database, add information on when they have been contacted, whether they are interested in volunteering, their presidential and gubernatorial preference, etc. There is a constant churn of activity. Then there are the activities of the people in the paid staff office. They are issuing press releases, creating graphics for ad campaigns, constantly blogging on facebook and other sites, doing accounting, keeping the infrastructure running, etc. Most of these people are professionals who have decided to take time off from their regular jobs to do what they feel is very important.

Coming into Richmond has been a challenge. The campaign is busy enough and has enough volunteers that they don't have time to coddle people like me. They had volunteers to house people, but didn't get me the person's contact info until half way through my first day in Richmond. On my first day, Mark Harper's friend (who I crashed with until the campaign gave me contact info for my host) took me in and I phone banked all day. On my second day, I spent half of my second day here finding my way to the office via foot though a park with a river that was in flood and covering a lot of the paths and via bus during a storm. Then I bought a map, a beater 3-speed bicycle, a stamp, envelopes, and cough drops. I was so excited to get the bike. 2 miles is now a short distance instead of a long trek! Plus, it sparked a conversation with this hilarious guy in the grocery store who started a folk music radio station and told me where to go contra dancing. I'm probably going to meet him Tuesday for a concert.

It's hard to get to know people in the campaign office because everyone is frantic and often on the phone. The field organizer I've spent the most time with is a cool guy, Rudy from Chicago. He decided to take a leave of absence from his job as a lawyer in Chicago to work for Obama in Virginia. His parents thought he was crazy until they saw Obama's acceptance speech and started to see where local organizing can get you. He's super friendly, keeps a positive attitude even though he's beat, and still believes he's doing the right thing.

I'm so glad I'm a volunteer not paid staff. I can paint signs instead of phone banking if I feel like it. I can leave at 9 so I can go do something in the evening. I don't get untenable deadlines daily. And they feel like they have to be nice to me. Today I'm off to explore Richmond.