Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

Today at the National Press Club, Professor Lawrence Lessig launched the Change Congress project. Created in conjunction with Joe Trippi, the project intends to employ the strengths of the Internet to end the impact of PACs and lobbyists on congressional policymaking. What’s really fascinating about this initiative is that he’s taking the lessons learned from creating the Creative Commons copyright initiative and applying it to political reform in a way that’s never been done before.
In his speech, Lessig gave several examples of policy changes that should have taken place but didn’t because of the influence of money, such as combating global warming or limiting the recommended allotment of sugar in our diets. These are policies that should have been no-brainers, but industry influence upended the process. He noted that when the country’s forefathers talked about independence, it wasn’t just about independence from Britain, but independence from improper influence as well. In that sense, he argued, their goal of achieving independence has failed.
But Lessig thinks it’s still possible to remove this dependence between Congress and money once and for all. The Change Congress project will take a three-step approach to the issue.
First, he wants members of Congress and the public to go online and pledge their support for up to four different goals: no longer accepting money from lobbyists and PACs; banning earmarks; supporting public financing of campaigns; and achieving total transparency of how Congress works. Users will be able to do this in the same way you select a Creative Commons license for your website. Their website will have a form that lets you select which ones you support, and it’ll generate a code you can put on your own site. This code will contain metadata driven by the semantic Web – essentially, a collection of URLs, each defining which of the policy goals you support. (update, 4:20pm: when I wrote this paragraph, the site’s badge generator wasn’t up and running yet, but now that it is, it seems that the code generated for users doesn’t contain Semantic Web metadata yet. Update 4:37pm: I’m now told that Semantic Web metadata might be rolled into the badges very soon, possibly later this evening or tomorrow; a volunteer is working on the code and hopes they’ll use it. -ac)
Embedding this code into your website, whether you’re a policymaker, a candidate or a member of the public, will let them reach step number two: tracking who supports what. In the same way that search engines can pick up websites that employ different Creative Commons licenses, Change Congress will be able to pick up which sites support each of the four policy goals. They’ll then be able to map out where support is strongest and where it’s weakest. Then, they’ll deploy crowdsourcing, just like on Wikipedia, to get an army of volunteers delving into the details to see who’s just pledged support and who’s actually supporting the cause in measurable ways. This information, too, will be mapped for all to see and scrutinize.
Step number three will be to employ these tools for raising money. The public will be able to make small donations – even just five or 10 dollars – to candidates that share the same policy reform beliefs as they do. This will allow for grassroots fundraising to take place, not unlike Emily’s List or the Obama campaign. Taken all together, he describes his project as a “Silicon Valley approach” to policy reform.
Lessig admitted there will be naysayers, particularly those who feel there are other problems more important that reforming Congress and the flow of money. To them, he gave the example of the alcoholic. An alcoholic faces many problems – loss of family, employment, health, etc – but none of them can be solved until the underlying problem – dependence on alcohol – is addressed first. To Lessig, before we can solve all the major policy issues of our day, we must first eliminate Congress’ dependence on money and outside influence. Once this can be done, the real work of implementing important policy solutions can take place. Harnessing the power of the Web and its seemingly endless community of concerned citizens, he may just be on to something here. -andy

Eighteen months ago this week, I started working at NPR as senior product manager for online communities. I’ve spent a lot of that time working with shows on social media experiments and educating NPR staff about the role Web 2.0 can play in journalism. But I’ve also spent much of the last year working on a big project – one that would have NPR dive head-first into user-generated content. The project is called Get My Vote, and we’ve just launched a public beta of the website.

As the name suggests, the project is based around a basic premise: what will it take for political candidates to get my vote? Every person has their own reasons for selecting a particular candidate, their own litmus tests, and we’re asking the public to articulate this in the form of open letters to the candidates. Using Get My Vote, you can upload your own commentary – audio, video or text – and talk about what issues or concerns will drive you to the ballot box. NPR is then planning to incorporate these commentaries into our shows throughout the rest of the election cycle.
We’ve also designed the project in such a way that local stations – both NPR and PBS stations – can create their own Get My Vote initiatives on their websites by embedding Get My Vote widgets. That way, a station can localize the project. A station in Arizona, for example, might create a local version of Get My Vote focusing on immigration perspectives, while a station in Massachusetts might challenge users talk about what it would take for local mayoral candidates to get their vote. So while most users might end up talking about the presidential candidates, I’m hoping it’s used for state and local races as well.
On the Get My Vote homepage, you’ll see that we’re using a tag cloud prominently. These tags are submitted by users when they upload their commentaries. For example, a commentary from an Iraq war vet about healthcare for vets might include tags like “Iraq,” “healthcare” and “Walter Reed.” The more often a particular tag is used by commentators, the larger it appears in the tag cloud. That way, you can get a sense of what topics and ideas are being referenced most often by commentators. Clicking any tag also will show you all commentaries associated with that word or phrase.
We’ve also ensured that the commentaries are embeddable on other websites and social networks – a first for an NPR project. There’s an embed code available for commentaries that you can grab and place in your website. You can also click an option to post on another blog or network, giving you a list of more than 20 sites where you can upload your own Get My Vote commentary, or someone else’s. For example, here’s a video featuring Texas musician and author Kinky Friedman talking about the death penalty:

Speaking of Kinky, you’ll notice that some of the videos in the site have been produced by NPR staff. That’s mainly because we didn’t want to launch a site that was devoid of any commentaries, so we put together a few just to get things going. Soon enough, I expect the number of user-generated commentaries to far surpass the numbers of commentaries we’ve produced for the site.
The site is now in public beta. This means that anyone can now access the site, upload their own commentaries and explore the site in general, but we’re still working out a few bugs and other minor fixes. We’re hoping that if you have any problems with the site you’ll alert us through the contact form. Over the next few weeks we’ll continue to tweak the site, and soon after that, we expect some of our shows to begin using it on air.
So when you get a chance, please visit npr.org/getmyvote, upload your own commentary and please let us know what you think. Our team is really eager to hear what you have to say. -andy

This morning I was listening to a story on NPR’s Morning Edition by Rob Gifford talking about British soul singer Amy Winehouse, who is nominated for more Grammy awards this year than any other female artist. The bulk of the story focused on how Winehouse and her runaway hit album, Back to Black, has paved the way for new wave of young women songwriters with a decidedly retro outlook, harkening back to the glory days of Motown. But then it took a twist I wasn’t expecting: the impact of media concentration on musical diversity and the US racial divide.

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Tonight’s going to be a busy night for Twitter users, with more than 20 states voting in the biggest Super Tuesday primary in US history. Twitter use has spiked during major election events, like debates and the Iowa caucuses, so tonight should be even crazier. Thankfully, the folks who run Twitter just moved their servers to a new ISP, so hopefully they’ll withstand the crush of tweets once the first polls close at 7pm ET tonight.
If you’re interested in joining in on the fun, I’ll be tweeting from NPR headquarters into the wee hours of the morning, monitoring the results with the rest of the NPR.org Super Tuesday team. I’ll be posting official precinct results, as well as whenever NPR makes the call for a particular primary using nprnewsblog, while I’ll use my acarvin Twitter account for more general observances. I’ve set also up a Twitter account called SuperTweetday. All Twitter users are invited to reply @SuperTweetday to share stories about what’s happening locally in their voting precinct at the polling stations, as well as observations on the results. These posts will then be automatically to the SuperTweetday account, so if you follow it, you’ll receive everyone else’s comments.
Meanwhile, you should check out Twitter accounts Supertuesday, which is already covering election activities now that the polls are open, and IVoted, which invites people to tweet their votes @IVoted to share them with other users.
It’s gonna be a fun night. Hold on to your hats, and keep your fingers crossed that the system doesn’t come crashing down…. -andy

Yesterday, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday put out a call for political podcasters – audio podcasters as well as vloggers – under the age of 30 to serve as contributors to the show. They’re looking for young people from across the political spectrum to participate. Here’s the announcement that went out on air, drafted by yours truly:

Are you a podcaster under 30 who’s passionate about Election 2008? Weekend Edition Sunday wants to hear from you!
We want a diverse group of podcasters to tell us how the election is playing out in their areas. Tell us why you’d be a good choice.
Send us an e-mail with details about yourself and your interest in the election. Please put “WESUN Podcaster” in the subject line. Be sure to include links to your previous podcast work.

Once we figure out which podcasters will be contributors to the show, our plan is to set up a blog that will serve as the home base for their stories through the rest of the election cycle. They’ll also be airing some of the podcasts as on-air commentaries as well. So if you’re a young podcaster with insights on Election 2008, please send us some samples of your work and audition for the project. -andy