Getting my ideas together for the Joining the Blogosphere shindig here briefly…
Some questions I have going in:
What does Jude Barry see as the political potential of blogs? Will every candidate start using them as a way to get their unmediated authentic voice out? Or is it enough to use the Howard Dean methodology of creating a community for your supporters – to give them a forum to develop their ideas for you as a candidate?
What does David Pescovitz think a site like BoingBoing does for society? Is it just another authority on Cool? As Slashdot would be the authority on Geek or Engadget the authority on all things, er, Gadget?
We know Dan Gillmor is the authority on grassroots journalism, but is there more to it than that? I had the impression that he quit the Merc to start something else – doesn’t he have some VC behind him? Is there a grassroots-enabling piece of software coming soon, or is it already out there? Maybe it’s enough that Dan is the shepherd/evangelist to a grassroots journalism movement – or at least to more citizen participation.
But if Dan’s not the technical pusher of the coming citizen journalism, who is? Jimmy Wales? Kos? Is blogging already filling this need? Are newspapers getting the software and developers they need to get citizen participation max’ed out?
These are just some of the things I want to quantify for myself tonight. As always, I’m interested to see how my expectations change throughout the night. And of course, there’s a part of me that wants to play some sort of drinking game (in my head): Drink every time someone says “horizontal communication”…”RSS”…”Wiki*”…
There’s no wireless in the library (I am not making this up), but I’ll post some highlights and afterthoughts when I get home tonight, or quite possibly tomorrow morning.