Date: Fri, 07 May 2004 15:17:54 -0700
Subject: Community Architecture Plan: Outline & Background
From: Cameron Barrett
To: Mike Liddell

Hi Mike,

Outlined here is an informal plan that described what I want to do in 
regards to utilizing online community for the Democratic Convention.

The core of the idea comes from a few basic observations:

1. The delegates and journalists who are attending the Convention have 
very few ways to communicate with each other prior to, during, and after 
the Convention. Besides informal mailing lists, personal Rolodexes, and 
contact information provided by the Convention organization there are not 
many channels of bi-directional communication available to the people 
involved in and attending the Convention. Providing an online 
communications architecture for these people would underscore how 
innovative and forward-thinking the Democratic Party is.

2. The general public is pretty clueless about the Convention, yet 
thousands of activists nationwide want to participate if they are allowed 
to. By opening up the communication between those attending the Convention 
and the general public, it enhances the idea of inclusion, participatory 
democracy and openness -- best represented by the Democratic Party.

3. All politics is ultimately local. Delegates are at the Convention 
representing their constituencies, their interest groups, their 
politicians and the American people of the Democratic Party. Providing a 
categorized online communication architecture that outlines this for the 
American public so they can participate in the conversations they care 
about the most with the delegates, their politicians and other concerned 
Americans is a crucial step. The Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC is all 
about command and control, with their army of trained underlings. The 
Democratic Party (and, ultimately the Kerry campaign) should be about 
channeling the diversity of their supporters in ways that benefit the 
Party. The core concept here is bi-directional communication -- 
communication that goes in both directions, from the top down but also 
from the bottom up.

4. Journalists attending the Convention are an important group that cannot 
be overlooked. They are the people that take the messages from the 
Convention and propagate them worldwide. Keeping these journalists happy 
is something the Convention should be very concerned with. One of the 
things journalists complain about the most is having access to the 
delegates and politicians they want to talk to. By providing an online 
communication architecture that gives these journalists the basic contact 
info they need as well as a channel of communication, they are kept happy. 
It's common knowledge that most journalists are lazy and therefore the 
more information, access to people and access to information we give them, 
the easier it is for them to do their jobs.

By providing a way for all of these groups to talk to each other, to talk 
amongst themselves, and also get the general public and political 
activists involved in the process - if only externally from the core of 
the Convention's structure/processes -- the better the Convention looks in 
the eyes of the public and the world.

I will follow this email up with a plan about how we can build such an 
online communications architecture and online community that solves the 
things I've outlined above.

- Cam