As If It Matters

Last March I visited Chiapas, Mexico (photos here) on the invitation of my friend Dave Pentecost. While there, we recorded several podcasts while romping around the jungle with Dr. Ed Barnhart, founded of the Mayan Exploration Center. We put these podcasts up on EchoRadio as the Junglecasts - and they have gathered quite a following. Most recently, Wired News featured them as part of “Beyond Porno: Free iPod Content”, a collection of cool free content for your iPod. The junglecasts have also appeared on BoingBoing.net and a number of other places, but far and away my favorite was this email Dave received:

Just letting you know these Jungle Podcasts are great and they are being heard as far away as Antarctica! Keep up the good work, cheers.

Regards,
Christopher R. Clarke
Casey 2005 Expeditioner
Wilkes Land, East Antarctica

I’m in Bellingham, Washington State for the holidays with my parents and grandparents. Today I was over at my grandparents’, and I used my grandfather’s bathroom. And there, in the bathroom, was this book… what exactly is my grandfather up to? He’s always scheming away on his latest project, and this time the book is a dead give-away.

Tonight my parents and my grandparents and I went out to dinner to celebrate my brother’s birthday. He’s in New York City with his family, so we celebrated without him. But we did count up the number of countries we’ve visited. My grandfather was quite a traveler during his career, and so was my father - so between the three generations it turns out we covered 72 countries. Airport lay-overs were excluded - you had to actually have stayed in the country and be able to describe it. So, 72 countries was the final talley. My father had Asia pretty well-covered, and my grandfather had Europe and the Middle East well-covered. They shared Africa equally, and South America was touched but was the least visited. I think Haiti was the only country I had stayed in that nobody else in my family had visited - otherwise most of my visits were pre-empted by an earlier visit from my father or grandfather. My grandparents visited Jerusalem when it was still part of Jordan, so the question was: could you count it separately from Jordan (which they had also visited)? Verdict: yes. 72 countries in almost as many years. Amazing.

Stoller blogged it, so I’m a lemming and must blog it too. Strep Throat kept in bed through Christmas so I apologize to all those whose phone calls & emails I haven’t returned. I’m sick & grumpy, but my new PSP (greatest Christmas gift ever!) makes me happy even while sick.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: webmaster (1, 2, 3), wilderness survival instructor, middle school teacher, CEO

Four movies you could watch over and over: The Big Lebowski, The Village, Any Given Sunday, fourth movie undecided

Four places you’ve lived: Burlington (VT), Queens (NY), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Surabaya (Indonesia)

Four TV shows you love to watch: Medium, The Daily Show, The 4400, Battlestar Galactica

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Sierra Nevadas (Spain), Chiapas (Mexico), Aruba, Columbus (OH)

Four websites you visit daily: EchoDitto.com, W00T!, Politicalwire, Boingboing

Four of your favorite foods: spinach, steak, broccoli rabe, fennel

Four places you’d rather be: with my niece Sophia, San Cristobal (Chiapas, Mexico), Cazalla de la Sierra (Spain), Mepkin Abbey (SC)

My sister-in-law Barbara posts on her blog about the Christmas gift I sent my niece/goddaughter Sophia - a great big LL Bean gingerbread house. The photos are adorable. I love Sophia. She is the greatest. I also love my brother Pete and his wife Barbara. You two are amazing, a real inspiration to me. I guess the holidays and the weather here in Bellingham are making me pretty sappy. Happy Holidays, everybody.

This past Saturday, December 17, I had the honor of being Sophia Josephine Mele’s godfather at her baptism. Because I was actually participating in the ceremony, one of Sophia’s other uncles, Philip McAlpine, assisted with the photos. I am completely in love with my little niece - so, without further ado, here are the photos of the auspicious day: Sophia’s Baptism. My favorites in this batch include this photo, where she woke up from her nap and started flirting with me from behind her blanket, and this one where she is completely fascinated by the Christmas tree, as her Aunt Alex patiently lets her play. But brunch the morning after the baptism yielded two of the best photos yet - one with John, and one with Linda. That Sophia sure is a cutie.

I don’t write much on my personal blog about my work, but maybe now is the time to start. I’ve been struggling with the question of the internet as a tactic in campaigns, and through it all significantly handicapped by my lack of political campaign experience (and consequently a limited understanding of traditional campaign tactics). But when Micah Sifry wrote an astonishingly honest and clear post-mortem of the Rasiej campaign (which I was also associated with), I started to think about some of the questions I struggle with in terms of the internet and campaigns:

(a) Online voter persuasion & GOTV: I think that we generally understand online fundraising. But what about voter persuasion and voter GOTV? How does online persuasion work? Is it successful? I think it’s a tough nut to crack.

(b) Declining effectiveness of online fundraising: In the mean time, what we know about online fundraising is slowly declining in effectiveness. At some point that side of the equation is going to stop working, too. Oh, and even right now it’s expensive and has a long maturation time line. Don’t believe me? How many repeats of the Dean campaign have we seen - any?

(c) Television: given the changing media landscape (increasing proliferation of cable tv channels, fractured audience, penetration of TiVo and DVR technologies, rise of video games and internet as alternative to TV, increasing use of DVDs to watch movies instead of visiting movie theater - which appears to eat away at standard TV time), what is the role of TV in the next cycle? arguably, the most powerful TV ads last cycle were the Swift Boat ads - a small cable buy. What about the other $1 billion spent on TV for political ads? You could spend more money on field and other non-TV strategies - with exciting and successful effects - but at the end of the day if your opponent puts up a couple million in negative ads and they can win. Negative ads still have a decisive effect.

(d) Media: the population that consumes traditional media is rapidly shrinking. Last year Pew did a study about how people consume news. More and more consume it via blogs and other informal sources - like the Daily Show. “new media” should include cell phones and video games. I suspect cell phones are going to rapidly grow as a way people consume information and news. how much does a new york times story really matter? how much does it drive other coverage? how important are reporters to the political dynamic if less people depend on their outlets for news? it’s possible that they’re more important - but with smaller audiences.

(e) National strategies vs. primary strategies: One of my number one take-aways from the Dean campaign was that we had a national internet strategy - which was pointless (except to raise money) when you’re trying to win Iowa and New Hampshire.

At the end of the day, it’s clear that the internet is emerging as a decisive part of american life - but I can’t figure out what that really means for politics. there are glimmers of what it might mean here and there, but nothing is really coming together for me.

Maybe it’s the holidays, or maybe I’m just returning to something in myself that was in hibernation. Whatever it is, I’m back to blogging. I’ve even got a few posts lined up in draft mode. Something I heard Jerry say last week inspired me - he said that Doc Searls talks about blogging like writing email, but publicly. So I’m going to take some recent screeds I wrote over email to friends and blogify them.

But before we go there - I’ve uploaded 2, maybe 3 years worth of photos in the last couple of weeks. There is travel: southern Spain, southern Mexico, and Rome. All manner of flowers. And the star of the show, my neice and goddaughter Sophia Josephine Mele. But there were also a bunch of weddings:

• Mike & K
• Brian & Erin
• Jim & Kristi
• Larry & David
• Dan & Ginny
• Peter & Barbara

And that’s just in Smugmug! In my Flickr feed I’ve got even more, including my India trip and the county fair.

Today, my beloved brother, Peter Mele, marries Barbara McAlpine, at noon eastern time. I’m about to go join the groomsmen, but before I do - a prayer for my brother, and his new wife, for a long and good life together. (They’re off to a good start!)

To my great consternation and frustration, I managed to forget my camera back in DC. Instead, I’ll be using the camera on my phone to send photos to my Flickr account - so check http://flickr.com/photos/nicco/ for the latest photos.

(Until I get this blog out of beta you can find my other photos here.)

Okay - well, things aren’t really ready, my new WordPress blog is still in development, but screw it - the need to blog outweighs perfection. Release early & often, right?

Bear with me. This Movable Type installation for Nicco.org is becoming ancient and comment-spam riddled. I’m in the process of migrating to a new WordPress platform, so if things aren’t entirely working don’t get upset yet. Technically I’ve been in the process of migrating to a new host/blogging platform for over a month, but I’m finally getting up the energy to finish the transition. Stay Tuned…