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Votes Bits & Bytes, Panel II: Business
By Matt Margolis | December 12, 2004
The second panel of the conference on Friday started around 10:45 a.m. and was on business and the Internet. How has the internet enabled new business models to be created, what we can learn from these and how we can apply them to politics.
Ester Dyson of CNET Networks spoke first. She explained the differences between government/politics and business. In government, the purpose is to serve everyone, while in business you have a target market. This is also case in politics, where you are defining your target market. She explained that the failures of both Dean campaign and the Kerry campaign were because they both failed to enlarge their target market. They were preaching to the choir, talking mostly to their base and not doing anything to enlarge their base.
Craig Newmark of craigslist was on this panel. To be honest, I really only knew of him and site because of the book The Power of Many, by Christian Crumlish — but evidently craigslist is a very popular site.
During the lunch break, I was sitting and talking with Chuck DeFeo about the conference so far, we both agreed it was very interesting and insightful. Craig Newmark at one point walked by and Chuck introduced himself and complimented his talk during the previous panel. I then introduced myself. Craig then remark to Chuck about what he said was inappropriate behavior on some Kerry message board or forum where he said Bush supporters — allegedly in response to an e-mail by the campaign were being extremely rude and inappropriate towards other people. I found it quite bizarre for this to be associated with the Bush campaign.
Chuck explained there was no encouragement of that kind of activity (I’ve even checked my e-mail archives to verify this) and then the conversation evolved to discussing that there are in fact “bad apples” on both sides who do not wish in engage in civil discussion. I just found it amazing that the alleged bad behavior of a few was attributed to the official campaign. I can tell you based on e-mails I get and a small minority of comments from Bush-haters that Craig’s original comment was a bit unfair.
Coming soon, the Keynote address…
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