{"id":113,"date":"2003-11-09T20:55:55","date_gmt":"2003-11-10T00:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/2003\/11\/09\/born-again-in-blogspace-the-clark-co"},"modified":"2012-05-04T00:06:22","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T04:06:22","slug":"born-again-in-blogspace-the-clark-community-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/2003\/11\/09\/born-again-in-blogspace-the-clark-community-network\/","title":{"rendered":"Born Again in Blogspace: the Clark Community Network"},"content":{"rendered":"

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     Cameron Barrett’s rollout of the new Wesley Clark blog confirms the news that the modern presidential campaign is, at the core, a software production house.  The Clark Community Network<\/A> is a fascinating and, I say, admirable piece of work  It’s a very advanced exercise in simulating Wesley Clark’s idea and ideal of communitarian democracy.  It actually implements the Dave Winer<\/A> mantra that it’s not the candidates but the voters who should be blogging.  (It’s the same idea that Jeff Jarvis<\/A> advocates for newspapers.  That is, don’t blog at your readers; rather turn your readers into writers by handing them the blog tool).  Everyone’s a blogger in the Clark space–everyone who chooses to be.  Of course everyone is a commentator, too–their comments community-rated up, down or off the page.  The campaign provides new tools, modeled on MeetUp<\/A>, for Clark events.  It adds a tool for fomenting Petitions within the Clark campaign network, and another tool for crediting Recruiters with people they brought to the party.  <\/FONT><\/P>
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     We do seem to be approaching a new definition of a political campaign.  The Clark Community Network, Cameron Barrett says, is “a collection of knowledge.”  He presents the CCN as friendlier, more inclusive everyman’s place than the Howard Dean site<\/A>.  In conversation he expands on this provocative note: “We’re not just reaching out to embrace the online world. Our strategy allows for the participation of every American — not just those who have wealth and influence. Dean started early and has the buzz but we’re doing it properly. Politics will never be the same.”  I don’t think he’s hit the literary style or musical rhythm of the Dean blog yet, but he’s assembled all the instruments and he’s serious about making them swing.<\/FONT><\/P>
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     Key points of interest in the conversation<\/A> here: Cameron Barrett<\/A> thinks his new CCN could enable a competitive Clark reentry in the Iowa caucuses.  He’s still miffed at the bell that Stirling Newberry<\/A> tolled on behalf of the Draft Clark bloggers.  He got some help with his Scoop site from Rusty Foster<\/A> of Kuro5hin<\/A>, who told him, “finally, a political campaign who gets it!” He offers a tart review of the other new entry in the blog race: the John Edwards campaign page<\/A>, he said, looks pretty, slow and vacant.  Cameron Barrett is an adamant open-source believer who has learned from bad experience not to let anyone with Microsoft’s Outlook mail log onto his network.  But unlike Joe Trippi<\/A> of the Dean campaign, Cameron Barrett isn’t modeling his politics on open-source analogies.  Rather he’s extending what he discovered as a college teacher in 1997: that a personal blog was an ideal way to construct a community of searchers and learners.  Listen here<\/A>.<\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

     Cameron Barrett’s rollout of the new Wesley Clark blog confirms the news that the modern presidential campaign is, at the core, a software production house.  The Clark Community Network is a fascinating and, I say, admirable piece of work  It’s a very advanced exercise in simulating Wesley Clark’s idea and ideal of communitarian democracy.  It actually implements […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1340,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/lydondev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}