Soft Launching FutureCampaigns Blog

Yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm launching another blog. Actually, it's already up. I started it last week on my futurecampaigns.com site, where I've been hosting information about the work I do as an adviser to nonprofits, political organizations, and as a writer/editor about related topics.

One might wonder why on Earth I'd put myself in line to work on what I believe is probably a seventh semi-regular blog, not to mention the places where I'm a guest contributing editor. Sigh. Well, it goes like this: I'm really passionate about technology and its impact on the world. That translates to its use in government and politics as well as the policies about technology. And I've been studying this stuff since I was in high school (to the point that I created my own major: "Technology & Society" in college), so clearly the interest isn't going away. But somehow I haven't been focusing on writing about just that in any one place until recently. It was an accident, actually.

Originally, I planned this blog to stick closer to those topics, but then I realized it was really a place to cover everything I'm interested in, and I played around with it a lot. Eventually I settled on more techie, political and cultural topics for this blog, and that took me away from everything I wanted to say about tech and the world. I'd covered related topics here on this blog (some posts which I republished at the FutureCampaigns blog), I had alluded to my experiences in tech and politics on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, particularly in light of our interactions with Elizabeth Edwards, but I was saving all of my ideas for a big project (in the works for a while now). Finally I realized I own all of what I write in the places I've been writing and it's all stuff I want to get out to people, so why save it when the whole purpose behind what I wanted to do was to get it out there?

So with PDF '08 on the horizon and a renewed energy for focusing on the topic that probably has a lot to do with how proud I am of what the Obama campaign has been doing (i.e. everything right in terms of tech!), here I am with a new blog. I look forward to friends and colleagues visiting it. The other thing I've done with the blog that most other blogs in the space haven't is create an extensive blogroll full of related resources. It's still a work in progress - I have a lot more to add - but due to time constraints, I went ahead and put it up as I build that part.

As to the content - I plan for it to be a mix of stuff that appeals to techies and politicos/activists. Some of it will be written at a more basic level because I want nonprofit directors, for example, to get a better picture of why certain technologies can help them, and the only way to do that is to explain it in general terms that aren't too overly technical - for the most part. Most nonprofits and most political campaigns are still in the dark ages when it comes to tech, so I want to help educate them. Meanwhile, I also plan to tackle some of the geek meat, i.e. the cool gadgets and what they do. Like MAPLight.org - it's an awesome mashup and they have a bunch of apps coming out for different states soon. Not everyone in the world knows what a 'mashup' or an 'app' is, and that's OK, but I plan to blend the content as much as possible. The reality is that the blog will take on its own flavor after a while, but this is where I'm starting.

I'm really looking forward to meeting more people working in this area next week in New York because I hope to write about every single one of them and their projects on the FutureCampaigns blog. It's so important that we all work together, and I find it absolutely fascinating the achievements that have been made in technology, government, politics and policy over the past few years alone.