I am a front pager at Colorado's fastest growing local politics blog
Square State.
I like to travel far and wide like a bloggy missionary, a blogbassador if you will, and help campaigns and orginizations get a feel for what exactly it is we are inventing out here.
I just got an offer that has me conflicted...
I was asked today to talk to a communications/public relations consulting firm about the netroots, and give them a demo of what it is I do and how it is I do it.
I met the guy who invited me while working on the campaign of one of my favorite candidates. The guy paints himself as a hard core liberal, and his political resume really reflects that. He has helped a number of good candidates hone their messages and get solid media attention.
Oil pays the bills.
The company he works for has corporate clients that are swimming in oil. I am not talking little guys. I am talking one of the largest. If I take this on, I will be spending a couple of hours talking about the net to the people that handle those accounts.
I don't know what other corporate clients they have, but for me, just knowing that one is a big steaming deal breaker.
My impulse is to say, "screw 'em"
But I find myself thinking that maybe this is an opportunity to inject a virus into the corporate mass. Isn't there something about the distributed conversation of the internet that undermines top down heirarchy?
It's not like anything I know is secret. It is all out there if they want to take a look, but I have been pretty deep in the netroots for a bit and I have built a body of knowledge.
Will I be helping them to game the system, or will I be helping our system to game them? If they get sucked into our world, might they not accidently hear our message?
Help me out with this.