So we've been talking about Twitter these last many weeks. Progressive PST has appeared as a new, all Kossack social media consulting service. The Blog Workers Industrial Union is encouraging activists to get registered for the service and to be ready for when we add a group coordination component to the adaptive messaging we're providing Progressive political campaigns now. And then there's Kossack twitter ... who is currently entrapped in the bardo of becoming.
All of this is going to add up to a system that draws in the key players: political campaigns, Progressive activists, and the tool makers and users who are building a bridge between representatives and their constituents.
And all of this will decay into what Winston Churchill would call "unremunerative scatterization" unless we apply the principle of Attention Conservation
It isn't a big secret that I'm a Bruce Sterling fan. You look at the work I've done the last two years on DailyKos, you sit with a copy of his post collapse political thriller, Distraction, and the parallels are eerie. Energy, biomass, being on the road, parallel social structure as the corporate/government axis breaks down – it's all there. Character wise I'd be Kevin – the anglo hacker who backs political consultant Oscar Valparaiso. Hrm, a political guy with a Hispanic name ...
This being said, we should consider the concept of attention conservation, which Sterling has heavily applied to his Viridian Movement notes, a rolling design discussion on green topics set to expire when the Kyoto protocol does in 2012. The notes some 500 in all, begin with a line like this:
Attention Conservation Notice: You have just received a
lengthy, unsought lecture. It is the very first mailout
in an extensive series of Internet list activities that
will be emanating from this site. If you do not find this
text of compelling interest and relevance, then you do not
belong on the Viridian Mailing List. If at any time you
send email asking to be removed, we pledge that your
address will be deleted from our list immediately. You
will not be troubled further -- or at least, you won't be
troubled directly.
The point is that the note might be a thousand words, but you know within the first few lines if you need to read it fully or just file it away in case it becomes useful later.
Twitter is teh d3vil for wasting time – a flood tide of one liners and URLs pointing to a mishmash of material, everything from the latest Trollcats to JB Poersch trolling for donations to the DSCC. Some of it's funny, some engaging, a lot of it is crap (but engaging crap); is any of it really worth your precious attention?
I've started to shed activities on Twitter. Trolling the conservative hashtags to test my software? I loaned some of the code I've written to someone with a much sharper tongue than I have. The wingnuts get dogged mercilessly and the person is a programmer who is starting to send me suggestions and updates. Instead of hours of my time being frittered away doing such things myself I now have a ferocious, informal proxy working in that space. I think I've got back a solid day a week with this move.
I got a bit of programming done regarding rating Twitter users and it was getting to be a real burden keeping track of the inputs. Spedwybabs rounded up a couple of others to do the research to keep the lists of the Blog Workers Industrial Union up to date, I made arrangements with @Klout to provide their service to us in bulk, and soon Kossack Twitter will be publishing social media polling information. Determining who is actually making good use of Twitter will become an largely automated thing and this gets us one step closer to a couple of BWIU people actually getting paid to manage the help desk.
Ah, yes, the Blog Workers Industrial Union help desk. Progressive PST is providing the servers, the hosting, and the technical expertise to run a Request Tracker help desk. Once a few other things happen a couple of the BWIU members are going to receive some sort of compensation for managing this thing. The constituents for the help desk service will be political campaigns, ballot initiatives, select Twitter personalities working on Progressive issues, and Progressive PST staff. Oh, and look at that juicy Open Government Directive, which came along after I authored the bulk of this diary. Lots of work in there, and no mistake about that.
The workflow management capabilities of Request Tracker ought to conserve everyone's attention. A campaign manager can point out a letter to the editor in a local paper that needs comments and instead of having to deal with it all on her own a couple of BWIU hitters will show up and make sure the discussion trends progressive. A ballot initiate wants to push a certain term to the top of the Google search ranks? They can drop off a press release and the diarist squad will go to work talking up the issue. Each will report back to the help desk when they've completed a posting somewhere and the initiative manager making the request gets a tidy report showing the coverage they've received.
Twitter is stateless ... and so is the DailyKos wreck list, but in ways that I don't have the space to fully explain here. Having a workflow system that coordinates paid professionals and focuses the passion and energy of the Netroots is going to add up to potent force in the Progressive political landscape.
Those responsible for campaign messaging will spend dramatically less time keeping up with the shifting social media sands, top level activists will be able to easily multiply the force they wield, and those who are interested but lack the writing skills to compete for space on the wreck list will find a series of new outlets for their enthusiasm. Everyone's attention will be conserved, the circular firing squad that arises due to the lack of outlet for the energy found in the Progressive blogosphere will instead turn towards operating a blue dog obedience school, and the already disintegrating Republicans will face another body blow as we make the Fox News assertion that 'conservatives own Twitter' just another in a series of lies.