Review: Politic 2.0

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Aug 10

Earlier this week I attended a Politic 2.0 event where all but one of the Salt Lake Mayoral candidates had an opportunity to respond to questions.  The event was held at the Downtown library.  The method of question submission wsa through a web interface, where people could ask questions, and then “vote” for or against other people’s questions.  Thus the most popular questions got asked.

This is my second Politic 2.0 event, so let me through out some positives, negatives, and comparisons with the previous event from my perspective (I will however, steer clear from commenting on the actual candidates or my feelings on them, since that’s just not what this blog is about.)

Good stuff:

• The location was absolutely great!
• Matt (the moderator) did a great job.  He is a wonderful addition to the team.
• It really gave you a chance to see the candidates.  I feel like I know them all so much better now.

Bad stuff:

• There were such small numbers of votes for any given question that it was easy for people to manipulate.  The person sitting with me commented that any candidate could easily have had a few dozen of their people completely control the question lists.
• There was no advantage to actually being there.  All questions and votes were online… The video feed was streamed online…  There were a small number of people there, so networking was not a key factor… so why did I actually drive down to the location?  Okay, I did get to shake hands with the candidates, but still not worth the drive, park, etc.  I would have gotten pretty much the same experience in front of my screen at home in my PJ’s.

Comparison:
This event was far more objective than the previous event.  I felt that it was entirely audience driven rather than having things steered.  The event was more professional.  That application interface has improved a ton.

Summary:

An event well worth attending… just not in person unless they make some changes.

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• Posted in Local Review