Trippi said a mouthful

It’s so refreshing to read about people who are obsessively passionate about what they do. Joe Trippi’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised– a title he borrowed from 70s poet-activist Gil Scott-Heron’s poem – was a definte shot-in-the-arm promo for democracy.

Although Dean didn’t win the election, it was a win for the democratic process. What Trippi did for the Dean campaign proved that letting go and interactively running a decentralized campaign through the eyes and ears of the people, who best know what they need and who is most likely to give it to them, is simply revolutionary. 

Particularly powerful sections of the book include the very first meetup that Dean showed up in person for. It’s amazing how the meetups determined the campaign events. And Dean’s revelation after meeting people from all across the country that he’d only communicated with online and seeing that, yes, this is real. How Dean supporters rallied and used the attacks of enemy site hackers to raise more campaign funds – how creatively effective! Dean’s first blog entry. How the campaign inspired 89-year-old Lou Stark to start his own meet up. The Dean campaign was also a perfect example of how effective it is to reach out to young people on their terms and use their knowledge — after all the future of this country is in their hands.

Trippi, if you happen upon this post, you and Michael Silberman, who served as Dean’s campaign meet up director and was recently invited by Garrett Graff to speak to his digital campaigns class at Georgetown University, I’d like to know how you feel about the media coverage of the digital campaign support in the 2008 election? Is the media doing any better at capturing the power behind digital political campaigns?