Walt Mossberg is tuned in to Ron Paul

Tonight, my status as a chairman of an SDForum Special Interest Group got me invited to the annual SDForum Visionary Awards ceremony at Heidi Roizen's house (pictured at left in glorious VGA detail).

This was really an impressive event, with a high ratio of interesting and personable people. There were even some successful entrepreneurs in attendance, judging by this vanity plate at right.

A highlight of the evening was chatting with Walt Mossberg, the veritable Mohammad of tech reporting, who has been the tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal since 1991. Tonight, all manner of enterprising salesmen were busily bringing their mountains (or molehills) to him. Walt held forth on the strengths of the Apple design philosophy, on the shortcomings of the mobile carriers (a.k.a. "the Soviet Ministries"), and on opportunities in the dusty and uncomfortable space between HDTVs, DVRs and DVD players.

Since Walt covered the Washington beat before setting up shop as the tech guru he is today, and has lived in DC for 30 years, I asked him to speak to any interesting innovation he's seen in the political campaigns this season. He professed not having seen anything interesting so far, and asked if I had come across anything novel.

I told Walt about my own experience looking for information about the candidate I most wanted to learn more about. Since he wasn't one of the top three Dem or Repub contenders, there was very little that could be learned about him from the mass media. I explained that I much more often find videos I'm interested in watching on YouTube, and that these videos make for much better sharing that a simple newspaper article or webpage.

At this point, Walt asked me, "So are you a Libertarian? Is Ron Paul your man?" I was taken aback by his bold guess, but then again Walt is a smart guy. I was pleased to admit that he guessed correctly, and we went on to discuss how mass media TV really isn't a good way to try to get oneself informed nowadays, and that reading online or watching YouTube videos is often more informative.

All in all, Walt didn't see anything terribly noteworthy in the technology employed in the campaigns so far. I personally believe that the degree to which consumers can use the YouTube platform to do an end-run around network television and the mainsteam media is going to define the next year and a half of campaigning. I have a suspicion that the campaign war-chests that have been absolutely powerful (and corrupted absolutely) in the past will turn out to be insufficient to channel-stuff candidates' messages through all available channels.

This revolution will not be televised.

The Ron Paul Meetup debacle

Tonight I went to a Bay Area Ron Paul Meetup, and what I found really struck me.

Having become a loyal Ron Paul supporter only a few weeks ago, most of what I know about him I've learned from the dozen or so youtube videos of him that I've come across this month. Tonight's Meetup sounded like a great opportunity to meet like-minded believers in "Paulitics" and learn more about the politician (a word I am ashamed to use to describe Ron Paul).

I went into the Meetup with little in the way of expectations. What I encountered, however, I would never have predicted. The organizer of the Meetup was a fellow with his heart in the right place who had an ardent desire to 'organize' the Meetup. After everyone went around and introduced themselves, we dove into his printed agenda. Several minutes into his agenda, he actually used Robert's Rules of Order to move to elect a steering committee of "probably 4 people, because 3 seems like too few and 5 seems like about as many as you'd want". This was before anyone had more than 10 seconds of knowledge about the potential candidates in the election.

The host then yielded the floor to someone who took us through the different types of incorporated entities we could become, depending on which activities we took part in. We had an expert on 527 orgs and 501(c)(3)s explain several of the pros and cons of each type. Which ones make opening bank accounts easier, which ones are tax deductible, etc.

Next, prepared signup sheets for a set of 8 committees were passed around. Since the discussion about the steering committee election was met with some degree of hostility, these 8 committees were not called committees; rather they were given the Newspeakish title 'focus areas' by the host.

By this time, my mind was wandering. I had come to hear about and talk about Ron Paul. I realized that my expectation was not to hear Robert's Rules or be asked to elect other strangers to committees within the Meetup, but rather to hear what brought the others who were present out on a Monday night at 7 PM to talk about Ron Paul.

Then the irony hit me -- the bureaucracy we had generated (or more precisely, that the Meetup host had generated and the large majority of the room had passively gone along with) within the space of an hour was a symptom of exactly the same 'organization' disease that currently plagues the American government and that Ron Paul has been an opponent of since the 70s. One of Paul's core values is in the superiority of limited government and free enterprise.

If even a group of supporters of Ron Paul can come together and within an hour create a stifling bureaucracy, then imagine the potential for over-organization with a similarly sized group with pro-big-government ideals.

Early in the Meetup, one of the more free-spirited attendees (named Starchild) pointed out that this Meetup should be run in a more democratic fashion. I host's response stuck with me: "For now, we'll run it as a dictatorship in order to be more efficient and get more done. We can be a democracy later".

I've heard that before!

Preface

Welcome to what is, at this moment, the newest blog on Blogger.com.

For those who may not be familiar with the allusions in the blog's title, I invite you to read a great book, Atlas Shrugged. If I had my way, more people would ask the question "What would John Galt do?" than any other popular alternatives.

Initially, I expect to write on an mix of topics I'm interested in, including technology, economics and aviation. In other words, a bunch of random stuff.