Jeff Jarvis got around to blogging this before I had a chance to: PrezConference: A candidate answers! (Here’s my original videoblog post.) From Jeff today:
We have our first reply to a PrezConference question from a candidate. Joe Biden answers JD Lasica’s question about what he would ask us to sacrifice. Here’s JD’s question on YouTube. With this and his head-to-head video debates on issues, Biden takes the lead in smart moves in the YouTube campaign.
Here is my invitation to ask any candidate any question. Just record your question and upload it to YouTube (or use QuickCapture) and then tag it PrezConference (just as Biden’s campaign tagged his reply). That way, we’ll see which questions get answered and which don’t along with the answers. The tag makes it a conversation.
This is an important moment in the YouTube campaign. In the old days — yesterday — JD would have had to have run into the candidate at a random event somewhere in the country to have even a prayer of asking a question and that interaction would have been lost in the moment. But now, JD can ask and the candidate can answer in front of all of us and he can answer for all to hear. So please do ask your questions. We deserve answers.
Indeed. The tag does make this a conversation. I’m not surprised Biden was the first to do this — he’s already indicated he’s not afraid to confront the issues without a filter during his frequent appearances on The Daily Show.
Sen. John Edwards? Sen. Barack Obama? Sen. Hillary Clinton? Let’s hear from you, without a scripted, polished, orchestrated video production. Just talk into the camera — talk to us. (Sorry, videotaping your speech in front of a political audience doesn’t cut it.) What better way to talk directly to the people without having to spend millions on advertising, without having to play games with a cynical political press corps? John McCain has his Straight Talk Express. Who’ll start a Transparency Express, a Conversation Express? (Later: See Steve Garfield’s comment below regarding an earlier episode with John Edwards. Thanks, Steve!)
I hope other bloggers and videobloggers will join in and ask questions of the candidates. The pundits are saying YouTube and MySpace will play a major role in the 2008 election. But what’s really about to happen is that we, the people, will. Finally. Candidates who engage us at this level will earn our trust and respect (but not necessarily our votes). Those who continue to use only traditional top-down media conventions won’t.
It really is that simple.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
How do you determine if it’s a milestone?
John Edwards did this when he first started video blogging and answered a question from my mother in law.
In that case he even called he by name, Nora, and had actually seen the video.
Here, Biden is answering a question read to him by a staffer.
I think it’s great that he’s answering a question from the audience (us), but it didn’t seem like anything special to me.
When Howard Dean made a big deal about using the blogs for fundraising in his campaign, he admitted that he didn’t even read blogs.
This seems similar and I’d like to know if Biden actually knew where the question was coming from.
I’d like to see what’s next…
Hi Steve! We’ll know in a few months if it’s a milestone or not. If this tagging business blossoms into a conversation with the candidates, then we’ll know Jeff Jarvis’s experiment was a success, and a precursor to many similar conversations in future campaigns.
Glad you pointed out the earlier episode with John Edwards (I’m a fan, especially after meeting him at Gnomedex last year). So perhaps the Edwards exchange is the real milestone here.
What would make the Biden video a milestone, in my view, is if it becomes an ongoing dialogue rather than an isolated event. You can ask the Biden campaign about the details of what the staffer told Biden, but it’s pretty clear from the beginning of the video that the senator was clued in about what this was all about.
JD = I like this a lot. I’ll be watching. It’s cool.
BTW, I’m done blogging at Halley’s Comment and will soon announce my new enterprise. I think you’ll like it.