Politics on the Net 

I am fascinated by the Howard Dean campaign, for the US Democratic Presidential candidature.  And its brilliant, innovative use of the Internet, in arranging local political meetings.  

But the technique of the website is wholly conventional.  In fact, it combines the simplest E-technology with the oldest technology of all – “let’s meet up for a chat”.  Take a look at it yourself - www.meetup.com.   

The website (which pre-dated the Dean campaign, and was simply “adopted” by Dean’s team) does not rely on the web for “exchanging ideas” at all!  All that the website does is to arrange a conventional face-to-face meeting and then give publicity to the arrangements.  The Meet-up Webmaster assumes responsibility for matching venues to groups, presumably deriving income from promoting a venue for a “meet up”.  I have, by way of experiment, registered a FabianDebate meetup for Cardiff, on the first Monday of every month. 

• I will report progress

Do you have any experience of this device?  Drop me a line

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