Standby for Rudd's online campaign

theage.com.au.

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd is expected to use online video technology as a part of his election campaign — and to use his embrace of new media as a sign that he is more in touch with the younger generation.

A spokesman for Mr Rudd confirmed this week that "an online campaign is a key part of our election strategy … Any politician in touch with the current generation understands you have to communicate with people through the web."

Comments

GoodToBeWithYou 2.0 ya' reckon?

Hillary wowed 'em with her "Let The Conversation Begin" webshows, or "live online video chats" as she first announced them, later simply "webchats". Is that what Kev and Walt have in mind?

It was a pretty elegant interface, from the viewer/participant POV. You didn't have to leave the the live video page and get thrown into a popup when you sent a comment/question. You did of course have to wait for moderation before your contribution appeared in the public pane, a la those ABC after-show fora.

And if you were really really lucky, your question got picked up by Hizza Herself, and you got a mention by name and an answer in the live Video, to be later stored for perpituity in the varieties of video 2.0 around. McLuhan and Andy will be spinning in their graves.

To the extent Hillary's effort worked, it's largley because Hills is a bit of a genuine talent as a performer.

Compare it to say Debnam's web-launch,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_EffJAD0Q0

it's laughable. Honestly, to let something out that you can barely hear and hope to put across a message of "they are just not up to standard" is just plain stupid, the liberalNSW youtube poster orta be horsewhipped.

Kev of course has a bit more experience in the conventions of vaudeville, so I'm expecting a whole lot better, and a whole lot better than his australia day set-piece blipvert at that. Singo fluff like that won't work in a live interactive environment for young people.

Has anyone ever heard Kev doing talkback radio? He does OK fielding enquiries from select groups of young thoughtful smarties, but the cyberthugs who get their jolly's inhabiting right wing blogs would probably clog up the interrogative bandwidth and make a genuine live open webchat unworkable.

I think Lindsay Tanner deserves a mention for breaking the online campaign ground, he's been putting up streaming vids for ages, and lately is using the youtube platform under his own name. It's a lot ameteurish with it's bad lip-synch, but that works for me as a sign of authenticism, whereas the Debnam lack of production quality, and the hand-waving, makes it look sooo contrived, (ditto Kev's Oz Day ad).

(Actually I reckon Lindsay is the real brains trust, I'd much rather see a Swan/Minchen Tanner/Costello match, much more entertaining than the Costello/Swan mismatch.)

So will it be youtube, or myspace? Will kevinrudd.com be ressurected as a blog after it's been Jonah'd into ALP.org.au since his ascension. ?

(You can still get a fair bit of the original kr.com website from the waybackmachine, in both incarnations, before and after the Toadies. Kev seems to be a bit of a web-veteran, 7 years uploading isn't bad. How's http://web.archive.org/web/20000818065403/http://www.kevinrudd.com for old school?

I guess the form is gonna depend on what Uncle Walt is comfortable with, but he seems pretty old school with his Trolley of Truth idea, it's the absolute antithesis of Web 2.0, so I'm not too hopeful that it'll be anything too risky.

God forbid that it's as drack as the laborfirst mire. I'm obviously the last person to think that blog posts and comments should be confined to Fantale Wrapper brevity, but there can't be that many punters that will wade through to the end of a 3 thousand word post like they have over there.

Personally I reckon newsvine is the go.

I'll get out of your way now.

Sincerely, GoodToBeWithYou

[Trevor Cook]

Thanks for that thoughtful commentary. I'll be interested to see what sort of emphasis is given to online stuff. The amazing thing with Hiliary, I thought, was announcing the campaign online and letting the media take its lead from the site along with anyone else who is interested in going straight to the site. I was also struck about how many times she and her site feature the word 'conversation'. I just wonder whether the ALP will put online as a focal point with lots of information being published their first (in video and audio as well as text)and lots of interaction or whether it will be an add-on.
Of course, Australian political parties are wedded to control and yet to be seen whether they can come at a more free flowing environment online.
But with Rudd, it doesn't seem that he does things by half measures so we should probably expect some action.
And what a great way to play with Howard's mind then a sort of 'where's johnny' running online commentary and criticism of the PM's every public utterance in an almost live timeframe.
The old NMLS (animals) did a great job monitoring media for Opposition gaffes and then turning them around through the media.
Now it could all be done so much faster and in so much more detail online.
I bet there's a bunch of other stuff that could be done too
Cheers, Trevor

[GoodToBeWithYou]

I see Mark B, and Co, are playing a bit of "who was on blog first" in reponse to Tim Gartrell's claim to have been there, done that in '04.

Funny fragile little thing, the local blogsquare. Bit like real life, n'est-ce pas?

Oh yeh, I followed up one of your 2.0 tags, found out about IBM's QuicKR, and am looking at yahoo pipes, that implement it. Very interesting, thanks for the tip.

Sincerely, GoodToBeWithYou