Meeting Communication

There was an article in the NY Times today about how CNN is going to have a debate where the questions are going to be asked by ordinary people through YouTube Videos. They had to come up with something to make the debates watchable by anyone other than the candidates’ relatives. The debates I’ve watched lately are a joke. I think many high school debaters could do a better job. The last one I saw, the facilitator actually asked the candidates to raise their hand in response to questions. The hand raising seems more appropriate for kindergarten than a presidential debate.

Video based questions raise some interesting questions themselves. You can do a lot with a video. A video question can be a lot more engaging and communicative than just a submitted written question. If a picture is worth a 1000 words, a moving picture is worth?

I’d like to see a debate with PowerPoint visuals. Maybe I’ll submit a video of a short PowerPoint presentation – kind of like Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth slide show. It will be called an “Inconvenient Lie – the Bush Whitehouse”.

I really enjoy a good political meeting. I go to my local town hall meeting occasionally just for the entertainment value. They should change the name of the meetings to “egohall meetings”. What ever happened to the democratic political idea of the politicians taking the time to listen to the people that voted them into office? Or maybe that’s the problem, that there are so few people that vote today, that they only need to listen to themselves (they always vote for themselves) and the few friends that voted for them? I’d write more, but I have to go work on my video submission for the debate.

“YouTube Passes Debates to a New Generation”
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: June 14, 2007

This entry was posted on Friday, June 15th, 2007 at 7:45 am and is filed under General.