MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-02-09 |
| FROM | From: "Stanley A. Klein"
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Re: eGovOS conference in D.C.
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At 06:47 AM 2/9/2003 -0500, Ruben Safir wrote:
>
>My first election was with Abe Beam for Esposito's political machine
>cira 1976 and goes all the way to Today on all three levels of Government.
>iIt involves primary, municipal, statewide and national politics.
>iI did and still do what ever needs to be done.
>
>I took off a few years for military service.
>
>Politics in the beltway is not real. The voters are at home.
Politics "inside the beltway" (which is a difficult term for me because
part of Montgomery County *is* inside the beltway) is very real. So is
politics in Annapolis and Albany. It's just different because the voters
are home and the lobbyists are all over the place. However, when campaigns
cost big bucks, who are the real voters, the ones back home or the lobbyists?
>
>Convince the voters or making it in their intersts, and you can
>influence muscle. This is why the Washington Establishment gets
>caught with it's pant down every few years in Congress. Last year
>was an example, the Contract with America is another.
I told Chris Van Hollen that there were three campaigns the DNC should
study. One was his. One was Mary Landreu's. And the third was Doug
Duncan's 1987 campaign for Mayor of Rockville. In that 1987 election the
votes cast for a candidate were 90+% negatively correlated to campaign
funds spent (almost a straight line -- spend another dollar, lose another
vote).
>
>The bottom line is that organization, and political unity is what most
>often wins. Compromise only when you need to swap political capital,
>and preferably with a friendly camp. Keep your message slimple and clear
>and get out the vote. Keep everyone on the same page. Feed your constients
>and your politicaly active workers.
>
>
>Never compromise with MS. It's a waste of time. And clearly, as you have
as much
>experience as your saying, then you know that argueing about politics and
winning
>politically are two differnet things completely
I'm not talking about compromise. Letting them speak at a conference where
they will be skewered is not compromising. (In that 1987 campaign I helped
set up a debate at a civic association where I did a number on the
then-incumbent mayor by asking a question from the floor about his campaign
spending and sources.)
>From what I've heard, New York politics is hard-line, in-your-face,
abrasive 24/7 with no letup. The unions sometimes send that kind of people
here to help out during campaigns. They fall flat on their faces. Nobody
wants to work with them. All they do is screw things up that other people
have to fix.
You need to know the turf and culture where you are working. There are at
least three different political cultures relevant to my local political
involvements: Rockville, Montgomery County, and the Baltimore area. The
cultures are different enough that the DC suburbs sometimes get blindsided
by things going on in the Baltimore area.
It might help for you to read some of the books by Deborah Tannen. She is
an expert on how people hold discussions and how people from different
cultures (like men versus women or New York versus Washington) interpret
both conversation and body language.
>From that perspective, Tony is doing the right thing letting Microsoft
speak. They effectively spoke at the last conference (through their puppet
from the Alexis de Toqueville Institute, whatever that is). At least they
want to show up to take the heat themselves.
We are running a guerilla, stealth campaign and doing quite well at it with
a very limited budget. Terry Bollinger, who is on the conference committee
and will speak, wrote the Mitre report on free/open-source penetration in
the Defense Department. He showed it runs around 40% and opened a bunch of
eyes (and raised a lot of hackles in Redmond).
Susan Turnbull and Brand Niemann, who are both on the conference committee
and will also speak, run a monthly government/industry "Collaborative
Exploration Workshop" that is helping government CIO's learn about
free/open-source and a bunch of other disruptive ideas that can save money
and improve productivity. I hope to speak there about a forthcoming
IEEE-USA broadband position that will really make things interesting
politically. (Bayonne could easily become a widely-used, superstar product
in that environment.)
David Wheeler, another conference committee member who will also speak,
works for a government contractor but has independently made a name
collecting business case numbers on the benefits of free/open-source and is
the author of the "stacker" module of the Linux Loadable Security Module
effort.
Microsoft's next point of attack will be in the area of security. They
poured in money and got their Windows 2000 product certified at Common
Criteria EAL-4+. (I recently met the manager of the evaluation lab that
did the certification.) Tony has been working on countering that for some
time by getting Security Enhanced Linux evaluated. That's probably what
the Microsoft lobbying at NSA was all about.
Come in here with New York tactics, disrupt the conference, and raise the
level of controversy to in-your-face 24/7 and you will cut all these people
off at the knees.
You need to know the turf and the culture. Learn them first before you
plan your efforts.
Stan Klein
____________________________
New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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