A Copyfighter’s Musings

Joe Trippi’s on campus, and the hype is coming in full force, on posters and in my e-mail box. At first, I was pretty excited and wanted to go to his new study group, but that’s receding as the student chatter grows. Maybe I’m too cynical but…

Joe Trippi helped do some really interesting campaigning and fundraising using the Internet and social software. He was a critical component, and he’s probably an amazing person. So are guys like Zack Rosen and Neil Drumm. So are David Weinberger and Jim Moore. Haven’t met them, but probably so are Zephyr Teachout and Matt Gross.

I wonder: will the mass of students attending Trippi’s study group have any idea who these people are? And will they ever care to? The posters advertising the event set Trippi up as the The Guy, when really he was The Guy Behind The Guy (Dean), and there were plenty of other incredible people behind him. This was, in some respects, an open source, bottom-up campaign, right?

Some students were keen enough to start a new TrippiAtHarvard blog – neat, you discovered blogging. But why not integrate with the rest of the Harvard bloggers? There’s already a whole community here ready to interact with you – hell, Weinberger and Moore both work at the Berkman Center. (Note: dropped the editor a line, and hopefully they will come to blogs@harvard).

Look, I’m only marginally a student of this stuff, and I’m not asking for people to have already read, say, Clay Shirky’s take on the campaign. I’m not questioning people’s levels of knowledge or interest in the subject matter – it’s not about that. Rather, I worry about their perspective. I hope that people don’t start tripping over Trippi, when there is so much more going on in this space than him and so many more amazing people at work. You overlook them, and you by definition don’t get it.

Filed by Derek Slater at 12:18 am under General news
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