Dispatch From SXSW
The following guest entry was written by Julie Barko Germany, deputy director for the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. She is attending the South By Southwest festival in Austin.
Technology overload. It's not as bad as it sounds. I don't have thumb cramps from using a Blackberry too much. I don't have iPod ears (that slight pain you get from using the standard iPod earphones for longer than an hour a day). I'm midway into my second day at SXSW Interactive, and I have a technology buzz.
With little more than an hour until my panel on mobilizing the masses with mobile technology begins, I'm sitting in the middle of the exhibit hall, I'm afraid of missing something -- talking with the right person, attending the five different panels I want to go to at the same time, getting a Firefox tattoo at the Mozilla exhibit booth.
I attended a panel on the rise of blogebrity (celebrity in the blog- and more recently the vlogosphere) yesterday afternoon. There's nothing too startling in 2007 about the idea that everyday people -- you, me, the teenager down the street, your boss -- can reach an audience of tens, hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people online creating something poignant, startling, or funny.
But what does this mean for politics? This morning over breakfast tacos in a pub, my father asked me if I thought an unknown everyman could ever run -- and succeed at obtaining -- a presidential nomination. An everyman as president? A vlogger as a serious candidate? At a place like SXSW, the idea doesn't seem too far off.
Or maybe that's just the technology buzz talking.
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