The target was 100,000. But volunteers across the country blew past that goal by early afternoon yesterday. New goal: 200,000. The result? More than 300,000 calls in one day! All in support of the health care reform this country needs so badly.
And Monterey County Democrats were part of it. When health care reform is achieved, people like these callers will have the quiet, lasting satisfaction of knowing they helped make it happen: “I think the overwhelming message with yesterdays calling was gratitude. People still want to talk about their health care stories. Many are so grateful that the Democratic Party hasn’t given up this fight. We kept hearing thank you, thank you, we know you are in a battle, so thank you for fighting for me.” – Teri Short “My story is of the woman who just lost her job and has NO insurance of any kind.This has happened to several of her friends also. We were just about crying at the end of her story. After I told her about the Public Option she was encouraged and hoped Obama would follow through.” – Ed Weinstein “I was calling people who were registered Democrats, but not known to be supporters of health care reform. Everyone I reached was incredibly happy to hear from me and glad to take action. All were strong supporters of single-payer healthcare, and also very willing to support President Obama’s current reform efforts. They expressed a desire for a healthcare system that is more responsive to the needs of patients and their families rather than to the needs of corporations and shareholders.” – Liz WardUncategorized
Warmer, Fuzzier – The Refreshed Logo
via nytimes.com
A great peek into the thinking that goes into brand identities, and a real indicator of how times have changed: companies used to want to look like authorities, and now they want to look like friends.
Google Wave Preview
via wave.google.com
Tim O’Reilly: “Jens, Lars, and team re-imagined email and instant-messaging in a connected world, a world in which messages no longer need to be sent from one place to another, but could become a conversation in the cloud. Effectively, a message (a wave) is a shared communications space with elements drawn from email, instant messaging, social networking, and even wikis.”
Tiny Art Director
A completely delightful blog: the Tiny Art Director is the artist’s somewhat demanding and temperamental young daughter. And yes, she is indistinguishable from many adult art directors.
Google Fellowship Applications for PdF 2009 Due Friday 5/8 | techPresident – http://bit.ly/190LTk
“Are you an entrepreneur or activist with ideas about the next big thing to change government? A non-profit professional trying new technologies with great results? A former campaign staffer still blazing new trails in online politics?
Google and Personal Democracy Forum are teaming up to offer registration fellowships that cover the full forum registration costs and a meal with Googlers for twenty well-qualified, creative political entrepreneurs to attend this year’s conference on June 29-30 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City.
Fellows will be chosen based on evidence of how you’ve turned ideas into action and into new applications of technology in the political or civic arena.”
Apply at http://personaldemocracy.com/webform/google-fellowship-application-pdf-2009-wegov
So much opportunity here. E.g. I’m more and more convinced that much of the challenge facing government is the difficulty of visualizing and making sense of complicated systems, policy, organizational networks, opportunities, threats, etc. All of which could be helped by data visualization, shared data sets, web services, etc.