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Joe Trippi on the Howard...

 Joe Trippi on the Howard Dean online campaign strategy

Very interesting interview with Howard Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, over at Larry Lessig's blog. A few interesting points for anyone, political or not, to keep in mind when thinking about communication with a far-flung plural audience.

Trippi says the way they have dealt with trolls on the Dean blog is to use troll postings to trigger campaign contributions through a Dean Team. This shows the troll that their negative and abusive posting is actually helping the campaign -- shuts it down fast. Actual discussion, even if it represents a challenge to Dean campaign positions is welcomed, but trolls are shamed out with contributions.

Trippi admits that it is hard to let go of the hierarchical approach to campaign message management. That's hard for everyone, but combined with the clever anti-troll strategy, it can provide the basis for self-organizing responses to challenges created by the total openness created by the Net. Lesson: Learn to let go.

Here's the power of an egalitarian campaign in a nutshell: "On the Cheney lunch: the Vice President had something like 125 people who gave him $2000 each, for a total of $250,000. We had 9700 people, giving roughly $53 on average, totaling $508,000."

My criticism of the interview is that Lessig starts from a "your blog" assumption, as though BlogforAmerica was a single-pronged effort. In fact, the Dean blog is just one of a constellation of blogs about the Dean campaign, and that is what gives the campaign so much power -- many hubs connecting many constituencies.