Chris Bell is getting out there

[muse]

I complained big time in a post a few days ago that Chris Bell seemed to be totally incognito. Well, here's his schedule for the next few weeks (I got it off of his website www.chrisbell.com). I'm glad to see he'll be all over the state getting his message out. I hope he'll get some good media coverage.

* Wed, 3/22: Chris to speak at San Antonio AFL-CIO meeting
* Sat, 3/25: Chris to speak at the Travis County Democratic Convention
* Sat, 3/25: Chris to speak at the Tarrant County Democratic Convention
* Sat, 4/1: Chris to speak at the ATPE Convention
* Wed, 4/5: Chris to speak at Sabine Area CLC meeting
* Thu, 4/6: Chris to speak at CWA meeting in Houston
* Mon, 4/10: Chris to speak to Galveston County AFL-CIO

[sonias]

1. Yep, saw him at the SDEC meeting in San Marcos yesterday

He's campaigning to win.

Sonia

[WestHoustonDem]

2. What happened with the TDP Chair? I haven't seen anything

except that the SDEC endorsed BAR.

[johncoby2]

3. Nothing. They do not vote till April 22 as scheduled.

[Smarty Pants Liberal]

4. The TDP chair will be elected at the NEXT SDEC meeting

on April 22 in Austin. The candidate who has actually helped write the TDP rules left that out in his spin.

SoniaS and I got to talk about the candidate who has actually helped write the TDP rules yesterday and I agreed with her regarding one issue - the team that he has behind him is amazing - and if he were to be elected they would probably then be helping the Party. Frankly, I think Fran Vincent ought to be the candidate.

[sonias]

5. Very good idea Smarty Pants Liberal

Charlie Urbina-Jones, who I thought made a very good speech for the roots, said he wanted more women in the party and running for office. I second that idea.

Charlie says it's time for the dog to wag it's own tail, and not be wagged by the tail (party elites).

Check out Charlie's daughter Stephanie Urbina-Jones. I'd heard her play on KUT here in Austin quite a bit. Did not know that was her Dad.
http://www.stephanieurbinajones.com/

His other daughter was helping him at the SDEC meeting. I think she was still in college?

Sonia

[Smarty Pants Liberal]

6. I was impressed with Urbina-Jones too

I was suprised to hear the word Demzilla come out of a candidates' mouth and I almost fell out of my chair when he mentioned that it is not being utilized.

And his daughter Millie with the campaign T-shirt and satchel a la Napoleon Bonaparte is a little spitfire. He said she does work for Barbara Boxer and do you remember the other? I was trying to find contact information for the potential speaker for the PPC caucus at the State Convention so couldn't tune in as well as the rest of the group.

So, Sonia, are you heading up the draft Fran movement?

[sonias]

7. ha ha, good one

How about I suggest that to her. She would never run against Glen; but if we got the same benefits without all the infighting. It's worth a try.

Women rock!



Sonia

[johncoby2]

11. I guess Maxeys database services is better?

And just as free to use? Or does he charge the party for it?

[crispini]

13. I'm going to assume you meant this post for me

since I'm the one that was ragging on Demzilla.

For one thing, Demzilla isn't Charlie Urbina-Jones' database, it's the database set up by the Texas Democratic Party, so I fail to understand your rhetorical question about Maxey's database service. I see you're trying to make a point here, but I don't quite get it. :shrug:

And Demzilla isn't "free" by any means, it was paid for by people's contributions to the TDP.

And the point I was trying to make here was about people's approach to technology. I am in the technology field, and it took me about an hour of playing with and discussing Demzilla until I realized that it has many flaws (see my other post for details). Furthermore, greater brains that I am have also concluded this. The Dallas county party has decided to roll their own database for 2006 for this very reason. So I guess my point is that if Urbina-Jones is praising Demzilla, I have to question how in touch he is with what technology should do and how it should be used.

I have also seen the database which the Austin Coordinated Campaign used in 2004. Glen Maxey showed it to us at Democracy Fest. I was extremely impressed.

Technology is not the cure all, by any means, but a good understanding of technology, PLUS putting the support in place so that EVERYONE who needs to use your tools can do so--- now that's dynamite.

[crispini]

8. Demzilla's not being used because IT STINKS.

As one of the first people to get access to the Voter Relationship Management website, let me tell you, it blows chunks. I was never able to get ANY support for my questions from the TDP, so I had no idea what I was looking at and I just had to guess. Also, you can't updated the data, so if you go out and walk your precinct and collect new voters, new phone numbers etctera, you have nobody to give that data to. Campaigns will still need to build their own databases. Also the state is not reliably getting updated data from the various counties. We actually sent our own data to them down in Austin and they still didn't update it. Dallas county will be rolling our own database for the 2006 coordinated campaign and if the other urban counties aren't doing that, well they should be.

Demzilla, at least the way it was implemented here, strikes me as the biggest waste of money and one of the worst ever implementation of technology I've ever seen.

If Charlie Urbina Jones wants us to use THAT thing, God help us all. He's obviously never even bothered to obtain a login from the state party and take a half an hour to look at it or he would know better. Either that or he doesn't understand anything about technology.

[acmejack]

9. Why is it so bad?

Software, hardware or a combination of the two? Is it just implementation issues that could be mended if someone applied a determined effort to trying to make it run right?

I am asking since I have been down to the TDP and done some hardware work and if it was something within my modest capabilities, I would take it on. Especially if I could do it remotely.

[crispini]

10. First, support.

If they put up a bulletin board that says "Ask your questions here" and then don't answer the questions they get, they've got to realize that will piss people off. If they are going to put something like that up, then they need to have the human infrastructure available to support it. I realise this isn't a technology issue, it's a process issue and a resource issue, but it only takes one bad experience to turn off an activist and make them not willing to work with you, especially since they are all volunteers.

Second, the quality of the data. They need to be more transparent about where the data is coming from and how often it is updated. They don't tell the user anything at all about the quality of the data. It's not a very strong recommendation to anyone. It is supposed to have "extra bonus demographic" information in it but again, nobody was ever available to answer questions about how it worked so does it? Who knows?

Third, but probably most important, the data is read-only. You are not allowed to update it. So you can pull voter lists and walk lists from it, but you can't upload your corrections. If the goal is to eventually build a database that can be used for statewide campaigns, as Maxey has said, and as I agree with, then having a database that is read-only is not going to be usable for that goal.

Unfortunately, if you open a database up to be read-write, all the way down to the individual precinct level, you are going to have to impose some pretty robust input checking, and get an excellent audit trail in place, and be able to revert the data easily in case somebody screws something up. It's not an easy task, but that's really what is required if this is going to be a statewide tool.

Honestly, I don't think it's anything that an individual can fix. I imagine it would probably require a rather weighty redesign of the database in order to make it read-write.

The really sad thing is that if I want a list of voter data I can trot down to the county elections office and pony up a hundred bucks and get all of my county voter data. Who needs VRM?

[Smarty Pants Liberal]

14. Wow, I'm such an idiot

I thought Demzilla came from the DNC and Voter Management was different.

Anywho, I read the rest of your posts and I agree, Voter Management blows chunks and there is no way that it could be fixed in time for it to be useful. A trip to the county administration building would be more fruitful.

[sonias]

15. Ah but the name, DemZilla, is cool

We should get a new state party level voter management tool, and name it DemZilla Rev 2. Or better yet DemZilla Reloaded.

Although we have to take red pills to work our way out of the Matrix. Are you the one?
:smoke:

Sonia

[Smarty Pants Liberal]

18. No, Fran Vincent's the one;-) n/t

[crispini]

16. VRM is the Texas "flavor" of Demzilla.

From what I understand, it's all we could get out of the DNC, and we still didn't get full fledged access to some of the features of the database.

I am very, very interested in how they intend to use demographic information to identify likely Democratic voters, but so far I haven't seen this concept bear any fruit. :shrug:

[Smarty Pants Liberal]

17. Well thanks for clearing that up, Crispini n/t

[sonias]

19. Very good report from SD25 meeting Saturday on DB

I'm going to copy part of a report that Zada-True Courage sent us in SD25, from the Saturday SDEC meeting. Zada is one of our SDEC members in SD25 and is on the Grassroots Committee.

We also had a report from our terrific DNC Field Directors. We heard from Anthony Gutierrez and Bryan Pendleton who have spent two straight months on the road. They have been doing training on the Voter Management System. We also heard from Sondra Holton who is the Field Director at the State Party Office. All are working hard and they've come up with some ideas on how to consolidate all the many lists into something that can be useful going forward.

Sondra also reported that our Texas Democratic Party Handbook (AKA Grassroots Manual) was being printed and shrinkwrapped as we met. This is also available for your own printing on the Texas Democratic Party Website. This book has been the labor of love of many Grassroots Committtee Members over the past several terms. Karl Siverman took the initiative to rewrite the book, there is new information as well as old, to enable it to be in a consistent format and to make it more professional. Karl spent over 500 hours on this. He wasn't alone many of us on the Grassroots Committee and others participated in review and offering information but Karl did the lion's share and he deserves a hearty THANKS.

We heard from Jennifer Dean who is charge of technology and the Voter Management System at the TDP. She has done some very good research on Voter Management Systems and she presented a new one to us and asked for approval to go forward with this system. This system is light years ahead of what we have now and will enable two way inforamation. This will go far to helping us build a database of voters that we actually know about. We moved that she should go forward with the new system.

Sounds like they have the resources now to start working on the VMS. We can thank Howard Dean for funding a few of those field director postitions too.

Zada rocks too!

Sonia

[Smarty Pants Liberal]

20. Oh YAY!

Brian told me about the new VMS but I thought he was talking about the one we have now.

Yippee!

And yes, Zada rocks!

[sonias]

12. Nope I don't remember but Boxer is enough

Millie's part of the Boxer rebellion.

Sonia