Smart Posse
Jul 12th, 2003 by jimmoore
Consider the advantages of Smart Posses!
An observation on the amazing ever expanding cyber Dean campaign:
The campaign could use a more targeted form of smart mobs, perhaps smart “sub-mobs” that can swarm around more selective opportunities. These smaller mobs, mini-mobs, might be made up of people who are more intensely complementary. And that, in turn, up the creativity and the fun..and help the grass grow roots.
To do this the campaign needs a technology service that sits somewhere between Match.com (for smart dates) and Meetup.com (for smart mobs). I think “smart Posses” might do it.
So—imagine that I fill out a profile and say, “I’d be interested in getting together with people within ten miles of my zip codes, 02138 and 01773, for fun and political activity.” “I’m interested in [pick one or more] zany street theater, civil disobedience, and tedious letter writing campaigns. I’d be willing to go to a bar and see if we could sign up cool people for Dean—if you’d go do it with me.”
Then the software would allow any registered member to propose a “Posse” of between five and nine people (Cognitive scientist George Miller’s “magic number seven plus or minus two). So I’d get an email “From smartposse.com” that would be from some person who had scanned the profiles and thought I’d be fun to have in her or his posse.
The Posse invitation would include links to the profiles of a bunch of other prospective Posse members that he or she had selected. I could go check these folks out, and decide if I felt the posse had promise.
A Posse date must have more than five members. This keeps it light, makes it more creatively chaotic, and distinguishes it from a date date. We email back and forth, and eventually either opt in for this Posse date or opt out for now. No pressure, just opportunity.
Oh yea, I have no problem with “cool dates for Dean” but that is a different idea…