The MyHeritage Look-a-Like Meter is pretty fun. Pace apparently looks 11% more like Shea than me though to be fair, they have similar facial expressions in the picture I use, neither of them are wearing glasses while I am and of course, neither Pace nor his mother have a beard either!
I know I've been neglecting lots of things on this blog with all the political posts the past few months and the Friday Fun Link is one that I've felt most guilty about. Therefore, this week I'm going to do a pre-FFL, a real FFL and a post-FFL – lucky you!
To start, Karaoke Machine is a site that got mentioned during my presentation at CLA (er, maybe in an unrelated discussion after my presentation come to think of it!)
Most of the people in the room sort of chuckled when it was described as a “blast” and “great fun” but I took note of the URL because I'm the type of person who, having gotten married in Mexico, would have a wedding reception in Shea's hometown when we returned that had “a Mexican theme…with karaoke!“
It is pretty cool – it's all web-based, you can get to a few decent songs (more if you pay of course), you can use an external mic or the one built into your computer, pick to sing along with or without a guiding vocal track and it even tracks whether you're singing sharp/flat or right on key! (I have no idea what it means when you see no indicator at all – that's probably bad.)
(Note to self: The next time you're on this site in your living room and hitting those high notes on “With or Without You”, make sure the door and windows are closed! 
)
Okay, after five months of almost non-stop political posts, I feel like I'm going to slowly transition back to library and technology posts (with a healthy mix of cute kid too!) But I don't think I'll leave the politics behind completely – I've got a few posts percolating including a few thoughts on the role of blogs & new media in the leadership race, some of my fondest memories of the campaign and perhaps a campaign post-mortem on things that might have been done better or differently. (Plus the next two years promise to be *very* interesting so I won't be able to resist chiming in on occasion.)
But until then, here's a pretty cool site which allows you to do a search then presents three columns of anonymous results – one from Google, one from Yahoo! and one from Bing (Microsoft's new search engine). You pick which set of results you like the best and then the logos of the different companies are revealed. (I tended to pick Google on a few different tries but was surprised how often I ended up picking either Bing or Yahoo! as well.)
Ryan has decided not to run in the Riversdale by-election and that's
the right decision for a wide range of reasons. (The link I gave is to News Talk 980 and even they mis-spell Link's first name as “Dwaine”! Er, I hope that mistake doesn't go *poof*. 
)
1) It allows
a great female candidate with deep roots in that area to run unopposed, increasing the chances both her and Ryan will be in the Legislature in 2011 (and she's a lactivist too
– Shea met her at convention and all I could say was, “Uhm, I'll just be over
here” as they compared notes and chatted like old friends.)
2) The choice not to get into a nomination battle once again showed Ryan's principles and values. It's not just about winning for him – it's about the long-term future of the party and also doing the right thing.
3) It allows
Ryan to avoid some of the nastiness that is inevitably coming with
Dwain Lingenfelter squaring off against Brad Wall. (Today, John Gormley was openly speculating about whether Dwain Lingenfelter even meets the Elections Saskatchewan regulation stating that you have to have been a resident of the province for the past six months to be elected. I may not have that 100% correct but that's the gist of what he was on about. That detail is also referenced in the last line of this Discover Moose Jaw story.)
4) It gives Ryan time to re-group after a grueling, five-month campaign of non-stop activity.
5) And it will be a
chance to see whether Link needed Ryan more than Ryan needed Link as I
suspect is very much the case.
Below is the video that introduced Ryan at the NDP convention last weekend. I'm completely biased but Ryan easily had the best floor show of any of the candidates. I hope someone also uploads his speech because it kicked ass too!
And I can't help but take one last shot at Dwain Lingenfelter by observing that his convention video looked like an 80's corporate training video including, I swear to god, one person spinning and pointing at the camera in the most cheesy fashion imaginable! He also used a Jack Semple instrumental track which was a cool nod to Saskatchewan except that the track he picked sounded like a 70's porno song (er, at least I suspect that's what 70's porno soundtracks sound like. 
) I didn't link to the actual Semple song he used above as I don't know the name of it – I just wanted to give you a sample of how talented Semple truly is. In fact, he won a cross-Canada guitar competition which is where the clip I linked to is from. Oh, and to top it off, Link used Bon Jovi's anthem, “Raise Your Hands” as his exit song. Yep, nothing screams party renewal like head banging 80's glam bands! Of course, I would've gone with “One More Time” by Streetheart for the Regina connection and the oh so appropriate title – but that's just me.)
Okay, that's it. I'm introducing a moratorium on cuts on Dwain Lingenfelter now that I'm slowly coming around to the fact that he's the leader of the party I believe in and, as long as he does a reasonable job of reaching out to the supporters of other candidates on the left of the party, I won't be voting Green or Liberal in the next election.
Nothing but positivity from here on in! Starting now…
I happened to be passing through the lobby during the last morning of the NDP convention today when I came upon Dwain Lingenfelter threatening to have a party member charged with assault while the member was being physically restrained by two other people.
I didn't see the start of the incident but from what I was able to glean, it sounds like the member had bumped into Link with his shoulder, possibly after having an exchange relating to this story where Link appeared to be contradicting the will of the party's membership almost immediately after winning the leadership.
I don't know if Lingenfelter feels that he's begun reaching out to the supporters of other campaigns as he promised to do in his acceptance speech. But obviously, they've begun reaching out to him! 
(Bad joke, I know. But I share the frustration of many in that it appears that Mr. Lingenfelter's words are empty – both in terms of how he intends to be a leader of all NDP members and also in how swiftly he appears to be ignoring the will of the majority of the delegates at convention who voted for a strongly worded anti-nuke resolution.)
Well, the race is over and Dwain Lingenfelter did end up winning as most people projected. Though Ryan did make it a nail-biter in the end with Link getting 55% of the vote to Ryan's 45% on the second ballot.
As I posted on Facebook, I'm not as disappointed as I thought I might be if Ryan lost and there are a number of reasons for this:
1) The enthusiasm I saw generated in the room today by Ryan's floor show, his speech and his supporters was amazing.
2) The fact that Ryan managed to come within a thousand votes of beating Link (where'd I hear that number before? ) is almost unbelievable when you consider where each of them started from.
3) The fact that the other two contenders came over to Ryan after being eliminated (Deb Higgins after the first ballot) and withdrawing (Yens Pedersen) and Ryan gained 1700 votes on the second ballot while Link gained less than 700 shows that Link won the immediate prize but that the platform and approach that Ryan put forward were the ones that are connecting with a wider range of people and will lay the groundwork for the party's long-term direction.
I don't know – I probably shouldn't be writing too much right now as I'm still trying to process what the Link win (and how close it was) means – for the party, for the future, for all of the young supporters like myself who are feeling some real mixed emotions right now.
Through-out this whole race, I've enjoyed the CBC coverage and especially the comments from readers since you'd get a real mix of Link supporters, Meili supporters, Sask Party muck-rakers chiming in. So here's a link to their story about Link winning the leadership.
Shea and I went
to the first day of the NDP convention today courtesy of our
constituency association. We were a bit late arriving, having to run
some last-minute errands for the Meili campaign (ah, the life of a
lowly volunteer! 
)
It was a very interesting day – surprising how many people we knew –
co-workers, former co-workers, colleagues, Shea's uncle (who's on the
conference planning committee or something) and so on.
Morning
was Resolutions and to be honest, the stuff they were discussing – from
anti-nuke stuff to legalizing drugs to who should serve on municipal
police boards – alternated from really engrossing to desperately
boring. Someone observed that “the problem is that you see the same
people getting up over and over and you know they're going to say the
same things about the same pet issue that they've been saying for 15
years.” (It made me wonder if there's some connection between people
who can't resist approaching an open mic and people who maintain blogs?
)
Had
conversations with a couple people who explained why they were
supporting Link – one person said “Link knows money – how to raise it,
how to deal with it.” All I could think was “Really???” Because from
what I've seen, Link's skill with money basically extends to raising a
whackload of it (including from some companies that no one can find
record of – I can't find the link to that disccussion now but I think
it was on Jurist). His other skill with money includes how to spend
$11 000 in small bills to buy memberships for people who don't want
them and/or don't know they're getting them. It actually blows my mind
that “he knows money” of all reasons is why someone would say they're
supporting Link.
Someone
else made the experience argument to me which is maybe Ryan's biggest
weaknesses in the eyes of some NDP members – especially many boomers
who often have a very linear notion of what might constitute a career.
This person literally said to me: “Ryan should start by getting
involved with his constituency association then maybe run for MLA in a
few years then move into cabinet a few years after that then, when he's
paid his dues, he can run for leader.” I countered that, in my eyes,
Ryan not having long, deep party ties is a big part of his appeal. He
doesn't owe somebody a favour from the 1982 convention or still carry a
grudge from the 1993 one. He isn't yet completely burdened by internal
party politics of “who loves me, who loves me not” that might prevent
someone from actually being able to accomplish anything. Plus I think
he's proven himself in other arenas to be more than capable of leading
a provincial political party, especially if he surrounds himself with
experienced hands as I'm sure he would.
I'll give an example from libraryland. The National Library of Canada recently appointed their National Librarian who did not have a Master of Library Science degree. There were debates about this continually at CLA last week and many of the same arguments were put forward – if you don't have an MLIS, you don't know the issues. You don't know the history. You don't know the language. And as a professional, I tend to agree with those arguments. But then I think that the most famous recent National Librarian was author, Roch Carrier, who brought a huge amount of profile and a unique perspective to the position and I know that, when you're talking about a leadership role, not just a “typical” position, past credentials and history and connections aren't necessarily the most important things. Ability to lead and to get things done is.
Afternoon
was further discussion on those same resolutions (someone explained it
to me but I'm still not sure why they discuss these things then break
for lunch then come back and discuss them again! I think the morning
is supposed to be a chance to really work them over then they're
supposed to go away and someone picks which ones should be discussed in
the afternoon “for real” if they can't get to them all. Either that or
they're trying to encourage new members to never attend a meeting
again! )
The
day ended with a tribute to Lorne Calvert featuring Premier Gary Doer
of Manitoba and the other two living former Saskatchewan premiers,
Allan Blakeney and Roy Romanow as well as Mr. Calvert's daughter.
Great speeches by all – Blakeney's was probably my favourite – and I'm
man enough to admit that I teared up numerous times throughout all of
them. (I also briefly considered a plan to buy a Sask Party membership
and attend their convention the next time it happens, just to compare
and contrast, how things are done at each.)
After supper at home, went back to the hospitality suites at the Regina Inn tonight and it was great. Jurist has already detailed
how three of the candidates had theirs at that venue while Dwain
Lingenfelter had his at the Hotel Sask. Someone said that Link booked
his event first so I can't help wondering if this, like so many other
things in this race, reflects a real division within the party? Link
was quoted recently as saying that if he wins, it'll be like Obama and
Hillary with him and the other candidates – they fought hard but came
together to work afterwards. Only that there are a couple fairly major
problems with that analogy – by any reasonable measure, Meili is the
Obama figure (ie. the eventual winner) so it's speculation how things would've worked out if Hillary had won. Also, Hillary was willing to stick
around to work with Obama whereas Link is on record as saying he won't
stick around to run for a seat if he loses while all other candidates
have said that they would. So I guess he's not seeing himself as a Hillary figure in any way, shape or form – even though he is!
The
winner of “most people” in terms of the hospitality suites at the
Regina Inn? The hallway outside the Pedersen/Meili suites! That's
where the bar was and that was where a lot of people ended up
congregating.
Highlight
of the whole day? Listening to the replay of John Gormley Live
(well-known talk radio host in Saskatchewan) on the drive home and
hearing him say “auto erotic asphyxiation” about fifty times while
discussing the David Carradine death (he said his staff checked and
he'd done 14 000 topics in his time on the air and that phrase had
never been uttered before. He definitely made up for it!)
They
also had a clip of the new leader of the Sask Green party saying she
hoped Link didn't win because it would be a huge blow to the NDP's
credibility as an environmental party. I thought that was pretty cool
– the Green party stands to be one of the other winners if Link wins
since there could be an exodus of new and/or progressive NDP members to
the Green party. Yet, here was the young new leader of a
what is currently a fringe party in Saskatchewan saying they don't want
to gain members at a cost to our planet. Amazing to put principles
first and as one person who spoke to a really long resolution
re-affirming the NDP's commitment to all kinds of our core issues said,
(I paraphrase) “Why are we even discussing this?”
I always forget that people are actually reading this blog but heard
from a few people that they've been following my political posts. (I was keeping a
pretty low profile at the convention – not walking up to people and saying “Hi, I'm
Jason. I blog at Head Tale. Have you seen it???”)
Here's an “unrequested request” from one recent reader…
So I'll turn it around and
end my last post before the new leader of the NDP is chosen by simply
saying: “Thank-you Ryan!”
When I recently told someone I'd just been to the CLA conference, he replied “So you're a nerd then?”
“It's worse than that,” I replied. “I happily spent the first day with the Emerging Technologies Interest Group. So I'm like an uber-nerd of the library world!”
In that spirit, here's my Geek Chart:
Here are the slides for the presentation I gave at the ETIG pre-conference. A couple of them went wonky for some reasons – my best guess is that the file I was using got opened in Powerpoint (English version), Powerpoint (French version), NeoOffice on Mac and maybe one other program as well between the time that I designed the presentation and when I uploaded it. I'll replace the file when I get a chance to fix these errors…
(Click here to read All Ten “Reasons I'm Supporting Ryan Meili” Posts)
Since my earliest posts about Ryan I've compared him to politicians like Barack Obama and Tommy Douglas. But as I said when I began this latest series of posts with “#10 – He's Soft Spoken“,
I knew this wasn't literally the case – only that these kinds of
comparisons worked as a useful shorthand for the type of leader someone
might resemble in policy or strategy.
The comparisons can also be useful to provide some insight into the
type of leader a candidate had the potential to be. In fact, in some
ways, I think Ryan's best analogy might be a sort of hybrid of Tommy Douglas and Barack Obama –
a “21st Century Tommy Douglas” if you will.
The comparisons are useful to a point but in the end, should he become
the leader of the Saskatchewan NDP on Saturday, Ryan Meili won't be the next TC Douglas, the next Barack Obama or the next anyone else. Ultimately, he will be the first Ryan Meili.
Still, that's not such a bad thing when (with all due respect to the
other candidates who would each make a fine leader for the NDP in their
own way) Ryan is the only one I see with the potential to be a
transformative leader for the party – the party of Douglas that my
grandfather voted for and the party of Blakeney, Romanow and Calvert who are the
leaders I've known in my lifetime.
Ryan has his weaknesses, some real and some outright fabrications
that are being passed around as fact. But if you were creating the
perfect candidate for the Saskatchewan NDP at this point in its history, you'd probably have a hard
time doing better than Ryan.
Here are some of the main characteristics, attributes and experiences he would bring to the leadership:
– doctor
– connected to both rural and urban Saskatchewan
– strong connections to the First Nations community
– tech savvy
– young
– progressive
– accomplished
– innovative
– award-winning
– positive
– intellectual
– idealistic yet pragmatic
– experienced with international development
– his biggest scandal is that he was arrested during a peaceful protest
at the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City (something many NDP
members probably see as a badge of honour as much as anything!)
– multi-lingual
– lives and works in Saskatoon's inner-city (when not working in
various small towns around the province as a rural relief locum)
– and I've been told some people find him quite handsome too!
There are some candidates who seem to treat the NDP, not as its historic precursor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation but as the Competitive
Commonwealth Federation. I don't think Ryan operates that way. Time
and again, he's shown that he will cooperate with his leadership
opponents and can bring others together rather than dividing people (PDF – scroll to page 19).
In the end, it comes down to this. Against a group of leadership
candidates who were arguably all better known within the NDP than Ryan at the start of
the leadership race, Dr. Meili has vaulted from relative unknown to being a
strong second-place contender in a few short months. This is due to all of the factors I listed above plus the fact that he's drawn a strong team of party newbies and stalwarts to him because they also recognize Ryan's potential as a transformative leader for the Saskatchewan NDP at a critical juncture in its history.
If I'm being completely honest, when I first got involved with his
campaign, I probably thought it would take a miracle for Ryan
to win (but after seeing Obama overcome similar odds in the US, that's a miracle I was willing to believe in!)
After Lingenfelter's membership scandal reminded everyone that
this is as much a choice about doing politics in an old way versus
doing them in a new way, I thought there was maybe a chance that Ryan
could win.
Within the last
two weeks, with the money bomb and a last minute push of policy releases and events around the province, I've allowed myself to believe that Ryan really
has a legitimate shot at winning.
Still, to win, Ryan needs votes. The election results are tabulated on Saturday but you can vote now (don't wait until the convention if you can help it!)
If you haven't already, I strongly encourage you to consider voting for
Ryan as your first choice (or your second choice if you prefer another
candidate.)
Take a look at this hypothetical timeline:
I don't know about yout but I like the way that looks!
