Head Tale

[Edit – 2009/03/29 – It has been pointed out that one of the criticisms in this post is incorrect.  Dwain Lingenfelter's Google mash-up map doesn't work because of a usability issue, not because non-events are being posted.]

Recently, I did a post noting that Dwain Lingenfelter has about 26% of his support on Facebook from people who can be directly connected to our province via their network affiliation(s) while Ryan Meili gets 60% of his support this way.  In pure numbers, Meili beats Lingenfelter 173 to 128.  (This count was *before* a recent surge in online support that saw Meili's Facebook fan page jump by about 30 people while Lingenfelter has stayed static for at least a week.) 

In that post, I also touched on the current ActUpInSask.org NDP leadership poll which shows Lingenfelter as frontrunner by a large margin but has an inherent problem in that it is a poll that is easily gameable via people submitting multiple votes (a technique which likely is being done to a certain extent by all the campaigns.  Well, maybe not by Deb Higgins as is pointed out in the comments to a post BuckDog did on the subject.)

My latest exposure into the difference between what appears to be happening at first glance and what's really happening beneath the surface, at least in regards to the technological aspects of this leadership campaign, occurred when I took a closer look at the Google Maps mash-up Dwain Lingenfelter has displayed very prominently on his home page. 

Labelled “Link's Campaign Trail”, the map shows the entire province of Saskatchewan with a bunch of green and orange digital push-pins across the length and width of the province.  Green pins show where he's been and orange indicates where he plans to go soon.

Fair enough – great use of technology, very interactive, very cool way to represent that Lingenfelter is running a province-wide campaign and trying to reach out to all parts of the province (of course, this also subtly hints at his apparent ability to set the rules he wants the other candidates to follow – but that's a different post.)

Except that, as with the number of Columbia-based supporters Lingenfelter has on his Facebook fan page, if you look beyond the initial impression this Google map gives, you see something different may be happening. 

When you zoom in to see the text associated with each push-pin, many identify things like coffee parties, constituency meetings and the like that Link has attended or plans to attend.  But there are also a number of push pins that include a generic piece of text, all posted on February 14:

“Link is determined to rebuild the party membership province-wide. 
Throughout the campaign he will be visiting all 58 provincial
constituencies and talking with New Democrats and potential supporters
in every part of our province.  Click on the green balloons to see where he's been, and the orange to see where he's heading soon…”

If the pins with this text were all orange, I could (maybe) understand that they're placeholders showing communities he intends to visit but doesn't have an event to tie into or set-up for himself yet.  But a number of the push-pins are green indicating that these are places he claims to have been as part of his campaign trail.  Yet without a description, you don't know if it's a place where he held a formal event, a place where he stopped for gas and ended up doing some politicking at the nearby coffee shop or if he just passed through. 

Or if you were a really suspicious type, you might wonder if the person who did the mash-up just filled out the map with push-pins to make it appear that the campaign is doing more across the entire province than it really is? [Edit: I'm not going to delete this entire post as one reader demanded.  But upon re-reading, I'm going to strike out this sentence as I think it crosses a line and was inappropriate.]

Again, as with Link's Columbia support base on Facebook and the heavily gamed ActUpInSask poll, things like this aren't illegal.  But my feeling is that this is so much more politics-as-usual and slightly immoral – bending the truth, framing the question and doing whatever else it takes to create the impression that you want to give.

To put it another way, these things all appear intended to send a message: “I'm the oldest candidate in the race yet I also have the most online support – how can you not vote for me?”  But this discrepancy between appearance and reality is a big part of why I'm supporting Ryan Meili. 

I don't think Ryan wants to play these same old games (although to be fair, his supporters appear to have gamed the ActUp poll as much as anyone) and wants to move beyond these type of techniques to a politics that has something that people of all political stripes would find very refreshing –  honesty. 

As an example, in his latest blog post, Ryan admitted that a meeting he held in Wynyard was put together at the last minute and had a small (but mighty!) attendance. 

I don't know if you'd ever hear Lingenfelter admit to something like this and further, I think this is the type of thing that is *really* indicative of the generational shift that is much of what this contest is about.  I believe that people of my generation feel a lot more free to be open, to express their opinions, to share their thoughts honestly without trying to frame things or manage the optics. 

Technology and its potential to facilitate this openness and sharing is a bit part of that so when I see someone using technology in what you might call an “old school” way, I guess it just shows me that you can have all the fancy Google Maps mash-ups you want but if the content isn't there, you're missing the point completely.

One final point (and I know this post has been a bit all over the map – no pun intended).  Like Meili, Link also had a campaign event in Wynyard.  It was a coffee party on February 7.  Ryan Meili's Wynyard event was held in the evening while he was in that geographic area, continuing to his work as a rural relief locum doctor.  As with my technology-related examples, you can look at the surface appearance but the important thing is to look at what's really happening underneath. 

Lingenfelter comes to town and I'm sure he has a well-planned, well-oiled, well-attended event.  Then he leaves.  Ryan comes to Wynyard because he's in the area working in his role as a rural relief locum doctor.  He has an event that's last-minute, poorly attended and comes after a long day at the local clinic.  

But if I'm living in rural Saskatchewan, I know which candidate is demonstrating a true commitment to rural Saskatchewan and which candidate, I would support for that reason.