Today the Obama campaign organized about 5000 house parties in 50 states, with live video of Barack online. There is also blogging and video from "typical" house parties, like Janet Sutherland's gathering in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

The http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR200703... ">Washington Post attempts to contextualize the houseparties, but I think the paper lays out an overly simplistic, linear story of Dean to Lamont to Obama, without appreciating the shift that is occurring throughout mainstream politics not just by Obama but by many presidential campaigns (but perhaps the coverage is a welcome break from the old Jesse Jackson to Al Sharpton to Barack Obama story).

While I'm an Obama supporter and others might say today is not blogworthy because it resembled the houseparties / telephone conference calls that presidential campaigns have organized in the past, I think that today is a bit different. The fact that average folks could upload pictures and video and blog about their own house party made this a bit more about the participants, and a bit less about the candidate.

It seems to me that the Obama campaign faces a dilemma. In the traditional media world, they've got to make the case that Barack has the experience and judgment to be president. That effort is necessarily about Barack.

But the online world offers a different model that can't be about selling Barack as a "product," or perhaps even center around him primarily. Barack might be the reason that people intitially get together-but the larger question, which might seem rather naïve and idealistic, is how to harness the collaborative/collective intelligence of citizens to address detailed problems that no bright presidential candidate-and no group of experts-can solve alone.

As Tom Friedman writes in recounting an interview with Andrew Rasiej, "The next technological political model will revolve around the power of community and individual uploading. In this model, the public officeholder will no longer be the one who talks to the many or tries to listen to the many. Rather, he or she will become a hub of connectivity for the many to work with the many, creating networks of public advocates to identify problems, solve problems, and get behind candidates who get it."

I understand that many staffers are focused on winning campaigns rather than saving the world through civic engagement. But even political professionals are more likely to realize their goals if they can create an online network that allows for retail, nook-and-cranny, niche, meaningful, "Long Tail" interaction and engagement rather than generic one-way soliloquies and wholesale telemarketer-type financial shake downs. Granted, few campaigns have the resources to provide this personal experience themselves (aside from their Latino Outreach, Faith Outreach, and other outreach desks that walk the fine line between inclusion and typecasting). But following the spirit of Amazon reviews, eBay, and Wikipedia, the campaigns might create a network that empowers and trusts users to provide each other with this experience. We'll see.