Bling Bling in the ATL

Florida was massive. You can imagine the pitch - 18 days before the election, Edwards in town on 3 days notice for a rally. it was awesome.

I helped get ready for Edwards a bit, and worked on getting poll watchers for the panhandle certified. You don't want to know how disorganized that effort is.

I like the voluntary nature of all the work there - people come in when they want, do the work that interests them, leave when they're bored or have other pressing matters to attend to. When fish school there is an algorithm they follow that, roughly, realigns themselves with regard to the direction and proximity of the 4 fish next to them. Because each fish has the same algorithm, an awareness of all the fish in the school can be inferred. It feels kind of like that.

You meet so many people and have so many long term and short term tasks that you need to prioritize, until you've reached your capacity, and someone asks you a question and you stare blankly, cycling through faces and comments trying to figure out who the person in front of you is and what you can do with them.

The key to being effective is tapping into the people who are running the show, keeping tabs on what the overall goals are, even if you're not working on them, taking time-outs to process and recharge, delegating as much as you can down, and as little as you can up, and finding something that you're good at to work on.

Delegating was fun. I'd be in the middle of something, and someone would tell me, "get me 10K flyers with location info for early voting in all our counties by 3PM." I draft up a flyer, run into the volunteer room, shout 'I need a proofreader!' This middle aged lady with glasses painting a poster looks up and says 'I'm an economist, does that count?' I hand her the sheet and say, "get it back to me in 10 minutes." She'd come back to me with changes, I'd run it by leadership, add some legal schmegal at the bottom, then I'd go back to the lady and say, "If I show you where supplies and copiers are and get you some helpers, can you make 10,000 copies of this flyer on colored paper?" She says, 'yeah!' I run back into the volunteer room and shout, "Who wants to be my best friend?" Three guys stand up. I point to the middle aged lady and say, "Do what she says," and go back to my poll watcher stuff.

This weekend there was the Advance team from DC that came in to pave the way for Edwards to show up - put security, crowds, tickets, press, signs, demonstrations, counter-demonstrations in place. Most are bright young things named Todd and Trevor - 22 yr old men with healthy glows, great cheekbones and perfect blue shirt/khaki pants/docker outfits. Their affect is downright arrogant, they don't say much, and when they do, its in a low tone, and everyone does what they say.

Then there are the Bostonians - met one named A who was 50'ish, we watched a bit of the sox game together. He had shoulderlength white hair and beard, and would periodically pull out a paddle brush and touch up his hair. I wondered who he was and why he was on the Advance team, and I'm guessing he's someone not too important who worked with Kerry for a few years now.

I didn't want to leave, and I'm going back on Thursday. I wish this was my real job and that it wouldn't be over in 16 days.

In other news, the Sox won last night. I'm slowly getting into more and more trouble at work. My house is a cleanish, but all my laundry is dirty and I'm out of kitty litter. Jack brought me a live chipmunk when I got back on Monday, which I enticed into a coffee mug and threw outside. And I'm flat broke.