Gritty detemination

Last night, YouTube and CNN teamed up for the first formal 2008 Presidential candidates’ debate. Over 2,000 questions for the candidates were submitted to YouTube. You can watch the CNN streaming video of the debate here.

I’ve known that YouTube is a force to be reckoned with since the November, 2006 election because I was involved with the Video the Vote effort as a supervising attorney on the National Campaign for Fair Elections national voter protection hotline, 1-866.OUR.VOTE. As calls came in about a problem at a polling site, my job was to alert the Video the Vote crews, who scuttled to the scene, filmed what was going on and uploaded it to YouTube.

When I received a great little camcorder from my older son Jeff for Christmas last year, I was determined to use it to interview people on a variety of political subjects to upload to YouTube.

However, for several months, I’ve been struggling to learn how to upload video clips. Without going into any detail, you can hear from my voice in this ten second test that I filmed last night around midnight that I am full of gritty determination (I know, I know, we “upload” to YouTube, not “post.”). I finally succeeded this morning.

Why am I posting about this?

1. I’ve spent so much time learning to upload video clips that I’ve run out of energy for posting about anything else.

2. I think YouTube is going to play a very important role in politics in the future. The collaboration between YouTube and CNN to cover the Democratic Presidential candidate debates was even covered in China.

3. I want to have the technological skills that allow me to participate in the political process in the future.

Sidebar: I’m having a great time filming my infant twin grandchildren and am delighted that I can now upload to YouTube so other family members who don’t live nearby can see them as they grow.