Iran Democracy Activist, Tech Blogger, New Yorker

Iran Democracy

My new tag line on Twitter and Facebook: Iran Democracy Activist, Tech Blogger, New Yorker.

My old intro both places: Tech Entrepreneur. Advocating Inventor. Third World Guy. Netizen. Global Citizen. New Yorker. Googleable. Global South Advocate. Overall Nice Guy. Bossmanperson. Subway Comrade. Inspiration. Visionary. Troublemaker.

I am not right now a tech entrepreneur, thanks to my immigration mess. I fear I might get sued if I keep calling myself a tech entrepreneur. I have enemies in town. I will revisit that in about a year. For now tech blogging is my tech thing to do.

But my primary push is for Iran democracy. My immediate push is to do some fundraising for the work.

I want to do the Iran democracy thing while I wait to have the option to do the tech entrepreneur thing. I am very much in mood to do the tech entrepreneur thing. Tech blogging is a prelude to that. Learn from Fred Wilson the value of having a daily updated blog for someone who wants to stay active in tech.

My Iran democracy work is going to be social media intensive. I am presenting myself as a digital ninja/commando. It is as much politics as it is tech. I like the intensity of revolutionary work.

This is the crowd I am targeting to raise 150K plus: Prominent Iranian Americans. 100K pays for my work for 12-15 months. 50K is bonus upon task completion. Task completion is regime change leading to an interim government mandated with holding elections to a constituent assembly. If I raise more than 150K, the extra money I spend on the same cause in ways I choose.

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Reshma 2010: A Post Mortem

Image via CrunchBaseI very much stand by this blog post: Positivity, Excellence, Dark Matter.

There are three departments - money, message, organization - and Reshma Saujani is excellent at all three. Reshma 2010 was an amazing operation. I marveled at all the details that Reshma 2010 worked on day in and day out. I marveled at the long hours the Reshma 2010 team put in and still stayed in good spirits. It was an amazing effort.

Maloney won because there is power in incumbency, there is power in raising three million dollars for a primary, there is power in getting endorsed by a former president and two sitting Senators. And a sitting president. And the entire congressional delegation in the state. Maloney is mediocre, not exactly headed for greatness, but she has consistently voted the party line. Party leaders like that. She has been reliable.

But I felt victory was possible. And getting 6,000 votes when you could have won at 16,000, I am calling it close.

Now that the race is over, I am in a small mood to do a slight post mortem. Could we have done a few things differently? I hope this does not come across as Monday morning quarterbacking, that is why I started with words of heartfelt praise.

Social Media, YouTube

I never understood why there was no prominent, direct link from the main Reshma2010.com page to the Reshma For Congress YouTube channel, and why the Reshma bio video was not prominently displayed on the front page itself. Perhaps on the sidebar. We did want TV debates and we were not too happy we got a radio debate, but we did not make enough use of YouTube in the same spirit. I put in a request. Give me YouTube versions of all of Reshma's HuffPo articles. I did not go anywhere with that request. We should have attempted to go viral on Facebook with those videos. Forget Maloney, we should have debated the voters.

Volunteers

Reshma 2010 stayed staff centric. It burned the midnight oil like a tech startup, but it also stayed staff centric like a tech startup. It might have hired perhaps two fewer people and had a much larger budget for volunteer barbecues.

The New Woman Push

Barack Obama did not talk much about race. Reshma Saujani did not talk much about gender. But perhaps she should have. There was a South Asian push, but there was not a similar New Woman push.

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