Thoughts on the morning after ...

Waking up on a chilly Wednesday morning following the most historic election that I've ever had the privilege to be part of, I know that we are simply one step closer to fixing the problems in our country. As a Republican, I understood early on that this election had to be about more than ideology, more than race, and more than age. It had to be about getting Americans to stop thinking about themselves, and to begin working towards the common goal of making this country better.

The economic collapse wasn't about President Bush. It wasn't about Republicans. And it wasn't about a Democratic Congress. It wasn't about bad loans, or a war overseas, or foreign oil.

It was about greed. It was about people looking out only for themselves. It was about people forgetting to "be subject to one another." And so I voted for Barack Obama. I voted for a man with little political experience, with no executive experience, and with an ideology very different than my own.

Because what our country needed most right now was a "community organizer."

We need someone with the experience of getting people to work together towards a vision. The President wasn't going to fix the country's ills on his own. No President could. Real change only comes from the people that work towards it, united towards a common goal. Mixed in with the media-savvy phrases of hope and change was the most important message, the one that truly resonated with Obama's supporters.

We.

The next four years has to be about more than race. It has to be about more than political ideology. And it has to be about more than who won and who lost on November 4th, 2008. It has to be about all of us rallying behind not a man, but our country, to make it better. It has to be about us becoming a community, being subject to one another, and working for what we believe in.

It starts now.

Creating a Community is Hard

AMD is really tying to reach out to the enthusiast community with their news AMD Unprocessed website and forum, but so far, the going is pretty slow. It's always that way, because building a community takes time. The conversations are kind of forced at first, and no one knows quite what they can get away with, and when the community is somewhat exclusive (Unprocessed is primarily for tech bloggers) it takes even longer.

That said, the joint appears to be run by AMD and notable Windows blogger Robert McLaws. It looks like the idea is similar to what Microsoft is doing with The Hive (of which I am also a member), but focused on AMD products primarily.

I've got a bit of advice for AMD, and we'll see where it goes from here. First, they need to get more involved. Right now, a few of us are trying to get the ball rolling, but there has been very little involvement from AMD directly in the conversations. While it might not be Scott Carroll (who took over for Chris Aarons), some AMD people need to be there talking and assuring us the place is open for business. The only way bloggers will make a point to come there is if they have a direct conduit to information ... it's all about access. Otherwise, they can probably get better information from other third-party sources.

Second, with all due respect to Scott, get your welcome message off the home page. The idea of AMD "Unprocessed" flies against the idea of a PR guy providing us with information, so you may want to consider hiring an experienced Community Manager. Either that, or you've got to "open the kimono" right away and give bloggers access to information they couldn't get otherwise. Building trust takes time, but if you want to jump start a community, sometimes a grand gesture is required.

Lastly, if it's going to be a community, give people more places to talk about off-topic stuff, and maybe even about your competitors. Communities don't always stay on-topic, and sometimes it's the off-topic stuff that keeps people going in that difficult genesis period.

Anyway, it's an interesting experiment, and I hope it works. AMD has an opportunity to grab a little more mindshare from their competitors, and it's critical at a time where AMD is falling behind in the performance area, both in processors and graphics. Hopefully this will be great impetus for them.