Thursday, August 30, 2007

Don’t be evil.

My buddy Roberto sent me this link recently from the "Letter from founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, which was published in April 2004, as the group announced its move to public ownership."

"Don’t be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company."

I feel this captures well the reason why I try to "do the right thing" with everything in my life. "If you don't stand for something, you can fall for anything," said Tracy Mourning as she introduced Barack Obama at the Mansion event last weekend.

I will stand for this.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Obama in Miami Beach

This event was an interesting one considering I had just left the Miami Dade county auditorium. Taking place at Mansion, a premier night club in the heart of South Beach, and asking for $100/person brought out the bling in full effect. Unfortunately, these standard tickets didn't get you close enough to shake hands with the senator, it cost another $150 for that. I was definitely disappointed since it gave a sizable pricetag to simply make contact, but I can see the need to raise funds for the campaign at this point. I guess I'll have to move to Iowa or something.

The speech was pretty informal and I was amazed at how well Barack can play off the crowd. At one point while talk about today's administration, someone yelled out "Get out of the Bush's!". This had everyone rolling including the senator...he shifted into a full breakdown of why GW has failed the American people. At another moment on the same thread, a shout of "and the constitution" came to complete Obama's sentence on how the white house has word-played with our trust. It made for a great "stump speech" that proved a solid connection between the speaker and the audience.

He closed out as a great story teller... without embellishing, I'll describe it briefly. He recalled a previous experience on the campaign trail that showed him one person can make a difference. He had made a promise to an endorser that he would visit her hometown in some place in South Carolina. Turns out it was "an hour and a half from everywhere". Arriving in the rain and after a long drive with his crew, he was grumpy and unmotivated. Walking into a city hall with about 20 senior citizens, he saw little worth in being there. Making the best of it and approaching the group, he heard someone enter the room from behind. I small old lady with a large brim church hat mustered a commanding "Fire it up!". The group reluctantly replied "fire it up...". She followed with "Gettin ready'a go" to receive a louder response. Turns out this lady was a 20-year councilwoman known to be an awesome chanter. She incessantly repeated the phrases to louder and louder replies. "Come to think of it, I was starting to feel a lil....fired up myself", Obama explained. This one lady made all the difference. "So what I can say to you is... Fire it up!"..."Gettin ready'a go"... Each iteration elicited a louder and louder response from us. After the fifth time, he shouted "Let's change the world!!!...thank youoo..." and through up a recognizable Peace Sign.

I felt like I witnessed history.

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Obama in Little Havana

Today was a great day for south florida. In the face of protests and plenty of percieved opposition, barack obama had the "audacity of hope" to come and address our community with his crusade of change. And boy was it appreicated. In a packed house at the Miami dade county auditorium, barack inspired us all with his ideals and broad ability to unify those around him. The diversity of the crowd present was a testament to that.

On a personal note, I arrived at 1:45pm to find a long line of eager supporters waiting to enter the auditorium. Meanwhile, across the street from them was a crowd of hard-line Cuban conservatives yelling atrocities in Spanish (mainly) via a well amplified bullhorn. I had made arrangements to meet with a group of supporters who wanted to counter this expected opposition for media purposes. I even made a sign of my own.

Regardless, we were somewhat unprepared to go up againt this experienced opposition (45 years and counting). This prompted some tense moments. Coming up with good chants to energize us was a challenge, but overall we accomplished our goal and drew a good amount of the media attention. The main organizer,a harvard student named giancarlo, held the spotlight.

Once inside, though, the spirit was completely different. People were assembling in their seats and in the process of finding one for myself, I got plenty of photo ops due to my sign, LOL. I guess I'm meagerly creative after all. Anyway, i had a good feeling about the whole thing. I finally found a seat beside an interesting black woman named wanda. She had a calm and collected demeener about her, although her bleached blond hair screamed "statement". We made small talk, about how she was from Baltimore and curious about obama. I have been very impressed lately about how politically engaged people from the north east are. So much as to spend $30-$100 to see a candidate speak that you might not even vote for? That's somewhat of an investment in government, I would say. The community I was raised in never really taught me that value. I guess they were more cynical about government than I thought. The feeling was that we don't and can't make a difference... THAT NEEDS TO CHANGE!

Just before barack began to speak, my friend Mariah joined us. I was worried that she would miss him. She did miss the parade of local leaders talking about themselves which was ok. It was a little forced fed, but I can see the need to leverage a big name to help grow the base. Once obama spoke though, the crowd went wild. The experience was surreal for me...after following his movement for over a year, reading his book and absorbing just about anything the national media would put out about him, it was awesome to see his reality. I won't get into his speech since I'm sure it in youtube but his way of interacting with the crowd was flawless. Every shout out was adressed I detail, somewhat of a challenge given the formal speech he was proly following. It gave you a great sense that his words weren't reherssed at all and were coming straight from his core beliefs. Yet another piece of evidence that he is the "realist" candidate I've ever been aware of.

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