Candleblog

Town Meeting Day is upon us again in Vermont. For the first election cycle in several years, VCAM and CCTV won’t be doing the Exit Voices thing. It became clear over the last few cycles that the social media void we were trying to fill with the blog/aggregator was being adequately filled in other places by other people, using a whole slew of social media technologies. It’s now easier than ever for Vermonters to participate in the online meta-discourse about the elections.

Here’s a brief (and no doubt incomplete) rundown of some of the online social media outlets, portals and opportunities for public participation in Town Meeting Day…

First off, wed/dev social media guy, Bradley Holt, has thrown up a great aggregation site with suggested tags for your town meeting-related media. If you’re sharing Town Meeting media via Twitter, Flickr, Technorati, Delicious or YouTube, tag your content with “tmdvt09″ (#tmdvt for Twitter) and it will automatically post at the site.

CCTV channel 17 is of course covering all the action tomorrow evening starting at 7:30. A live stream and up-to-the-minute election results will be available at channel17.org. (NOTE: I will be in the channel 17 studio tomorrow evening talking with BTV political blogger Haik Bedrosian about new media and the elections).

CCTV also hosted some candidate forums in their studios. You can watch them online here.

Speaking of Haik, his blog burlingtonpol.com has interviews with all four BTV mayoral candidates as well as a host of information about the election and the IRV system.

The sisters at the House of LeMay have posted a write-up on the gayoral election in Burlington.

BTV mayoral candidates in social media: Dan Smith is on Facebook and Twitter and seems to have a firm grasp of the power of social media (and SEO — but I guess you’d have to have some search mojo with a name like “Dan Smith”). Andy Montroll is on Facebook. Mayor Kiss doesn’t (at first glance) appear to have much of a foot in the social media door. And Kurt Wright’s website is totally rocking a mid-90s aesthetic! Very retro, but no social media that I can see. (UPDATE: Wright has a Facebook page.)

What am I leaving out? Please educate me in the comments.

I’ll be at tonight’s Shelburne Town Meeting (working for VCAM) and I’ll shoot some photos and video for the pool of stuff. Yay, democracy!!!