With the U.S. Presidential elections likely to be held in November 2008, two major candidates, Senators John McCain (Rep.) and Barack Obama (Dem.) debated issues around foreign policy yesterday. To mark the occasion, Current.tv, a citizen journalism-based TV network, teamed up with San Francisco-based Twitter to host a special event that allowed folks to participate in real time as the debate unfolded.
Before the debate kicked off, Al Gore, former U.S. vice-president and a presidential candidate who co-founded Current TV along with Joel Hyatt, stopped by the TV network’s fancy digs. They are right across from AT&T Park and a stone’s throw from our more modest offices.
GigaOM Network Managing Editor Carolyn Pritchard and yours truly stopped by. Twitter team was in attendance as well, and so were my friends Tekzilla co-host Veronica Belmont and Gdgt co-founder Ryan Block. David Galbraith, who is in town for a personal visit, was in attendance as well.
I got a chance to exchange a few words with former V-P Gore, who was extremely warm and gracious and generous with his time. You can check out my photos from the event on Flickr, though they are not as good as Scott Beale’s always excellent photography.
3 trackbacks so far
6:47 PM PT
[...] GigaOm - Wired Thread [...]
2:15 PM PT
[...] the debates. Oh, and it got lots of press attention for the project, helped along in part by an appearance from Current co-founder Al Gore at the first [...]
12:40 PM PT
[...] blogged their Al-and-me pictures as news stories on GigaOm and Mashable, bringing themselves one step [...]
10 comments so far
7:58 PM PT
“With US Presidential elections likely to be held in November 2008 … “???
LIKELY? Is this up for debate?
8:37 PM PT
macdad,
hey it is habit from being a reporter for all my life. all future events, you always say likely because things can change. future can change pretty quickly
12:03 AM PT
Al Gore believes in global warming. Enough said.
12:05 AM PT
“Al Gore, former US vice president and a presidential candidate who co-founded Current.tv”
Not only that, he invented the Internet.
9:38 AM PT
Om, it appears you’ve been doing great on your diet! Looking good man
10:22 AM PT
Om,
Staying on the topic of your diet, I was wondering why your new avatar/image does not apply in the comments section? Is it intentional or was it not updated when your avatar Om 2.0 came out?
Reference:
(link)
10:45 AM PT
@Jay…. I have no other option but to be rock steady on my diet. It is a constant going forward for rest of my life.
10:46 AM PT
@avatar… damn, I never realized that till today. I think it has something to do with gravatar and however that crazy/kludgy WP commenting system works.
2:37 PM PT
Learn some history, Mark.
From Wikipedia-
Gore was one of the Atari Democrats who were given this name due to their “passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the “greenhouse effect.”[22] On March 19, 1979 he became the first member of Congress to appear on C-SPAN.[40] During this time, Gore co-chaired the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, along with Newt Gingrich.[41] In addition, he has been described as having been a “genuine nerd, with a geek reputation running back to his days as a futurist Atari Democrat in the House. Before computers were comprehensible, let alone sexy, the poker-faced Gore struggled to explain artificial intelligence and fiber-optic networks to sleepy colleagues.”[42][22]Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have also noted that, “as far back as the 1970s, Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.”[43]
As a Senator, Gore began to craft the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (commonly referred to as “The Gore Bill”) after hearing the 1988 report Toward a National Research Network submitted to Congress by a group chaired by UCLA professor of computer science, Leonard Kleinrock, one of the central creators of the ARPANET (the ARPANET, first deployed by Kleinrock and others in 1969, is the predecessor of the Internet).[44][45][46] The bill was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII) which Gore referred to as the “information superhighway.”[47]
12:29 PM PT
Have two candidates ever got the same number of votes in the past?