http://www.descope.com/features/wallofscience.html

“From here, Clem is ushered into the presence of “our President,” a H(W)all of Presidents-like attraction featuring the only President who pretends to take questions from the audience to which he replies with a canned non-answer (again, sound familiar?).”

“In the presence of the President, Clem seems less a loner and more of a guy from the inside (Clem refers to the President by what seems to be insider slang as “Spring Head.”). It’s clear that Clem has information on how the President works and, using the speech recognition system that runs the Fair (and mistakenly hears his name as “Uh, Clem”), he stops the attraction and is assumed to be a maintenance worker. Unable to get past the gatekeeper software of the President (or is it just a case of bad programming?), he causes the President to crash / shut down / go 101 (“the ride is closed? But I waited 20 minutes from here. Hey, Paolo! He broke the President!).”

The VON videos are certainly interesting. Unfortunately, the ones I looked at are a bit on the “light” and open-ended side and are likely to result in a candidate going into “replay” mode, giving their stock speech. A candidate’s position on various things can be obtained from their website or past statements, so asking someone for their stance on net neutrality will most likely simply fill up space that could be spent on more useful questions.

Let me suggest trying to ask *adversarial* questions based on *past policy-related statements and actions* and doing so in a way that will *knock a candidate off their stock spiel*.

Instead of asking about net neutrality, look up someone’s position on net neutrality and find flaws in their position. Then, either alone or with people who are familiar with asking adversarial questions, try to think up a “toughie” that would help reveal flaws in the candidate’s position or thinking processes.

Interesting initiative. I hope the candidates will take the questions seriously and video reply to them. I am looking at this with keen eyes and hope some of these may rub off in Canada where our next federal election may come soon. I don’t know if the Canadian politicians are quite ready for YouTube questions yet. But may be they are?

I’ve checked out all five videos so far, and they all look great. Short and to the point. (Good sound qaulity) By the way, looks like Jeff and Liz’s video currently has a small typo in the tag. Currently it has “prezconfrerence” (..frer..) instead of ‘prezconference’ (..fere..)

Best of luck,
Kempton

Thanks! Keep chipping away at the status quo.