The bottom line: the Liberal Arts Dude gives a hearty standing ovation to Theresa Amato for writing this book. I give it an enthusiastic five out of five stars! Why the overwhelmingly positive review? Let me explain by illustrating with a story about ordinary people seeking a change to the status quo to something better resembling the promise of democracy.

Introduction and Overview

I recently got clued in to an effort underway in the Federal government that took on significant momentum with the election of President Barack Obama called Government 2.0.

According to Wikipedia, “Government 2.0 is an attempt to provide more effective processes for government service delivery to individuals and businesses. Integration of tools such as wikis, development of government-specific social networking sites and the use of blogs, RSS feeds and Google Maps are all helping governments provide information to people in a manner that is more immediately useful to the people concerned.”

I made a minor splurge on purchasing music online the past few weeks. I lucked out and downloaded five EXCELLENT albums from Itunes which are now on heavy rotation on my Ipod. In the interests of sharing news and info about good—no GREAT—music to the world, I decided to devote this blog post to extolling the positive vibes that I got from listening to these albums.

Without further adieu, here is the Liberal Arts Dude’s capsule reviews of five great albums. Some of them were released a while ago and some are recent releases. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed listening to and writing about them.

Political reform is a dicey matter. There are many who clamor for and demand reform of the political system. I’ve been an observer of the American political scene for a long time and I have seen anti-establishment reform movements and efforts come and go through the years. Many of these efforts generate a lot of activity and even media attention but eventually fizzle out and end up not reforming anything.

One organization’s reform efforts, however, stuck out to me like a sore thumb—an organization called FairVote. This organization’s efforts stuck out  because they actually are succeeding in implementing crucial reforms. Not only are the reforms the type of actions designed to promote democratic participation among ordinary people and those who are outsiders to the two major parties—which I thoroughly support—FairVote actually has a record of concrete results in implementing reform on the local and even the state and national level.

I recommend reading a couple of books and a blog post to get a good background on the insurgency within the Democratic Party by Progressive grassroots activists.

• Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People-Powered Politics

• Taking On the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era

• MRZine: Guide to Democratic Party and the Democrats

Both books make the point that Internet and advances in social media technology have the capacity to empower ordinary people who have felt powerless and shut out of the political process to effective political participation. More than that, they have a potential to and in many cases, have had real impact in challenging and toppling entrenched interests in the Democratic Party and in traditional two-party politics. The blog post provides context on where this Progressive insurgency fits within the various groupings of the Democratic Party.

I just checked out an interesting video at the Independent Voting web site titled “How the Independent Movement Went Left by Going Right.” It is an hour-long documentary of a speech political strategist Jackie Salit gave at the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP) conference in January 2009.

Web Dude, Know Thyself

Nothing like a two-month break to make a blogger come back feeling refreshed! I took a break for various reasons in March. I feel like the time and my mood is right to get back in the saddle again so here I am!

I just got back home from an interesting event today: the Redux DC mini conference held at Georgetown in Washington DC where some great speakers reprised the presentations that they presented at the 2009 IA Summit and IxD ’09 conferences.

Yes, this was a professional development-oriented event that deals with my line of work—the web. More specifically, the event dealt with Information Architecture and User Experience—two aspects of the field of web design and development that I am curious and about which wanted to learn more.

I am at a point in my career where I have made the decision that I like what I am doing and that I do not foresee myself switching careers to something completely different. The problem I face, however, is what aspects of the web to focus my efforts and energies on to build a solid foundation for a career that will last for the next decade (or two or three!)?

I know at the very least what I am not as a web professional. I am not a coder or a programmer who deals with and writes in complex programming languages. I am also not a designer—visual or otherwise—who designs and creates the look and feel and functionality of websites. I am also not an IT professional who deals with hardware, software and servers.

That leaves me dealing with content and the user experience—to a certain extent, what I am already doing now. This is the aspect of the web field that excites me and which I foresee myself developing into some sort of specialty. This is why Information Architecture and User Experience are logical choices to explore.

Dealing with content for large-scale websites—gobs of content. Organizing them into some sort of coherent systematic, structure. Presentation and delivery of that content so end users are able to find what they are looking for to be able to do the tasks they need to do with that information. This is the subset of the web field where I feel someone like me who is not a programmer, designer or IT wizard can find a professional niche. This is an area also where my analytical and writing skills as former Sociology and English major can come into play.

Every so often in my blogging life I come to a point where I feel as if I have said my peace on any number of topics. The past few weeks I have been reading and posting much more often than usual and it’s been fun. The result, however, is that I am feeling a bit burned out and would like to take a little break from blogging.

Don’t worry — I usually find my way back in front of a keyboard and computer to resume blogging activities once again. I have been at it, after all, since 2002.

But right now, things are ramping up in my non-virtual life in terms of work, personal life, volunteer work, etc. I can’t keep up with everything without something having to give and right now that means my blogging would have to take a back seat to my other activities.

So consider me on a blogging vacation for right now. I’m gonna take it easy for a while, recharge my batteries, and hopefully get back into it once again refreshed and re-energized!

In the meantime, you might find me putting in an occasional blog post or comment over at the Mirror on America blog where the Angry Independent and his crew of bloggers (which includes me) discuss the heavy political and cultural topics of the day!

For all the critical things I say about the Democratic Party, one thing cannot be denied — the Progressive wing of that party, nowadays, seems to be where the action is politically. The base is energized, coordinated, and there are highly visible efforts underway to link the moving pieces together into an actual Progressive Movement.