I believe it was at SXSW Interactive 2005, that I was on a panel exploring the future of democracy, deliberative, direct and digital. As we explored the role of political parties, the idea of institutional memory came up, and it seems as if the Internet is changing the way we maintain institutional memory.

In 2003 and 2004, I was a volunteer in Gov. Dean’s presidential campaign. I established many close friendships during that time. When Gov. Dean decided to end his presidential bid, many of us reached out to each other online. We dealt with our grief about seeing the person we thought would best lead the country leave the race. We talked about what Gov. Dean’s delegates should do, and whether we should still vote for him in the primary, or if not, whom we should support.

We vented our frustrations about the sort of campaigns other candidates had run. We complained about the media, and most importantly, we sought ways to remain together to work on the issues that were important to us.

During that time quite a few mailing lists and websites formed. Sometimes there were conflicts between people from different groups. After all, we were all people that had cared passionately about Gov. Dean and the issues he stood for, and we cared passionately for how things would be handled afterwards.

People looked created different legal entities, 501(c)3’s, 501(c)4’s, State PACs, Federal PACs, 527s, and so on. Dean for America shut down, and a new organization, Democracy for America emerged.

I wasn’t involved with the Kucinich campaign in 2004, but it seemed like a similar process happened there, and out of it the Progressive Democrats of America emerged. PDA and DFA had a lot of similar goals and looked at ways to work together, me, and many of my friends ended up getting involved in both.

Now, it is 2008. This time around, I was a Sen. Edwards supporter. He has now suspended his campaign, and I’ve been invited to join two mailing lists of Edwards supporters, in addition the dozen or so I had been on during the campaign. I’ve been asked to participate in various online sites and hear discussions about other ones yet to emerge. Like in 2004, I, and all of us, wait to hear what Sen. Edwards will suggest we do going forward.

I’ve weighed in with a few suggestions of my own. I’ve gotten emails from a few Edwards supporters that are planning on running for office themselves. In 2004, Gov. Dean asked his supporters to stay involved. He asked us to consider running for office. At the time, it didn’t look like a good option for me, but my wife and I talked it over and she became one of the first Dean Dozen candidates. I strongly support Edwards supporters running for local office.

I’ve talked about it on one of the forums that has emerged. A lot of the focus there has been on people running for Congress, but I think the important races are the State Representative and State Senate races, as well as city council and other local races. It is a great way for people to get started and you can make a lot of difference in these races, as well as keep people’s attention on the issues that matter to you.

People have talked about other types of political reform, and I’ve encouraged people to connect with groups like Democracy for America. We don’t want to spend excess energy recreating the wheel. One group that I encourage everyone to look at is The Service Politics Institute. It is a great group focused on tying service projects with political action. Many Dean supporters did this in 2004. Edwards One Corps had a great focus on this, with Sen. Edwards declaring his candidacy in New Orleans as part of a project to clean up after hurricane Katrina.

The Service Politics Institute seems to be mostly just in Vermont, where it was formed, but it would be great to see One Corps members gather together and take both Sen. Edwards commitment to service and The Service Politics Institute’s commitment to service and tie it together with local campaigns as described above.

Another area that has gotten a lot of interest is media reform. This is an area near and dear to my heart and I’m glad to see the interest in it. I’ve pointed out to my friends in the Edwards campaign some wonderful groups that already exist. Freepress.net is perhaps the biggest and most influential. They have a daily news brief about media related issues. They organize the National Conference on Media Reform every couple years. Their daily news brief gets a bit detailed at times.

Then, there is the issue of media education. The Action Coalition for Media Education is my favorite group in this area. For people more closely involved in the production of journalism, there is the Media Giraffe Project. For those interested in finding sources of good journalism, and for opportunities to highlight good journalism, there is Newstrust.net. All of this leads to people creating their own journalism, and I like to point people to J Lab.

DFA and PDA helped preserve some of the institutional memory of the Dean and Kucinich campaigns in 2004. It is unclear how the institutional memory of the 2008 Edwards campaign will be preserved and how all of this will work together for a better country, but there are a lot of good people working hard to retain the institutional memory of the Edwards campaign. I wish them well, and offer whatever help I can.