Right now, I’m watching the President of the Utah State Senate on my desktop.

Nope, it’s not a live stream of C-SPAN coverage. It’s not even footage on the Utah State Senate’s YouTube Channel (though there is that, too). There’s also a blog and a text message application and a podcast.

I’m watching Senate President John Valentine’s office on a live webcam. I can see what he’s doing and – most importantly – with whom he is meeting. So can you. Explorer users only (sorry, Mac and Firefox users) can go to http://senatesite.com/senatesight.html.

It feels intimate, open, and exciting – three words not always associated with the online communications of an elected officials. This afternoon, I talked with the creator of the SENATEcam, Ric Cantrell, the Chief Deputy of the Utah State Senate. Cantrell says the web cam “Serves to demystify the halls of power.” As he explains it, somewhere in Utah, an elementary student might access the web cam as part of a school project and realize, looking into the Senate President’s office that “this is what I want to do when I grow up.”

Why do I like it? Instead of talking about what he does all day, Senate President Valentine is showing it. He’s walking the democratic walk, not just talking the democratic talk.

Of course, there is the little voice inside me – the one who sat through several course on the philosophy of science. “But the web cam is just like a microscope,” says the little voice “and when you put things beneath a microscope – when you observe thing s—the way they behave starts to change.” But that little voice gets quieter and quieter the more I play with SENATEcam. A louder voice emerges, and it’s saying “FTW!!1!” Translation: “Cool!”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Web Video, e-Gov. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.