Interview with Chip Smith, Managing Co-Founder of Hotsoup.com
We have recently posted about Hotsoup.com. Today, we are very happy to have Mr.Chip Smith, managing co-founder of Hotsoup, who kindly accepted to share his insights with eGovBlog. We take this opportunity to thank him and the Hotsoup team for making this possible.
eGB: What did motivate you to launch Hotsoup?
ChS: My partners and I believed that there was a growing number of Americans that wanted to participate in a civil dialogue about the news and issues that affect their lives. Partisan divide is at the center of our nation’s discourse and political change, and Americans have made their desire to be seen, heard, and publish extremely clear. We are not the only people that have noticed this consumer shift as prominent personalities spanning politics, business, news, entertainment, etc. know their capital in mainstream media is fading and that they must find new and alternative ways to reach and engage the masses. We developed Hotsoup to be a vehicle for exactly that — using the Internet to level the playing field among everyday citizens and known personalities and open up a dialogue about the issues, policies and politics that are important to our lives.
eGB: Do you believe the Internet and ICT have a real power to become a tool for democratic renewal in the 21st century?
ChS: No question. Democratic renewal is so heavily tied to the electorate’s willingness and desire to engage in the political process. And all you have to do is spend 5 minutes on our site or several others to get validation that Americans are using this medium like no other to express themselves about the issues that matter most and that they feel are under-acknowledged by the elected body.
eGB: Is there anything that the major political parties in the US could do better to help promote citizen engagement in public debate through the Internet and ICT?
ChS: Adopt the old saying, ‘get comfortable being uncomfortable.’ For a long time, politics has been a one-way communication engine — campaigns and parties created a message and then relied on their fundraising dollars to get it out over the airwaves and in to town halls. In today’s environment, that’s only a fraction of the equation for political success. It’s uncomfortable for some parties and campaigns to have a two-way dialogue with voters — scary in fact to engage in a conversation that they can’t predict or anticipate. And it’s a shame because the opportunities for open-mindedness and even endorsement is great at the other end of the discussion. We’re seeing signs of that on Hotsoup every day. For example, Under Secretary of State Karen Hughes recently engaged in a discussion with a group of Hotsoup community members to share her rationale for decision making. While not everyone agreed with her point of view, EVERYONE celebrated her participation as a peer. There are more examples of this every day on our site and we believe this leveled playing field will be a big factor come 2008.
eGB: Finally, do you think it is possible to successfully replicate the Hotsoup model outside the US?
ChS: That’s a great question. Right now we are focused on a domestic community. The need to discuss, debate, publish and network is certainly not a U.S. phenomenon. Online communities collapse distances and remove geographic boundaries. If we can establish a robust U.S. community — there is no reason we shouldn’t be able to build a global one.
