Saturday, Feb 1, 2003

Kelley Smoot is clearly trying to take the campaign in to her own hands and go against what Max wants for the campaign.  So, I sent this letter out to the campaign team today.

I met with Max today at the Chai Cafe in Bastrop today for two hours and came an understanding about what he wants to happen on the website. Max said that it was important for Kelley Smoot to move her content to http://www.maxforymayor.com  which is the same as http://www.maxformayor.org .

He doesn't want to move the site to another Internet provider. He wants to keep it on the present server. I understood him clearly on all of this.

We are all looking forward to seeing what Kelley Smoot has done for the website. The ball is clearly in Kelley Smoot's court, she needs to move her work to the website if anyone is going to see it.

The proposal to move the site to another provider is not an option, Max wants to work with the provider that we have. There is no need to move the site and pay for another provider and waste another 3-4 days getting new ip addresses. Like Mike said to me earlier today, "that would be crazy . . . we're getting it for free now."

It's time to stop petty internal politics and get the site and Max's campaign moving. Max has a great platform for Austin. He has ideas for energy, the environment and the economy that are clearly the best for the future of Austin. I discussed these at length with him over Chai Tea today, Max has a very powerful story to tell and it needs to be told. Without further delay.

Kelley, we need for you to ftp your web pages to the site so we can all see what you've done and get the campaign moving in the right direction. We have been waiting over two weeks now for your content and it still hasn't been placed on the site. All work has been halted on the site for two weeks

in anticipation of your moving stuff to the site. We need to get moving on the website again, it can't stay stagnant and be an effective voice for Max.

I'm waiting. Max is waiting. The voters are waiting. The campaign team is waiting. There is no question that Max wants to use the site we have in place and there is nothing preventing you, Kelley, from putting whatever content you want there.

We need to see what you have, Kelley! There is nothing stopping you.

Let's work together on this and be a team, ok?

If Kelley doesn't want to do this, then we need to move ahead with the design of the site. We can produce an excellent design for the site without Kelley if she continues to stall. We have the resources to do this without Kelley if need be.

Paul Walhus

 

Thursday, January 30, 2003 

Why is there such a long "gap" in this campaign log?  you ask.  Well, that's a good question.  A very good question.

First things first, Max made his major announcement that he was going to run for Mayor at Guerro's on January 23rd at 9:30 am.  The event was covered by most of the major media and I've captured the events as Windows Media player clips.  I'll be posting them on the website.  There was also a meeting at Max new campaign headquarters at 1300 Guadalupe Street in the shadow of the State Capitol Building.  I have a Windows Media presentation on the entire campaign that I would be happy to provide to anyone who would like a copy.

Back to why the gap? Well, it's because I gave up for a while.  I heard there was going to be a new version of the website and I thought there wasn't much use in adding any more content. Mike Collins and I both pretty much stopped work on the applications like the Organizer, and the Chat that were going to be featured on this website in anticipation of the new site.

Well, guess what?  It's already the end of January and I still don't have the content that was promised as a replacement for the website.  So, Mike and I and the rest of the team that was formed to create the website are resuming operations.  We're back.  Inner is back! We're going to build Max a website as an independent organization.  I don't know if you'd call it a political action committee or what but we've gotten tired of waiting to get the content promised for this website.

I have a lot of things to say about the way the campaign is being run and about what Max is doing these days.  At this stage, I am going to request that the campaign send us press releases, statements and position papers and we will put them in place on the website.  An ftp site has been set up to receive these materials. 

Now, what' been going on since January 16 and what was it like at the announcement.  I'm working on a piece now which will be tomorrow's campaign log entry and it will fill you all in on what's been going on in the campaign and what happened at the Announcement.  I am not going to hold back anything. 

Saturday, January 17 through Wednesday, January 29th are the missing 12 days I call

The "Gap"  

Friday, January 16, 2003

It's a brand new day, so think positive!  Got a call from AJ Montrose and he's ordering a cable modem for the campaign HQ on the Drag and he asked me to co-ordinate the installation.

Thursday, January 15, 2003

Today, I have to say, was a major disappointment for me.  I am feeling let down by the maxformayor.com campaign on certain aspects.  The first blow was the campaign headquarters debacle.  As I was driving to a meeting to discuss the website with Kelley Smoot, the new website designer, I had to take a double take when I saw 'Will Wynn' plastered all over the name of the former movie theater near Oltorf and S Congress.  This should have been Max's headquarters!

Then when I got to the Texicali Grill no one showed up on time except Mike, the co-sysadmin for the site with me.  Christine, the Campaign Manager,  showed up late and then she had me call everyone who should have been at the meeting to see where they were. And when I called Kelley, she acted surprised that I called and said she couldn't make it because she was waiting for a phone call.  Thanks, Kelley, I drove in from Bastrop to meet you and you were the purpose for the meeting.  Thanks for letting me know in advance that you couldn't make it!

When Esther, the "final edit" person for the campaign showed up, she decided to slash all parts of the website that were frank or controversial, like my daily campaign log where I talked about what was going on behind the scenes.  It was deemed too controversial and too dangerous to put out there even in a restricted area on the site.

They did find a campaign headquarters and that's good news, I guess.  It's on the second floor of a building at 1300 Guadalupe which makes it wheelchair inaccessible and less accessible to the general public.  There are two copy machines there which are part of the lease.  That's the best news of the day.

Maybe this will turn around, for now, I feel like I had the wind knocked out of my sails. I'm still going to do a killer website for the campaign.  I'd still like to see a former hippie street corner flower salesman get elected Mayor of Austin.  But man, this things got to turn around.  Things will get better, I tell myself.  Today has to go down as the headquarter debacle.

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Mike Collins has added a Groupware section to the website and I entered the first few users.  It's very cool.  It's like Microsoft Outlook or Novell Groupwise but in an open source version on the web.  If you go there you can use several very powerful tools:

It's at http://maxformayor.com/campaign you'll have to call me or Mike for your password.  Your username is in most cases your first name, except for folks like AJ in which case it's just aj. If I haven't set you up as a user, just email me with your information (address, phone, password desired, etc.) and I'll get it up and running for you.

Today I'm going to run in to town later and stop by the coffeehouse on South Congress around 1 or 2, then go sign up for as a SXSW volunteer down at the Hyatt.  You have to signup on their website and then go sign up in person at 5:30 pm tonight.  Then after that, I'll be at BookPeople for Karen Kreps (master web content manager) group meeting at 7 on third floor.

In March 2003, over fifteen thousand participants from the music, film and internet industries will converge at the Austin Convention Center over ten days to participate in three distinct yet related festivals, conferences and trade shows. Since its debut in 1987, SXSW has evolved into a unique global event focused on the creative side of the entertainment business. Somehow, we need to have a presence there and make an appeal to Austin artists and musicians.  It's going to take an innovative strategy. 

 

I am going to work on getting web based email going for everyone as well.  I don't have a time frame on this yet.

Minutes! I added a new page today, which is the Austin City Council Minutes, it is an index of all the currently published City Council Meeting Minutes and is partly in response to Max's desire to research the recent proceedings.

Tuesday, January 14, 2003 

I skipped Monday.  Actually I was hard at work building the conference center and meeting place on our land out in Cedar Creek.  So I was in to my bod' yesterday.  But today I had a talk with Kelly Smoot who just got back in town and we're going to work together on design. I hooked her up with Bob who did the great banner on http://www.theartco.com .  One thing she mentioned to me that struck home was that she wants to see more daily updates from Max and Christine and I'd love to see that too.  If Max would call me daily and give me his latest insights I could put these up on the website.  I guess we'll all scheduled to rendezvous on Thursday 

I have made all of Esther's changes to the main page.  I am ready for more suggestions and changes.  I want to hear from the team about what they want changed or added.

In today's news, there's a march for Martin Luther King planned for Monday, 9 am at 909 Chicon Street.  Opportunity to show up and reach out for the eastside vote?  

The web site payment acceptance process has been initiated with Liberty Bank and Milo has been a huge help.  He's got a turnkey solution.

Sunday, January 12, 2003 

The website can be a lot more than a poster child for Max.  It can develop in to a community of people who feel like they belong here, who write things in the conferences, who have email addresses that say "joecitizen@maxnofziger.com, who have home pages here and who get their news and information here. And it can be a research vehicle for the campaign with evolving content areas on the major issues like traffic, technology, taxes, the environment.  It can contain a database of all the registered voters and key campaign resources with the database back end. 

We really need to reach out to the voters starting now because people can vote by mail in the Mayor's race starting on March 4th.  Yeah, that surprised me.

The election starts March 4th, 2003!

Today is our web team meeting at the Nokonah at 1 and I'm changing the main page from "hey we wanna be a website someday" to a real looking campaign site.  I'm stressing substance over slickness and pumping it full of content.  I worked on the crucial record website and reworked the order of issues to stress the major issues and added pictures of the Airport, Stevie's statue, the Convention Center and the Veloway (how do you answer the objections of people who say the Veloway is outside of Austin?)  In re-ordering the list, the poor Tree of Lights kept getting bumped down the list.  I had to pick on the Tree of Lights.  It just seemed secondary to the economy and high tech, etc.  But what about traffic?

I notice that traffic and taxes are either missing or need more emphasis. These are going to be hot button issues with Will Wynn, the only current contender for Max.  Property taxes are driving people out of Austin.  I had to sell my home in the Quail Creek neighborhood recently and Bob and Karen are thinking of moving to Hot Springs, Arkansas. 

Austin - An analysis released today on the light rail proposal of Capital Metropolitan Transit of Austin indicates that Austin's traffic congestion problems of the future could be eliminated with bus alternatives to light rail. The report entitled Options Ignored, Opportunities Lost: An Analysis of Affordable Transportation Options for Austin (available at www.tppf.org) points out that Capital Metro seems to have dismissed viable bus alternatives in its planning process. With demand for automobile travel expected to increase as the Austin population continues to increase, it is likely that traffic volumes will exceed road and transit capacity by 64 percent by 2025 
            from http://www.tppf.org/pr/2000/pr101300.html 

I'd like to take a picture of Max with a representative group of constituents surrounding him who will be supporting him, blacks, Anglos, Hispanics, nerds, hippies, women, old folks, etc. And what about some celebrity pictures and endorsements?  Like that guy to Willies left in that picture on the bus could be Max. There's Sandy, Matthew McConaughey, Ray Bensen, Ann Richards, etc. etc.  Lance is probably in the South of France by now, practicing.

That Tree of Lights really took a hit.

Saturday, January 11, 2003 Day 2

Jackie Goodman withdraws!

This is huge news for the maxformayor.com campaign.  The Statesman is trying to reach Max for comment now.  That makes it a two horse race unless someone else jumps in before the March 19? filing deadline.

To quote today's article: "Jackie Goodman, the longest-serving member of the City Council, will not join the hunt for the Mayor's seat. Goodman, who was elected to her fourth term last May, said she did not want to commit the time it would have taken to raise the money necessary for a competitive campaign. Many believe a credible bid will cost at least $200,000 to $400,000 . . .

Her decision leaves the race with two major candidates: Council Member Will Wynn and former Council Member Max Nofziger. It also makes Wynn the prohibitive favorite, as he can use his incumbency to raise or spend the money it might take to win the race. Wynn, who owns a downtown re-development company, loaned his own campaign about $90,000 in his 2000 City Council race.

Nofziger, a former South Austin flower salesman, has been largely out of city politics since he left the council in 1996. Since then, he's best known for helping defeat Capital Metro's light rail transit initiative in 2000.

Stephen Scheibal sscheibal@statesman.com  445-3819

Jackie Goodman's statement 

I was eating breakfast with Dorothy when she turned to me and said "Jackie's not running."  And I thought today was going to be a slow news day!  I also started to give the website some structure today by archiving all the old content and by creating the beginnings of some new pages that will become the core of the website.  These text tags, will, of course be replaced by graphics on a banner like the one Bob used on http://www.theartco.com (take a look).

My goal for this website to make a place as refreshing and honest as Max himself.  I would like to create a dynamic site that allows full participation by the citizens and voters of Austin, and the larger community worldwide that cares about preserving Austin as a unique place.  I want to see lots of hits and lots of unique visitors on this site.  

Friday, January 10, 2003 Day 1

Paul's Campaign Log - these are my raw daily notes, sometimes cryptic of things that I don't want to let slip through the cracks.  It's for the intranet, inner site only so it's not for republicaton or rebroadcast outside of the campaign inner circle.

Today I am at Texas French Bread on South Congress and I just met with Max, Christine, Ester, et al and showed Max and Christine the website. My wife Dorothy is off at Nia class and I'm catching up these notes while I'm waiting for her to pick me up.  I ran into old friend Stewart Butler at the coffee shop.  He's putting http://woodsmithbuilders.net online in a couple of days.  We did a bit of updating and he sat writing in the front window on his notebook computer.

key players

Max Nofziger - I bumped into Max at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar poster booth on December 17th.  He told me he was running for Mayor and was waiting to hear Gus decision which would come the next day (not to run). He wrote his phone number 462-2386 down in my daytimer.  I showed him the poster at his booth which was the show at the Armadillo World Headquarters of the first day I ever spent in Austin in 1979.  Later on down the line,  I called and left him a message and floated about 14 website names by him and he picked http://www.maxformayor.com . That's how I got started on this site. The names on the list were all great names!

Christine Bundell - campaign manager 694-4281 cell and 447-4432 home (don't call on Weds, Fri or Saturday nights or Sunday morning).  She's setting up a bank account today and we can connect to Paypal for donations. She's currently a legal aid but will soon be devoting her full time attention to the campaign.  Know any legal aids?  She needs someone to fill her spot at her law office. That's her in the middle of the picture, juggling her appointment book.
cbundell@austin.rr.com

Ester Matthews 444-1640 She is the "final edit" for the website. estermatthews@email.msn.com Her day job? She works at Austin Energy.  

AJ Montrose is the guy on the left in the picture above and he's working on finding a campaign headquarters for Max, he's definitely one of the heavy lifters and a confirmed "sex addict" (no not true really, he just threw that in at the campaign kickoff meeting for comic relief).  He will be playing a very key role in this campaign.

Maggie Olmstead 477-7255 901 West 9th St Nokonah -03 cmolm@swbell.net.  Maggie is a key technical advisor to Max.  She's hosting a meeting at 1 pm, Sunday December  at the Nokonah this Sunday for the web team.  

Lucille Treanor 476-7038 She might possibly be donating a boat.  She is Mambo John Treanors mom.

Hurvie K Franks 2201 Salina St -22 236-9263 no email yet.  She's head of the Blacklands neighborhood and an aspiring actress.  I saw her on KVUE news last night auditioning for a role in a reality tv show.

Richard Hartman  444-1818 is a campaign photographer and Photoshop artist. He's working on a logo for the site.  Haven't got it yet though.

Mike Collins 442-2009 the Linux guy who understands php and mysql.  He has a great website on linux and a consulting business based around this.

Bob Nagy 471-4286 work and 276-7428 home who is the co webmaster and media guru with a lot of skills but very little time. He's doing the around town video of Max and his accomplishments to be shot at the Airport, the Velodome, photovoltaic plant.and other places where Max has an a pivotal role bob@bobnagy.com is his email. Notice the rich color tones in the above picture?  That's because Bob used Adobe Photoshop to buff it up, and he showed me some secrets of the trade when I hung around his office at UT today. That's my Daytime and cellphone at the bottom of the picture.

James Ebert - Paypal setup

Anita Howard journalism instructor

Events

Texas French Bread at Annie and South Congress at 8 am every Friday.  Has subscription internet.

Max for Mayor
POB 41436
Austin, TX 78704

Lloyd Dogget endorsement?

fund raising meeting 211 Live Oak Tues 5:30 pm

sxsw worldwide problem of the live music capitol being threatened

Intac???

Roy Whaley N Austin strategy

Earth and Sky meeting place 3011 N Lamar

Max's birthday March 20 - first day of Spring

Christines started to give me her website wishlist and the first item was volunteer profiles. I may need your help on this so, if you're a volunteer reading this, please send me a bio about yourself via email or post in on our inner "logbook".

I gave Christine Jon Lebkowsky's email jon@well.com to contact. He's "on the fence" but would be a valuable asset with his community and sxsw connections.  Maybe he could help Max crack the Chronicle nut.  I saw his name in Christine's notepad.  Jon told me today that he remembers the "arts wars".  He was involved with the Texas Circuit and theAustin Writers League at the time.  They were battling for city funds that were actually not worth fighting over, he said, and he couldn't believe that they weren't channeling their energy into other types of fundraising.

It was great to meet with Max and friends at the coffeehouse on South Congress.  I really picked up on the flavor of the campaign.

I just saw Raoul Salinas walk in who has the Resistencia bookstore.  He's all over the country now doing youth work.  We used to teach together at the Creative Rapid Learning Center on the eastside.  He's a poet and writer.

And I still can't get over Stewart Butler being there. Christine just walked in and commented on how South Austin hippies are in to tech.  She's combing the local newspaper for relevant articles and just found one on how Governor Perry is doing away with the Texas Homeland Security Commission.  This is juxtaposed with an article about the bioterrorist threat in Texas to agriculture.  Interesting juxtaposition.

And, who knows, I may be hosting http://www.stewartbutler.com someday.  Stewart registered that name also.

That's a pretty good first day in my campaign log, brought to you by the fact that Dorothy is taking a long time in her Nia class. And tomorrow will be another entry.

terry@spring.net That's my email and you can always post things in my forum at http://www.spring.net . I'm Paul Terry Walhus. 512-699-4000 cellphone or 581-9617 at home.

Later that evening . . .

I'm at home now and just dumped this first campaign log  up to inner.  It has been a day around Austin.  I had a nice message on my answering machine from Brian "Packy" Rodgers who said he couldn't help with the campaign but "count on me for full $100 donation.  Just tell me where to send it."  So I'll get call him tomorrow and let him know.  Brian lives in the neighborhood above Whole Foods to the west, Maggie's hood and I once ran a parody site for him called http://www.georgebush2000.com and he's far from being a shrub supporter!  Brian and his friend Steve Koch are in to Austin real estate so they might have some ideas on a campaign headquarters.

Max is going to win this election if he can get his message out and not make any mistakes.  He's sincere.  He's experienced and he's capable of overcoming the obstacles in front of him of media opposition and the unfamiliarity about Max among Austin newcomers.