What's in a name?

I'm a facts and figures guy.  I'm no good at art.  I can recognize attractive, but I can't create it.  And I feel like I'm no good at naming things, either.  Picking a name is just too much of an artistic and marketing exercise.  So....

I'm working on a project that needs a name.  I've researched and come up with a list of possible choices.  I need your feedback on which name you like best.  You are also welcome to suggest other names.  But, frankly, all of the good names are taken.

What It Is
(Feel free to skip this part if you think you don't want to get too caught up in the details.)

Representative democracy is a form of government where the people elect representatives, and the representatives write the laws and manage the government.

Direct democracy is a form of government where the people debate each and every decision themselves--everyone is involved in every decision.

There are dozens of other variant forms of democracy.  Anticipatory, Athenian, Christian, Consensus, Constitutional, etc.  Each of these different forms contains a different set of rules concerning:
* Who makes the decisions (laws, treaties, government spending, etc.).
* How the decisions get made.
* The goal of the decisions.

I'm designing a new form of democracy.  (Yes, this is an extension of Democracy 2.0.)  The big idea is to get rid of the corrupting influence of money, and to put the people back in charge of the government.

This is NOT about liberal or conservative policies.  This is only about the way in which the decisions get made.  I think that debating policy is a waste of time as long as wealthy individuals, companies, and special interest groups can buy whatever policies or loopholes they want.

In my mind representative democracy has several weaknesses, which I hope to address:
* Money corrupts the system, and all of the representatives.
* The representatives are left in charge of their own rules of conduct and ethics.
* There is no check or balance against the government assuming additional powers.
* The system is very rigid and hard to change.
* The system does not respond well to the peoples' changing priorities.
* The results of the decisions are not measured against any goals or reviewed in any organized way.
* There are too many laws, and the laws are too complicated to be understood by average people.

Here are a few goals and ideas that I have for the project:
* Obviously the good parts of our government will be kept: equal protection under the law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc.
* People vote their goals and priorities, which drives the decision-making process.
* Very strong separation of powers and checks and balances.
* Every decision has measurable goals.
* Every decision is regularly reviewed and changed if the goals are not being met.
* The decision-making process itself is monitored and modified as new ideas and technologies become available.
* Strong protections in place to ensure that every law is understandable to average people and that everyone has ample time to review and comment before the law is passed.

Additionally, I'm not going to design the new system all by myself.  I'm going to launch a web-based project where anyone can give their ideas and add their input.  I'll seed the discussion with some of my own ideas.  And I'll moderate the process, to keep everyone on task.  But, ultimately, the crowd will make the final decisions on the design.

Naming Parameters
This is a project to design a new form of democracy.  So we are naming the project and the new form of government at the same time.  If the new form of democracy is called Bobble then the project will be called the Bobble Democracy Design Project.  Or something like that.

I have to be able to get a domain name for the project (and ideally for the new form of democracy.)  So, if we go with Bobble, then I will want to grab these domains:
bobbledemocracy.org
bobbledemocracyproject.org
thebobbledemocracyproject.org
bobbledemocracydesignproject.org
thebobbledemocracydesignproject.org
bddp.org (or .net)

(Yes, there are many 4-character domain names available in the .net and .org extensions.  bddp.org and bddp.net are both available, for instance.  I would only put up a site and email on the short domain name, and I would put simple redirect pages up on all of the others.)

This means that I can't use a name that is already in use, even if it isn't exactly a "form" of democracy.  For instance, reformdemocracy.org is taken.  Lots of good names are taken.  Many of them are just held by squatters who want you to pay $10,000 for the neat domain name.  I can't do that.

Some of the good names are taken by similar projects.  These projects have established branding and history, so I would have to fight them for the name or carry their baggage if I wanted to use that name.  opendemocracy.org is an example.  They are doing some good things to highlight civil rights abuses and stuff like that.  I'd like to see them participate in my project.  But I can't fight them for their name.

My Ideas
I've vetted all of these to make sure that there isn't already someone else using the name.  These are listed in no particular order.

Fair Democracy


Results-Driven Democracy


Adaptive Democracy


Incorruptible Democracy


Adaptable Democracy


Quest Democracy


Principled Democracy


Pragmatic Democracy


Humanitarian Democracy


Systematic Democracy


Planned Democracy


Honest Democracy


Evolving Democracy


Honorable Democracy


Equitable Democracy


Experimental Democracy


Modular Democracy


Scientific Democracy


Vote
Either comment below or send me an email.  If you have another idea I would love to hear it.

Best news I've heard in a while: breast cancer vaccine entering trials

Fox News provided the story, via Fark.  They have only prevented a handful of mice from developing breast cancer so far.  But these are mice that were bred to be prone to breast cancer, so 100% prevention is better than the placebo effect.

I wonder if lab rats are subject to the placebo effect?

Anyway, this sounds really promising to me.

The hiring study

I'm looking for a job.  At least theoretically, I'm looking.  I have actually found one company that I'm interested in, in part because I think they would actively support me doing projects like the research and book(s) that I'm working on right now.  I will probably approach that company soon, but I want to get more work done on my research project so that I'm approaching them from a position of increased strength.

I've been telling some friends and family members about the research project.  I think I have my story straight now, and I'm ready to write it up for everyone.  :-)

At both Journyx and CompUSA I conducted interviews and hired people.  And, like every task that I take to I did some research on how to find good candidates, how to interview them, and how to make the best possible hiring decision.  I'm not a PhD in hiring, but I've advised lots of other hiring managers, and they have all reacted like I had genuinely helped them get their hands around this activity.

Now I'm a job seeker.  I'm going to the classes and reading the books.  And I see a genuine disconnect between what people are telling job seekers to do and what I think hiring managers are looking for.  I believe that the people who are giving this advice are well meaning and working with the best information that they have.  But on a couple of critical points I think that they are completely wrong.

There have been very few scientific studies of the hiring process, and none that I can find that cover both sides of the process--hiring managers are looking for candidates at the same time that job seekers are looking for work.  I don't have enough personal experience to just call everyone out and design a whole new process.  I would probably be significantly wrong on many details, and no one would pay attention to what I said.

So I'm about to launch a scientific study of both sides of the hiring process.  I'll do this through a set of surveys that I run on the internet.  I'm going to use a major web survey company--mostly because they have built-in reports and analytics that I can leverage.  I will have surveys for hiring managers, surveys for job seekers, and surveys for people who have recently been hired.

I have a marketing plan to use viral and traditional web techniques to (hopefully) get hundreds of thousands of people to take these surveys.  If I can pull that off then I will have a scientific data set that will either prove or disprove my theories.  And then the study itself will provide the credibility I need to speak on these subjects and sell some books.

I am not posting my theories on the internet yet because I don't want to pollute the surveys.  And I don't want anyone stealing the theories before I can get to press.

I'm a practical guy.  I believe in myself, but I also know that not all of my theories will hold up to the data.  I'm ok with that.  I'm going to publish whatever the data says.  But I know that one specific theory will definitely hold up, and that one theory alone will justify the books.  I've already started interviewing people who have recently gotten hired, and what I am hearing from them is both confirming my theories and providing a bounding-box for the surveys.

So there are risks, but complete failure isn't really one of the risks.  The biggest risk is that I don't get enough surveys filled out to credibly demonstrate anything.  However, I have great confidence in the internet and in most peoples' desire to help others.  So I judge that risk as very small.

I think that the second biggest risk is that I get so many survey results that I have a hard time analyzing the data.  I believe I could get 5 million survey responses, or more.  If that happens then I will probably need to enlist some academics to help me analyze the data (cough) {Jeremy} (cough.)  That will force me to adjust my publishing plans some, but if that happens then the changes will be worth it.

The third biggest risk is that the whole thing will take too long.  But the vast majority of my work is done once the surveys are up and running.  So after that point I could work on other projects or get a regular job, if it comes to that.  This whole project will be going onto my resume, and so I think it will be easier to land the type of job that I would like.  And I'm building up quite a bit of expertise on the whole job search process, which will certainly aid me if I have to get a regular job.

Part of my marketing plan is to sell t-shirts, buttons, mugs, and mouse pads with the survey URL and a plea to help the project by taking the survey.  I don't expect to make a full income from that, but I think that I could earn enough from that to extend my budget deadline for getting the books published.

Right now I am actively working on the surveys, web pages, and cafepress store (where the shirts and mugs will be sold.)  I don't know how long this will take to get done, but I'm organizing the work in intelligent order so that I have first things done first.  I think I will have the surveys available for my friends and family to preview in the next week or two.  Getting the surveys configured on the web survey software will take a many hours--tons of tedious technical work that I have to triple-check before I launch.  But I think I could be ready to launch the surveys in the second week of December.

Part of my marketing plan is that there will be several rounds of survey marketing--each round bigger than the previous ones.  The first round is fairly small, and so I don't think it will be a problem to launch it right before the Christmas holiday.  The first big, public, marketing won't happen until after the first of the year.

I will be peaking at the survey results and working on writing the text of the books while the surveys are ongoing.  I don't really know how long it will take for my marketing campaigns to play out, but I'm guessing March.  By then it should be just a matter of doing the final compilation of the data and slapping it into the manuscripts.  So I'm looking at having books out in April.

So stay tuned.  The next few weeks and months could be very exciting.  Thank you for your prayers and support.

Thanks for helping with my branding

I sent out an email yesterday to a bunch of people asking for help with my branding.  I'm still digesting the results.  But I wanted to go ahead and say thanks to the people who replied and helped me out.



Andrew
Barbara
Brian
Christy
Curt
Dan
Dayne
Dylan
James
Janie
Jenny
Jeremy
John M.
John P.
Matt
Meredith
Phil
Rob
Robyn
Sarah
Scott
Sharon
Sommer
Steve
Yongi


You guys are great.  I really appreciate your help.

Thanks for helping with my accomplishments list

I'm working on compiling and finishing my list of accomplishments.  These people from Journyx helped me out by brainstorming for me and sending me some accomplishments.

Matt East
Andrew Reutter
Brian Maxin
Andrew 'Yongi' Trent
Bill Balcezak
Curt Finch
James Brawner
Robyn Burns
Scott Whitney
John Pell
Rob Irving

Scholars, all.  Many thanks.