Good morning, Blog for Iowa!

I decided to teach myself how to put up a poll this morning.  Come to find out, it was the easiest and quickest thing I've done on the Blog for Iowa thus far. 

You will find the Howard Dean Photo Poll on the left sidebar under the Tools component.  Please enter your opinion.  I don't really know how it works.  Thought we'd do a trial run for a few days.

The interesting thing about setting it up was that our blog service, BlogHarbor, has set up an agreement with the poll software company.  When you create the poll at Blog Polling, it looks gray.  Then, when you copy the code and put it inside a component, the whole thing turns yellow.  I know, I shouldn't show that I'm so amazed by little things like that, but each new experience has been fun and challenging.

Democracy for Iowa Website

Eventually, I'll start working on the Democracy for Iowa website.  I've been in contact with Georgette in California, who will be setting up Blog for California.  She liked our system and wanted to know which blog software we were using.  We've kept in touch and yesterday, I was confessing to her that with my limited knowledge of HTML code, my biggest worry was that I wouldn't be able to match up the colors of the DFIA website with the Blog for Iowa.

So, Georgette writes me back, and she has gone to the Blog for Iowa and looked at the underlying code using View, picked out the color codes we are using, and sent me the HTML numbers I will need to match up the websites.  Can you believe that?  I love Dean people.

Clickable Map

And speaking of lovable Dean people, Chad in Washington State is working on a Clickable Map of all the Iowa Congressional Districts and the Iowa State Legislative Districts for us.  Eventually, I will give you an email address to use to turn in the information you have accumulated about candidates in your area.  We may add the information for DFIA County Coordinators to the map, too.

The 21st Century Democrats Training Session

I spoke with 21st Century Democrats yesterday.  They advise setting up one big training session in a central location, so Alta and I were thinking maybe Ames would be good.  It's almost perfectly centered in the state, and it's easier to navigate than Des Moines is.

Also, we may postpone the training session until we get our infrastructure set up and our CC positions filled.  So, it will not be on for June, as we had originally intended.  All DFIA members are welcome to attend.

Don't forget to vote in the poll.  Let me know if you'd like a photo of Howard Dean up on the Blog for Iowa site.