Conversation

Data Ownership - Data ownership should remain and always remain the property of the individual. Issues of data ownership need to be addressed strongly going forward, no company has the right to own my data. I may grant them permission to loan it temporarily for purposes that are for my benefit, or theirs if I am feeling altruistic, but the right to use my data for a third party should be revocable at any time.

Data Portability/Migration - Likewise an extension of the above, I should be able to transfer and make my data accessible to third parties with ease. I shouldn’t have to be duplicating forms all the time.

The centerpiece of it all is My.BarackObama.com, where supporters can join local groups, create events, sign up for updates and set up personal fund-raising pages. “If we did not have online organizing tools, it would be much harder to be where we are now,” Mr. Hughes said.

Mr. Obama, now the presumptive Democratic nominee, credits the Internet’s social networking tools with a “big part” of his primary season success.

The heart of the campaign’s online strategy is a teeming corner of Mr. Obama’s headquarters two blocks from the Chicago River, a crowded space that looks more like an Internet start-up company than a campaign war room. During a visit in late May, a bottle of whiskey sat, almost empty, atop a refrigerator (there had been plenty of victories to celebrate lately, a staff member explained).

Sitting amid a cluster of cubicles, Mr. Hughes, whose title is “online organizing guru,” handles the My.BarackObama.com site, which is known within the campaign as MyBo. Other staff members maintain Mr. Obama’s presence on Facebook (where he has one million supporters), purchase online advertising, respond to text messages from curious voters, produce videos and e-mail millions of supporters

Coincidentally, on the very same day the Financial Times reported that UBS had advised 50 current and former employees of its private banking group not to travel to the United States. The bank is worried that they might be arrested in connection with a massive tax-evasion scheme under which UBS helped rich Americans cheat the IRS, thus making sure that the rest of us suckers had to pay for, e.g., the War in Iraq. Some of the clients of the scheme are already testifying before a grand jury, and a senior UBS official has already been indicted. UBS is offering to provide lawyers for all of the suspects.

Now, how is it that Gramm got to be Vice-Chairman of UBS? Why, by being the chief author of the banking-deregulation legislation (the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) that made so many bankers rich and helped create the crisis McCain doesn't want to do anything about.

In keeping with McCain's decision to purge "lobbyists" from his campaign, Gramm had himself de-registered as a lobbyist. But he's still Vice Chairman of UBS, and still McCain's chief economic adviser. All the de-listing means is that he can't now personally call Congressmen or Senators; no doubt his staff can handle such details for the next few months.

Sampson said his reputation is "very important" to him, but only knows one way to regain it.

"Just be who I've been my entire life," Sampson said. "Sometimes you take hits that you have to overcome, but that's something that I just work at as I go forward.

They note the key to the success of these churches is threefold:

1. Shared values rather than on autocratic rule.

2. Peer circles, rather than as a large, rigid, top-down hierarchy.

3. Leading through inspiration rather than by formal authority, allowing, but not forcing, others to follow them.

When I was asked to resign as basketball coach at my son's school because a boy -- his parents, actually -- suggested I had a prurient interest in the rebounding drill, and when my bishop, already predisposed to antagonism toward me, decided to "investigate" the claim, well, I was deeply invested in my reputation. This is the sort of accusation that can permanently damage my ability to make a living, even when swiftly exonerated, which I was.

So, in cases of egregious slander, yes, I really care about my reputation.

There is a short list of folks in my inner circle with whom I care greatly about my reputation. My children top that list. My best friend, Paul. A former graduate school professor. Erin. Kim. There are a few more, but the list is surprisingly short.

How do I shape, manage and protect my reputation? Largely by not aiming at my reputation! My goal, rather, is authenticity. I strive to live authentically. Or, as author Richard Bach says it, "Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true."

Live authentically. Live with integrity.

Alegi, 72, said Europeans are appalled by the Republican administration's willingness to set aside conventional civil rights for detainees captured in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Ken Sherman, a Hamilton, Ont., resident who was selected as a delegate pledged to Barack Obama, said that when he visits Europe, he uses his Canadian rather than American passport because international anger over U.S. foreign policy.

"In the last five years with George Bush, I don't pull out my American passport unless I need it."

But Obama's rise has made Sherman, 71, prepared to embrace his American citizenship again. "Something has happened in the past two years that has made me proud to be an American again. People are rising up."

Wayne Weightman, a 46-year-old Cambodian lawyer, came to Vancouver to support Barack Obama who, he believes, can revive respect overseas for America.

Obama's, by contrast, has been an organizational wonder, the political equivalent of crossing a Lamborghini with a Hummer. From the beginning, the Obama campaign has run circles around its foes on the Internet, using MySpace, Facebook and other Web tools to develop a virtual army of more than 1 million donors. The result has been fundraising numbers that have left opponents slack-jawed (last month Obama raised $40 million, compared with Clinton's $20 million).

But the Web is the political equivalent of gunpowder: It can mow down your opponents, but it can also blow up in your face. In 2004, Howard Dean's campaign also raised vast sums online, but it spent the money just as fast. By embracing the anarchic ethos of the liberal blogosphere, Dean generated enormous excitement, but he couldn't harness it. Within his decentralized, bottom-up campaign, a thousand flowers bloomed, but not at the right time and in the right place. "You cannot manage an insurgency," said Dean's Web guru, Joe Trippi. "You just have to ride it."

The Obama campaign has proved that adage wrong. It has married Web energy with professional control. It has used the Web masterfully but, unlike Dean in 2004, sees it as a tool, not a philosophy of life.