Tea Party Prep

Glenn Reynolds has been tracking the wave of tea party protests that have been sweeping the nation. Bill Hennessy has pulled one together here in St. Louis this Friday. Glenn will be glad to know that I'll be there with my protest babe!

There have been a couple of posts about how to protest—the basic prep work that's involved and how to address media needs/interests. My goal in this post is to provide some advice for conducting interviews and putting them on YouTube. Truth is, I've never done an interview, so this is also a bleg for your input—please comment below or trackback.

Equipment

The flip video camera (and similar cameras from other vendors) combined with YouTube has put real meaning into your first amendment right to freedom of the press. Time was when you had to buy ink by the barrel to get respect. As Marc Andreessen makes clear in a recent interview with Charlie Rose, those days are behind us (video, goto 31:50). Our betters in Washington are in the process of learning that they need to show more respect to the people that can afford $100 video cameras. Please do what you can to facilitate their education! Didn't somebody write a book about this? Why yes, the Instapundit did: An Army of Davids.

Here are some video accessories that you might want to bring:

• Empty spare memory cards
• Fully charged spare battery
• USB/Firewire cables
• USB Car Charger/Adapter
• Backup video camera and/or MP3 recorder
• Microphone
• Digital camera (to document the protest babes)
  

Obviously, you'll need a computer and an internet connection to upload your interviews to YouTube.

Interview Prep

Write down a list of questions that you plan to ask your interviewees. You might have a couple of different question lists for different groups, but I've only got the one below. Here are my preliminary questions for Friday's Tea Party:

1. I'm interviewing people attending this event and plan to put some interviews up on YouTube. Would you like to participate?
2. If yes, start filming. If no, thank them for their time.
3. Tell me a little bit about yourself. What's your name? Where are you from? Where did you go to high school? (The high school question is a regional favorite. I'm not sure how well it will play elsewhere.)
4. Have you participated in other events like this?
5. Do you support the recent spending plans and do you think that they will improve our economy?
6. When do you expect to see the results of the stimulus in the St Louis economy?
7. Do you expect to benefit directly from the stimulus? If so, how will you benefit?
8. What kind of work are you in and how will it be effected by the stimulus?
9. If you had to pick a number, what do you think the high water mark for unemployment will be this year? It's currently around 7.5%.
10. Similarly, if you had to pick a number, what do you think the low water mark for the Dow will be this year? It's currently around 7300.
11. Thank you for your time!
    

Let me know if you have any suggestions!

PS: I'll post an update Thursday about putting videos on YouTube.