I've Seen Fire and I've Seen Rock

Mike Gravel is a candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 2008. By all measures his is a campaign long on hope and short on prominence, he is polling in the 1% range in a crowded field that includes heavy hitters Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Otis faculty members, Matt Mayes and Guston Sondin-Klausner are two of Gravel's supporters and they believed in him enough to produce two videos for his campaign. The twin pieces "Rock" and "Fire" were posted to YouTube last month and enjoyed some immediate buzz for their unusual content. Things really took off a few days ago when John Stewart featured the Rock video in a segment of The Daily Show. Rock has now been viewed over 100,000 times and Fire is closing in on 50,000 views.

Following the Daily Show appearance, the story of the videos has been picked up by CNN, whose reporter Jeanne Moos did a profile, The New York Times blog, The Chicago Tribune blog, The Washington Post blog and MSNBC.com to name a few. Even some of the responses are garnering their own buzz.

Senator Gravel seems very pleased with the videos and with the resulting attention. Will it make a difference for his campaign? Who knows, but at a minimum it is a great example of the power of mass collaboration at work.