News-Record.com

• In 2006, Gross worked for the Jon Tester campaign.
• Gross and I talked a fair bit about how what was novel in 2003 – campaign blogging, social networking, etc… – is now required for serious candidates in 2007. One exchange started with me asking whether a lot of what the Internet allows folks to do isn’t the sort of old-school politicking on behalf of others one saw in the 19th and early 20th century, before the age of television. Click here to listen to the exchange that follows.
• I started this next segment by asking if people were going to look at the Edwards 2008 website and be able to say “Oh, look, you can tell that’s a legacy from the Dean campaign.” The short answer from Gross was "no." Click here for the really interesting long answer, that veered off into a discussion of YouTube and IPTV.
• The day before Edwards launched his presidential campaign, his campaign website accidentially launched itself. I asked Gross about that. Click here to listen to his answer.
• Did Gross always plan to be an internet consultant for the progressive political set? No. Click here to here him talk about his transition from river guide to Internet sherpa.
• When he was in college, Gross was the drummer for a band called "June." He bailed before their first (and last) big album, but said "I still do get very low dollar royalty checks from Spain."
• Gross has a personal blog, “Deride and Conquer” which has been somewhat inactive as the Edwards campaign geared up. I asked him about it: "I've got to find time for it. You’ll notice it has not been updated since Dec. 24," he said. "It's more of a matter of will I have time to keep it up … It’s always like when you have the most to say you don't have the time to write it.”
• Gross' former boss, Joe Trippi, said that at the time he felt like getting the blog up was like the space race, "Who was going to be the first one to launch a Sputnik." Dean did it first, but Gross had rushed out to Vermont so fast he needed to run back to Utah to pick up some of his belongings and didn’t have time to enable comments. So former Sen. Gary Hart gets the distinction of having the first presidential blog with comments enabled, Trippi said.
• So why work for Edwards, rather than some other aspiring presidential contender? Gross' answer: "I think he's extraordinarily talented, I think he has a vision for where he wants to take the country, and I think there’s a clear path for him to win the nomination ... It definitely for me, starts with is this a person I believe in and person I think would make a good president and would be good for the country. And having answered yes to all of those, that was the pick. And speaking just for myself, there are some very good people running, but there weren't others that were yes for all of those, that’s for me personally."

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