I'm in Chicago's O'Hare airport right now waiting for my airplane to arrive, but in a few short hours, I should be on the ground and broadcasting mayhem. Or boredom, depending on where the minute hand falls.
The angle I hope to contribute to Huffington Post's Iowa Caucus coverage is live, embedded video. You know, "lifecasting," of the sort pioneered by that Justin.tv guy, only hopefully more interesting to the kinds of political wonks that read the Post than your average MySpace dramathon. With a webcam on my shoulderstrap and a Sprint wireless card desperately trying to pump data out of a USB port, I will be providing a real-time view of events in Des Moines, IA from the perspective of your average campaign volunteer or hopeful caucuser.
The volunteer perspective you will get will come from the campaign headquarters of Democratic Senator Joe Biden, but I will also explore other events in the Des Moines area as time -- and weather -- permits (I hear there's WiFi at the John Mellencamp concert tonight!). Tomorrow night, I'll attend a caucus (or two) and put you right in the middle of that enigmatic electoral process.
This story and its embedded live video player won't percolate back up to the top of the fold, so bookmark this page if you want to check in periodically and see where I'm freezing to death.
I'll be updating my status via text message using Twitter, so with a little luck that widget to the left will tell you where I am and what you're watching -- or what body parts I can no longer feel. You can scroll back through status updates with the little arrow buttons.
Finally, there will be more self-contained video news updates via YouTube which will be embedded in their own story posts, but for the sake of collecting everything in one place, they will also be aggregated in the following Iowa trip playlist player for your viewing pleasure.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go stare at the runway and will my plane into existence. Or maybe I'll just stalk Ken Mehlman, who's pacing around behind me on his cellphone asking for a new, better computer.