Eric and I had a pretty cool opportunity this morning. US Senator Joe Donnelly hosted a "Coffee and Common Sense" open house for regular Joans and Joes to come voice their concerns. Pretty cool, we thought.
Going into it, we weren't sure what to expect. We honestly thought it might just be a town hall style approach, where anyone could just ask questions. Basically, just an open forum where the senator would actually be there. But to our surprise when we got there, everyone was actually given a number and you got a few minutes, one on one, with the senator. How cool is that??
So to start, you write all your information out on a questionnaire, and then wrote your question(s) out on the back of it. Then you gave your sheet to an aide to keep things in order. Of course there were numerous aides on hand - Eric even knew one of them. But you talked face-to-face with Senator Donnelly. The paper just gave him a chance to read the question and not get blindsided, which is understandable.
They weren't expecting quite he turnout they got, so they ended up having to keep the face-to-face time down to just a few minutes. But in that few minutes, if felt like he was really there listening. Eric had the upper hand on me in that he could talk non-profit with him, and even invite him to something where federal dollars were used. But I think at the end of it all, this is probably something that some good will come out of. They might even do it again, sometime.
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