Jim Gilliam is a geeky activist with big ideas. Shortly before the 2008 election, Jim started WhiteHouse2, a website imagining how the White House might work if it was run completely democratically by thousands of people over the internet. He is currently turning this into NationBuilder, a platform anyone can use to bring democracy to their government, business or non-profit in a radical and fun new way.

Shortly after the Iraq war started in 2003, Gilliam hooked up with award-winning filmmaker Robert Greenwald to research Uncovered: The War on Iraq, and tell the stories of dozens of government insiders, from CIA officers to weapons inspectors, all desperate to tell the world that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Released in just four short months, the film reached millions of people worldwide without any corporate distribution, based entirely on activists holding thousands of free screenings in their homes, churches, and small businesses. The grassroots political documentary was born, and Jim later evangelized the model at numerous film festivals and created a free web service, Brave New Theaters, enabling any filmmaker to use the same techniques to tell stories the traditional media is too afraid to touch.

Hear what Jim says is the biggest story of our generation. He talks about the promise of the Internet, and why his Dad's advice just can't be beat.

PdF Chat Time, new feature here at Personal Democracy Forum, gives you a behind the scenes glimpse into the lives of the politechnorati. Hear what inspires them, what keeps them up at night, and who throws the wildest parties. Get informed by the most knowledgeable players in the world of politics and technology.

To read the interview interview conducted by IM on June 15th click read more below.

I've been on the road since Thursday, first at a working meeting of the National Conference on Media Reform (NCMR), where I moderated a panel on the same topic, and today in Houston at a miniconference at the Baker Institute on the internet and politics. A couple of times over the last two days, I managed to pull out the N95 and shot a couple of fun, Qik videos with some of the folks I bumped into at NCMR. Check out Jane Hamsher, Susan Crawford, Robert Greenwald, Deanna Zandt, Craig Newmark and Tom Steinberg.

BlogHer interviews Barack Obama; a literary deconstruction of an anti-Obama smear; Brave New Films hits McCain with another biting video; blowback from the DNCC's choices for credentialed state bloggers; get your Jews For Jews Against "Jews For Obama" t-shirts now!; tracking the Democratic veepstakes on Technorati; McCainPedia claims to be a wiki. It isn't; and The Road to Victory goes behind the scenes in all 33 Democratic Senate races.

Robert Greenwald identifies anti-Obama Fox News "virus"; TheMiddleClass.org releases grades for Congress; LinkTV gives world citizens the chance to weigh in on the US election; a Digg clone for progressives; Ron Paul's avatar raises the tide; Bill Clinton is quizzed by college journalists; Obama and Clinton slow on Facebook and McCain rises; and a video of Obama renouncing Jeremiah Wright gains traction.

MoveOn members funnel more than $500,000 to the Obama campaign, end send out hundreds of thousands of GOTV notes; a new crop of nonprofits are creating political messaging, blurring the line between advocacy and electoral politics; a chart shows the most popular candidates on Twitter; a sneaky move to redirect folks looking for Mitt Romney (who are they?) to Mike Huckabee's site; the cult of the Obama or a genuine movement?; unexciting headlines about moderately interesting things; and the Obama campaign wants to control the fight against superdelegates.

Karl Rove joins Markos Moulitsas at Newsweek, dogs and cats live together; does Media Matters favor Hiillary Clinton over the other dems?; the Iowa Independent predicts the winners of the Iowa caucuses; a video from Brave New Films criticizing Fox News gets banned on Digg; John McCain is up next in the MTV/MySpace Presidential Dialogue series; bloggers galore at the 2008 Democratic convention; get yourself a "We Look Like Facebook" t-shirt today!; and Barack Obama's tech policy is up in super-accessible HTML format.

A new video investigates Rudy Giuliani's "scheduling conflicts" on the day of an African American-themed debate; a video shows that Mitt Romney has invested a tidy sum of money in Iran, despite very public calls for others to divest from the country; some missing John Edwards videos turn up on YouTube; a new social networking site aims at online liberals; Ron Paul raises over $1 million in an end-of-quarter fundraising push; and Newt Gingrich will not be running for president in 2008.

What should a presidential web site look like?; Daily Kos is legally the same media entity as Fox News, and not a PAC; Brave New Films releases a new video listing Rudy Giuliani's "mistakes"; and Rudy's Facebook page is slowly taking off.

A few days ago, YouTube, the giant videosharing site, unveiled some site upgrades that has a vocal chunk of its user base up in arms. The most important change, from the point of view of YouTube's burgeoning critics, is the removal of social data about videos in all the different categories and its replacement with videos that are being handpicked by the site's editors. People starting to call YouTube "EditorTube" in protest, a are using the site's tools to spread the word.