How 104,000 Obama Social Networkers Trumped 20,000 Clinton Volunteers
Is there any magazine cover Barak Obama isn’t on? Time has had him on its cover seven times this year alone. Perhaps a bigger accomplishment, though, is the candidate making the September/October cover of MIT’s Tech Review. Politics is increasingly driven by online technology, and as this blog often notes, the Web is increasingly defined by law and policy.
The article features Obama’s online strategy dream team, which includes Howard Dean’s online guru Joe Trippi; Stanford Law Professor and political change agent Lawrence Lessig; and Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes. The article provides a glimpse of how social networkers are converted into volunteers with a mission.
The technical acumen of Obama’s campaign extends into its policies. His technology policy agenda includes ambitious goals, such as establishing a federal CTO, increased privacy, data security and access to government deliberations through rich media. In fact, another of his dream team, spreadsheet inventor and Lotus Development founder Mitch Kapor, provides Tech Review with an article on the need for a federal CTO.
Meanwhile, Senator McCain’s technology plan has been viewed as long on non-technical economic doctrine, and has been described as so thin on specifics as to seem to have received only back-of-the-hand treatment.
The future of digital experiences will be built by strategists who grasp the full array of emerging business, social, and technical models. Specialties in user experience, branding, application design, and data science are laying the foundation for richer user experiences and business models breakthrough products and revenue based marketing.