The readings on Obama’s online fundraising strategy have less application to my interests although the sheer volume of activity was astonishing. An email list of 13 million addresses, 1 billion emails sent in total, 1 million people participating in the text message program and in the final 4 days, 3 million phone calls were made. Strategically placing Rospars, new media director, reporting line directly to David Plouffe, campaign manager, and this recognition of the importance of technology is manifesting in the role of a national CTO on the Cabinet of the US government.
For me, though, the Obama readings put the people side of the campaign into the spotlight. In the first instance what functions are necessary to transform energy into action? We saw in Camp Obama how the team trained and skilled up volunteers to get involved. Harnessing that passion and enthusiasm into manageable tasks and then providing the knowledge, skills and tools (e.g. NTL’s responsibility briefing document) to do it was a key endeavour. A two prong approach was at work: devolving real roles to people (“the incredibly simple act of distributing different roles to people”) and providing them with the tools and training to achieve. I am convinced education is part and parcel of involving people, both educating them on the tools, as we see in the story, but also the issues and here again technology can work its magic.
“We go through everything from canvassing, phone banking, volunteer recruitment, our campaign message, how to develop an organization locally” Woodards says.
What makes this process even more effective was the very very clear objective of getting Obama elected; reinforced by the belief that this was a chance to make history.
Pacing and speed lay at the heart of the success, instead of rushing in and working, the strategy was to build an infrastructure that could scale. This shift in mentality to “the slow build approach… of leadership building” paid off when on the first weekend they were able to knock on 2500 doors.
Relationships were everything. And stories helped open up these relationships – instead of a two hour orientation all participants took part in interactive in-depth training, “a powerful experience”. Self awareness was an important part and people were empowered to be leaders.
Interestingly the team understood that they needed to innovate the organizing model and adapt it to their area, so we see in Oxford, Ohio how the team tapped into social networks. If someone went to a bar every weekend then they would try to register voters in that particular setting.
This local focus translated into unexpected results with people undergoing life transformations and reconnecting to their communities: Jennifer Robinson now actively wants to make her community a better place “good organizing changes the world”.
The feature of technology as an invitation for everyday people to participate comes through clearly. And the capacity to identify volunteers and build their willingness and capacity to participate is something to be learned from. Hughes says “what we’ve learned…..there’s huge potential for people who haven’t been involved in politics to discover that, yes, this is something that impacts me”. For me as a UK citizen there is a seed for transformation in this Obama story. The combination of good organizing with decentralization – ‘the neighbourhood team’- and emergence – allowing actors to lead the direction, was explosive in its reach and impact.
Again it’s the ability of technology to build ‘killer apps’ that enabled this capacity: the web utility that the campaign had dubbed “Neighbor To Neighbor”. For me, the question that needs answering is: when it comes to civic participation what is the high value information? Many tools were used in the Obama campaign but the one that held the most potentiality for me was the strategic telemetry and the models that Strasma’s firm built for issue, persuasion and support.
