davidkamerer.com

Tag: Barack Obama

  • Obama takes change online

    changegov.png

    I call on president-elect Obama to create a community of committed Americans to discuss the solutions to the problems that face us. I call on him to designate a US Community Manager, with a small staff, to moderate and harvest those discussions to solve the country’s problems. Forget polls. With a few million people in my.america.gov, Obama will be able to tap into the world’s largest focus group. Communities are cheap, compared to most of what the government does. Create a space for the brightest people you know; use them to attract the best ideas. And better yet, use this energized community to sell those ideas to America.
    A day later, Obama answered the challenge with change.gov, a social media site,  to create engagement in the transition process. 
    On the site, you can read Obama’s transition blog, upload your vision for the future (with images), apply for a job and learn more about Obama’s policies and transition team.
    A hint of things to come? You can join the site by providing your email address and zip code. No doubt Obama will take direct engagement to the people to a new level. That’s one of the hallmarks of the social media campaign that propelled him into office.
    Yet another way that our President-elect is using social media to tell his story: Obama put his election photos on Flickr under Creative Commons license. 
    Read more about the creation of change.gov at Mashable and ReadWriteWeb.

  • How Obama did it

    Barack Obama climbed almost insurmountable odds in his bid to become our next president. As candidates go, he was inexperienced. He had to face down a powerful opponent – Hillary Clinton – and then maintain momentum against the Republican machine and John McCain. His race was undoubtably a negative for some voters.

    To be sure, Obama is a gifted and charismatic speaker. And Bush’s dismal failures made America ready for change.
    But Obama won because he ran an expert campaign. I think it’s the largest and most successful social media campaign ever. Through it, he engaged voters and raised an unprecedented amount of money. 
    I attended an Obama event in March, and my name and email address entered the campaign system. After that, I received timely – almost daily – messages from the campaign. They were personalized, relevant, and tactically addressed issues as they arose. Each missive included an easy way to donate, and encouraged even modest contributions. Multiply that by the millions who engaged with Obama, and you’ve got a genuine groundswell of social equity.
    Make note of these names: David Axelrod, chief strategist. And David Plouffe, campaign manager. These are the geniuses who led Obama to victory. 
    Posts like these will have to hold you until someone writes a book documenting the strategy and tactics that elected Obama. That will be THE book about the 2008 presidential election.