January 2009 Archive

Sorry, but after posting my video - friends pointed out lots of articles on how “antiquated” the White House tech was when moving in.

• Washington Post - Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
• Gawker - Technology’s White House of Horrors
• ZDNet - Obama staff: White House in tech ‘dark ages’
• MacWorld - Obama administration frustrated by old White House PCs
• LA Times - Obama staff has low-tech move-in day at White House

Sorry folks - but if you think the Obama Administration had no clue about the tech/software issues before they walked in - you must not be one of those “tech-savvy” people Owen Thomas talks about who live within “the Manhattan media bubble and Silicon Valley’s startup cube farms”.

Whenever I walk into an office - one of the first things I notice are the computers and the software that is on the screens. It is very easy to notice if someone is on a Mac or a PC - and you can see whether or not the bullpen is running LCDs versus CRTs.

Sorry - but the tempest is not worthy of the sniggering - the truth is, the Obama Admin is going to renovate the technology and the solutions within. Third day started today - it takes corporates (and startups) a little time to allocate budget and get systems/solutions installed.

Give the White House a break. If I walked into a company with tools designed for the 20th Century and was trying to connect to people within the 21st networked Century, I might need a little time to rearchitect the solutions.

[EDITOR NOTE: I have both PCs (IBM and Dell) and Macs (Powerbook G4 and a new MacBook Pro) and bang on in Linux (Red Hat and Ubuntu)]

Image via Futurenow/Robert Gorell

On the 13th of January, I was asked to speak with CNN International about how could the Obama Administration effectively use technology to increase transparency. The video is from CNNi: World News Europe with Becky Anderson.

Great quote sent to me from Yan Ivnitskiy:

“Starting today,” Mr. Obama said, “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.”

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].”

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

I love this particular paragraph - reminds me of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena“:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

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As I am banging away at another project, I overheard some people saying one of those phrases you always here when people are talking about “new” technologies (at the Social Media Monday Meetup):

You know, all of us here are twittering - but my Mom is not twittering, and mainstream are not twittering. We can not assume that everyone will be twittering any time soon, but it will happen.

What I love about this statement is at the end of the 2004 Election, when I was taking some downtime - I remember listening to everyone in the media industry discussing the new technologies of “podcasting” and “RSS feeds” - something that had been practiced in the 2004 Election.

Four years later, the “podcasting” meme has been subsumed with YouTube (has anyone looked/listened to any audio podcasts in a while?) and RSS feeds are still a technical term for adding blogs and other websites to your feed reader, personalized Yahoo! or google page (or Netvibes/PageFlakes). But, who would have discussed twitter and “tweeting” - even though the idea of texting was still a small phenomena done by the Europeans and Japanese.

Today, the threads of what may happen are being discussed in various arenas - check out these concepts:

• Mix and Mashable Services - with Open APIs Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, OpenID and such - along with the Data Portability Project and the effort of groups like the Sunlight Foundation - along with simple development platforms like Ruby on Rails and/or django - coupled with cloud computing - what apps will be available?
• Making Voice/Video Easier - I thought the VoIP apps would be a bigger part of this years Presidential Election, but I am betting that with the increasing commodization of minutes and bits (think of all of the VoIP and packetized services), a platform in the frame of ROR/django - then things might blow up (see RecordMyCalls and Jaxtr).
• Community Organizing 3.0 - no one ever discusses the original online communities any more (e.g. prodigy, Compuserve or dial-up BBSes) which showed people how to handle chat and conversing online as a common-interest community. Even with forums, USENet, email lists, chat services (like AOL) - the most we learned was free-for-all or heavily moderated (one gatekeeper). With the expansion of the “social networks” into the greater population (I can not claim friendster or Orkut was effective in 2004 since the population was quite small in comparison to today), and with the population who has grown up with MySpace and Facebook - Community has jumped to 2.0 with the reduction of a “small” virtual space (like a forum) and has become the grand square with gossip, news, and other micro-events that are available for people to filter and deep-dive if they desire. Community 3.0 - this is a challenging concept, where technology and the crowd’s energy is captured and used for additional social benefits - meeting some need that we do not have already solved. I beleive the gradient to Community 3.0 be a combination of Data Portability, APIs and our natural curiosity of others - combined with the large, cheap computing and storage resources.

This will be another interesting ride - seeing how society and circumstances around us will impact the engagement of people to create the next chapter of Politics.

This morning, I woke to a plethora of emails suggesting that I was two Administrations behind - especially after noting that Slate had already drawn some comparisons to the Presidential Election of 2006 and the Obama Election.

So, to follow up on yesterday’s post, here is the roster of the Obama Administration compared to the Santos Administration. Again, all photos of Obama Staffers are from Nadav Kander and The West Wing (TWW) photos are either from the web in general or from IMDB.

Click more to see the photo comparisons.
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After having a fun fest with watching “The West Wing” these past few weeks on BRAVO - I was amused when the New York Times released this promo spread from the magazine.

In reading through the article and looking at the photos, I wondered “Who are their counterparts in the Bartlet Administration?” And, after a liberal use of IMDB (thanks Amazon), some Photoshop and some heavy-duty HTMLing, I offer a scorecard from the first Bartlet Administration and (hopefully) the first Obama Administration.

Credits: all photos of Obama Staffers are from Nadav Kander and The West Wing (TWW) photos are either from the web in general or from IMDB. Click more to see the photo comparisons.
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….and needed a recommendation, can I suggest a friend of mine from New York City.

Noel (known by his friends as “noneck”) has been a staunch advocate of coworking (Change You Want to See), Democratic ideals and has been incredibly busy with supporting Obama and his personal enthusiasms for a better world (read his blog).

He is looking for a “community organizer” role - specifically in New York City - with a new-media bent. Rather than spelling it in my words, let me use his post for clarity:

I (noneck) will be…

• Working with a team that empowers people and educates them on community media techniques
• Working with online and offline communities to further unify the global connections we all share
• In a position to explore artistic creativity, hone multimedia production skills and explore innovative outreach techniques
• Working with an organization that has a track record of innovation and is willing to fully document techniques for all to enjoy
• Working with an organization that desires new partnerships to test out theories of empowerment and communication
• And….this position should be located in New York City and allows for flex workspace (I will have to travel.)

Any takers? His resume is found here: http://noneck.org/RESUME_HidalgoNoel.pdf

Tonight, I spent the evening listening to a number of people discussing the future of the Obama Administration and how technology may enable it. I live-blogged the event and provide my transcript below:

NYSIA January Monthly Meeting: Government By the People 2.0

Is technology changing democracy? With our panel, we’ll explore that issue, look back at the presidential campaign, and ahead to the new administration and look at the many ways that the Internet and technology is reconfiguring the way citizens connect with politics and policy.

Panelists:

• Josh Levy, Managing Editor, Change.org
• Micah Sifry, Co-founder and Editor, Personal Democracy Forum
• Rachel Sterne, CEO, GroundReport.com
• Tom Watson, Managing Partner, CauseWired

Moderator: Howard Greenstein, President, The Harbrooke Group

Bruce Bernstein (founder of NYSIA) makes intros and explains to the audience how NYSIA helps grow small tech businesses in NY. Bruce thanks Chase for sponsoring, and then intros Howard Greenstein, who has been running the panels and special events.

Howard opens the event with a discussion on participatory democracy: there is a potential for significant changes - how much is real, how much is perception.

The question is: what can we (the entrepreneurs) do to make it “work” for us. How can we use the tools the Obama Campaign has used and use it to our advantage (small and medium companies)?

Introductions

• Tom Watson: new book “CauseWired” (third printing) - came out in November - online social activism. Politics to non-for-profit causes. New firm - CauseWired Communications - turn them into Causes.
• Josh Levy: 19 different online social movements at Change.org
• Rachel Sterne: GroundReport.com citizen journalism platform and make money off the platform. 3500 reporters on the ground. Rachel was a Business Developer at LimeWire and a reporter on the Security Council at the U.N.
• Micah Sifry: Personal Democracy Forum curator, techpresident.com blog, consulting with Advocacy Organizations on the Web. Primary client is the Sunlight Foundation - grabbing ahold of the massive amounts of the government data and shine the light on what goes on with Congress.

Q: Did social media tech affect the election?
MS: Should the question be about “new media” vs “old media”? If we focus on YouTube, where candidates were sharing own content, initiating own events - yes. I believe that Obama would not have won the Democratic primary without the astute use of Internet technologies. The Obama team believed they needed to ride the new wave. Normally, the tactic for winning the Democratic Primary is about tapping big donor networks, then big media cheerleading for you, then elected officials / union officials.

Hillary had all of those things, and Obama won. Obama was able to continue to tap this unknown area. Hillary was supposed to win the Super Tuesday race. But it was about the caucus states was about having the most delegates. Obama organized technology to organize the massive base of potential support into pyramids across the states. 2 out of 5 in the major swing states. Obama Campaign used their own tools to mobilize and activate.

JL: that is the most specific you are going to get. At techpresident, they were charting YouTube usage by the campaigns. What it did was showed was the fact that the campaign could rout around the mainstream media. Continue the platforms LONG after the media cycle.

TW: “bottom-up stuff” - Obama benefited from the bottom up. The core of supporters did their own thing - and ignored the centralized control. The social network “influenced” the MSM. Self-perpetuating cycle.

RS: parallels are occurring in the larger, MSM media - everyone can participate, everyone can contribute. NowPublic, NewsVine, GroundReport - MSM orgs are recognizing the benefit of access to the community (e.g. iReport for CNN).
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