Political Gastronomica : Campaign 2004
Blast from the Past - Kerry's 2004 Online Fundraising Performance
I have been reading all sorts of posts on the performance of the different campaigns, including Colin Delany's post on TechPresident about John Edward's $1M funding surprise in five days and the insurgence of online fundraising after a successful win in Iowa and/or in New Hampshire. Well, I have always had the online stats from those first two weeks after Kerry won Iowa and New Hampshire and thought maybe I could share them with you.
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Performance-based Metrics
One of the things we were doing from November until January was trying to unlock the secrets of fundraising and online performance. I spent untold hours pouring over data and online donations to determine the potential success formula. We learned that more pages on a contribution page is bad (went from a 20% conversion rate to an 80% conversion rate), one page minimum on the forms, fewer elements are better (you do not need them to check off each line on the FEC disclaimer) and watched how the conversion rate (contributions/unique visitors and finished contributing/started contributing) improved. But nothing could prepare us for the avalanche that happened on the day after Iowa.
The very next day, as the graph shows, we were having incredible performance on the donations. At the time, I got besieged by one of the communication staffers who asked me for metrics on performance. After a bit, we rushed out numbers and found our press going through the roof. Everyone wanted to know how we were doing. I remember a staff meeting a couple days later where someone from the senior staff commented on the ATM machine finally was working with the Internet. Within a week, we had hit $1M on online donations - web and email.
New Hampshire and Super Tuesday
We were seriously worried about the software doing on contributions since it was relatively cheap and had not been tested under serious load conditions, but when New Hampshire went to JK, I was there all night long watching the server load, making sure we were okay. And, we made it quite nicely. It wasn't until SuperTuesday that we discovered the fallacy of low-cost solutions in an enterprise world.
The evening that SuperTuesday was announced for JK, we were in a large auditorium and were watching the celebration of JK becoming the presumptive nominee. It was astonishing, and I had someone watching the server to make sure all went well. The very next day, MeetUp.org decided to point their 2M members to our server. According to our software provider, we were assured everything would be okay. It could handle the load. Uh huh.
Within 15 minutes, the server suddenly froze and gave up the ghost. We restarted the server and tried again. Less than 5 minutes and it stopped. Interesting, at the same time, Nicco Mele of the Dean Campaign called wondering how we were doing. We discussed performance - and even commented on the sudden uptime challenges - and he said that their (the Dean Campaign's info) had always said there was a pent-up energy for donating once the nominee was chosen. I had to dash off, and fortunately for us, we had a backup plan in place to handle the donations - making them a more "batch" process rather than a "real-time" (authorization right at the time of request). Once that system was in place, we easily took in another $1M within 24 hours.
It was an amazing time, and I wonder how Joe is doing over at the Obama campaign right now...
And for the political/data junkies, I offer the following PDF with the graphs for each of the online efforts during those weeks. Click here for the PDF.
Tags: Online Fundraising, eCampaigning, John Kerry, Campaign 2004, Online Fundraising Performance
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 3:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
And just what is the impact of TV on the web?
One of the questions I have been asked in the past two years was what it was like in the trenches when the campaign suddenly began to take off. As I have written in the archives, the change was astounding - but none so remarkable as what occurred on the night of the 19th. As all know, Kerry pulled off an incredible feat in winning the primary in Iowa - but what is not known is how difficult it had been to get Kerry to recognize the power of his own voice when helping the Internet side of the campaign. The image below is a data set I have talked about in the past, and now feel comfortable enough to share since this lesson is becoming more commonplace than before.
(click to see larger image)
Trying to get Kerry to say the URL
One of the hardest tasks we had on the Internet team was to get the staff to accept the fact that the website was an important part of the campaign. We had a memo written that requested the URL be included in every press release, Kerry wrote an email to the staff instructing them to include the URL on all communications and our ongoing challenge with the Political staff on the need for coordination between them and the self-organizing supporters through MeetUp was a regular head-ache. Even JK was uncomfortable about saying the name of the website - it was suggested he thought it was too self-serving to say his "JohnKerry.com" on television.
In an earlier archive post, I mention David Thorne, JK's ex-brother-in-law who was instrumental in helping the Internet Team get sufficient traction. What I did not mention is how David is the architect of what happened that night in Iowa.
After becoming incredibly frustrated with the Advance team and the Political team, David decided to take matters into his own hands. He ended up creating what is now the JohnKerry.com logo, getting it placed on foam-core, and then sticking it on the front of the podium before JK arrived. He then made sure the URL was in the speech and, as JK walked up to the podium, he whispered strongly in his ear, "Remember the website!" The results are seen above.
Afterwards
I spent that night babysitting the machines and tracking performance - making sure we did not crash. One of the tasks I took on was to find a way to track what happened in terms of time. The only dataset that was worthy of note was out bandwidth usage for our website. The graph shows five minute increments of bandwidth usage - and the peak shows that we had a jump of over twenty times the base usage in a very short period. In the world of large content sites, this is not that big of a deal (google 200x this traffic in a single day). But as a graphic to demonstrate what could happen, this was extremely persuasive. Once David showed this graphic to JK in the morning, he could not stop saying "JohnKerry.com" at almost every event he was at.
The power of the candidate is extremely underutilized - especially when considering what is the potential return. With the Deutsch campaign, I was able to tell when and where ads were being aired simply because the traffic impact was significant enough to drive people to the website in minor bursts. Do not discount the impact of multi-channel media strategies and the multiplicative results they can have.
Tags: TV and the Internet, eCampaigning, John Kerry
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 8:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Part 2: Greater Democracy - History of DemComm
Following the previous post, a little bit on the history of DemComm.
If not for Mark Gorenberg...
One interesting anecdote from my time with the Kerry Campaign - when I originally negotiated my role, my primary tasks was to build the network of online Kerry supporters - through some form of structure which we had dubbed the Kerry Leadership Network. But as things quickly escalated, the KLN was quickly deprioritized over the course of the first two weeks of the camapign. When I arrived, the team was focusing on the Alexa stats that one of our earliest Internet supporters, Marc Gorenberg, was focusing on. At the time, Gephardt's Alexa ranking was much higher than ours - and we needed to determine if the stats were truly reflective of our traffic.
After investigating our own traffic stats (which were confusing and wrong), it became obvious that issues concerning technical infrastructure were a higher priority (and we had Erin Hofteig and Dave Patten working with community members), I switched to my technical side and became the CTO. But, I always kept my involvement with community effort - working handedly with Dick Bell, Erin Hofteig and Dave Patten on our community efforts.
Aside from implementing an enterprise-worthy email CRM solution, one of our skunk-works projects were the creation of John Kerry personas on the social networking sites of the time (Ryze, Friendster, tribe.net to name a few). Erin's work on these sites were so successful that we got a press hit regarding the number of "friends" JK was getting at Friendster - though one part of the story not reported was that, during the course of the campaign, JK's profile was so popular and there were so many pseudo-JK profiles being created that Friendster had to create new features like an "official" profile and to overcome their limit of 500 friends at the time.
Returning to March 2003
As Kerry began to win primaries and other campaigns began to fold, we began to bring on more staff to handle the increasingly complex management of a national campaign. In the Internet, bnuilding an organization that three months prior, was the size of a small startup and now had to service the needs of a customer base the size of Amazon.com with similar needs in terms of customer service - the tasks was incredibly daunting.
As experts became available, we were hiring on members to become part of the Kerry team. It was in late March/early April that we hired Amanda Michel and Zack Exley to fill out our community efforts. Amanda came to us from the Dean Campaign, highly recommended by Jim Moore for her work through Generation Dean. Zack was brought on to focus on community - and, at the time, focused on the execution of effective email campaigns.
I had met Cam at eTech and lobbied for him at Kerry because of his exceptional work with the Clark Campaign and the Clark Community Network. He came onboard to spec out the next generation of a community platform that would engage our supporters beyond the typical forum (which had been staffed and maintained by our supporters) or blog (run by Dick, Peter Daou and Ari Rabin-Hayt).
Creating DemComm
The challenged we faced at this time was dealing with various issues that startups see frequently when they have explosive growth - moving from a simple infrastructure and small staff to an enterprise-worthy infrastructure, serious customer service and integrating an infusion of new staff. Couple this challenge with the fact that we were not be allowed to "officially" work with the DNC until we were "officially" the nominee (though being presumptive allowed us to finally begin our integration efforts), we had a extremely large task in terms of technical infrastructure. And, with Amanda, Zack and Cam joining us in April, we were trying to ramp up quickly.
From discussions with online futurists (like David Weinberger from ClueTrain Manefesto and Howard Rheingold), it became obvious that creating a team of community experts and leveraging some of the collaborative technologies could get us further along in our underestanding and development of a online community strategy that was far beyond our personal bandwidth and budget.
While we were attempting that model with demtech (and having difficulty with specific requirements to help us build a solution), the concept was still sound and lead to the creation of DemComm.
Creating another skunk-works project
On April 2nd, seven people were added to the DemComm group which, as Jock mentioned, included Amanda, Cam, Howard, Nanci, Jon, Jerry Michalski, John Coates and myself. One of the problems I faced was, while I knew this was an important effort, I had a number of other projects I had to address (including completing the infrastructure buildout for the website, a new Online Action Center, and a total rebuild of the contribution, marketing and reporting engines by our tech team), we agreed that Amanda take charge of this group - since she had the strongest reporting connection through Zack.
As Amanda wrote:
Howard is absolutely right - the success of our efforts will rely on wide acceptance throughout the campaign and the grassroots (via bi-directional communication). For example, promotion of the online community and its efforts and aims needs to become part of the campaign's message to the grassroots. Of course, self-organizing won't work if our architecture won't support it.A plan is the best way to leverage support and involvement throughout the campaign. 100% support won't make the difference, but substantial support will. Pushing for the plan early on will also ensure that our efforts get worked into the campaign's general election strategy.
Pushing for direct action throughout our community is essential. And not just because of its immediate results and the benefits of immediate engagement - asks for direct action are good reminders of our goal.
I propose that during our meeting on Thursday that we discuss the process for putting together the plan. Most everyone has raised questions that need to be answered, or at least addressed before we make any big decisions. Let's figure out how to pursue possible solutions in a timely way - and how
to delegate work among us all. We don't have much time to put this in place - six to eight weeks is the max for planning time.
The team began to work on the plan - and, through the hard work of the people on the team, we had the initial draft that Jock shows on the Greater Democracy post by the self-imposed deadline. The challenge we had was, at that time - the campaign was focusing on fundraising, staffing up and the insanity behind building up for the coming Convention.
But it should be clear - that DemComm was another skunk-works project: no one in the senior staff (with the possible exception of the Dir of Internet) knew about DemComm. We all knew that the goal was to prepare a proposal for the campaign that would be guidance for development - and help in supporting Cam's community solution. Cam's proposal (which I think is still one of the better ideas the campaign generated at the time - combining the best parts of threaded discussions, forums AND blogging) - was not accepted due to cost concerns and potential political liabilities ("What if someone said something on a Kerry Community blog that was racist or anti-American? Even though it came from an outside user, it still is a Kerry-branded site...") So, while we had some of the best people working on DemComm, the challenge was - as a priority, the community effort had a very different focus. Which leads to Kock's point of "sheeple" and how the campaign operated in 2004. And that is the topic of the next post.
Tags: DemComm, Kerry Campaign, online organizing, eCampaigning, Greater Democracy, Howard Rheingold, Jerry Michalski, Amanda Michel
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 12:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Part 1: Greater Democracy - History of Demtech
Originally, I was going to write an post called, "Did Kerry take away any of the Dean lessons?" which was, from my initial thrust of Jock's post at Greater Democracy, going to be a clarification of a couple of stories from the Kerry Campaign, including the specifics of DemTech, DemComm and the ideas behind Peer-to-Peer Campaigning. After writing a bit, I realized that my reply was better as a three-part post - explaining some of the myths and realities of the groups mentioned and efforts underway at the Kerry Campaign for engaging online community. To that end, may I clear up the story of DemTech:
Origins of DemTech
Originally, when I joined the Kerry Campaign, and we were in the doldrums, I noted that the technology infrastructure for most campaigns was sorely lacking (including ours) - leveraging consultants and very closed solutions to offer hosting and activism services for the candidates. Additionally, the database solutions (dominated by NGP) for fundraising, volunteer management and voter databases were large, complex data structures that would be a cumbersome project to tackle when and if we needed to merge databases with the eventual winner. To handle the systems, we were using people who were not as technical aqs we might require - and all of our appeals for technical support were met with indifference.
As many IT managers involved in mergers know, managing difference data sources and trying to merge them with limited technical resources and budgetary constraints can be a Herculean project that can be an incredible time suck. With a Presidential Campaign running at 100 mph, it would be much better if all of the primary candidates would work together to ensure that their technology infrastructure was compatable.
Reaching out to the primary campaigns
After we relaunched the Kerry Website in November of 2003 (with the help of JR and Brian), I created the demtech eGroup and reached out to all of the technical individuals in the other campaigns to suggest that we have a back-channel group where technical knowledge could be shared for the eventual merging of teams. Of all of the campaigns, the only ones that really connected at the time was Nicco (from Dean) and Turo (from Kucinich). All of us were quite focused on the tasks at hand, but the channel gave Turo a way to see if we could help him out of a problem.
Before this effort, there was also an eGroup called Tech4Dean which (from my understanding) was working on corralling the IT energy that supported the Dean Campaign into projects for the campaign (as did the Clark Campaign with Clark TechCorps). The challenge we faced was that the campaign was so busy with so many efforts, that the DeanTech group could not get the appropriate focus. But from this model, I revised the mission of the demtech group - attempting to capitalize on the centering of the efforts on behalf of the 2004 election. From the original "charter" letter on the demtech wiki:
...the idea for DemTech was a "safe space" for the campaign tech staffers to meet and exchange ideas (as shown on the original intro). It seems today that DemTech is a space for some of the leaders of the volunteer community who are interested in both process and technology to deliver and develop solutions for the Democratic Party for local, state and national efforts.......DemTech can become a clearinghouse for the tech groups online. The goal is to create a team that focuses on a set of priorities (e.g. field management, voter outreach, social networking solutions, news clipping, etcera) that builds teams that focuses on development of solutions.
As mentioned earlier, the greatest challenge was the unifying effort of trying to build a project (three months to the Convention, eight months to the election) which did not have access to the customer (Field Director, Communications Director, etcera) or the customer was focused on other, more pressing problems ("Who is thinking of field in each state when the Convention is only XX months away!!!"). One of the group's greatest challenges was that we had incredible energy, but little in the way of guidance from the campaign (I remember one of our calls where I was frustrated being unable to give strong product guidance to our team). We realized we might be too early to the party, but found one effort that we knew could be beneficial - how to build an effective online community. Thus was borne the idea of DemComm.
Tags: demtech, Kerry Campaign, online organizing, eCampaigning, Greater Democracy
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 3:40 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Recognizing the First Team (continued)
Funniest thing about coming into the campaign that day - was noticing how small the space actually was - and how little space we had. Aside from the players already mentioned, I should introduce a couple of other folks who added color to the campaign in my first days. It should be clear that when I came into the campaign, I had absolutely no campaign experience whatsoever, let alone Presidential experience...
Aaron Rosenthal, Database Administrator - one of the funniest guys on our floor, Aaron ran our installation of NGP - which is the software database solution that the campaign used to manage the financial and compliance efforts and our membership database (which we affectionately called KerryBase or K-Base). Aaron had performed similar work with another campaign in the past -- and joined the campaign in this capacity. One unique characteristic he had was a pet gecko (of which I forget its name), which unfortunately passed away sometime into the Primary season -- handling such adversity and challenges that no normal gecko should ever be subjected to.
Jessica MacLeman, Dewey Square and Internet Team Member - from what I remembered of Jessica in those first few days was she was a recent graduate and had joined Dewey Square (the consulting firm) as an intern and became a team member of the Internet Team almost inadvertantly. She was to be responsible for state efforts -- and became the main go-to person for various state page modifications and voter database solutions during the primary season.
Chad Lennox, Volunteer Coordinator - Chad was one of the "older" people in the basement - tirelessly managing the scores of volunteers that were there in the summer months, scrounding for volunteers and interns during the dry season (Sep-Dec), and then having to manage a tidal wave of supporters as JK began to surge in the polls in the month of January and after the Iowa win. Chad always had a smile for the many volunteers that joined the campaign - and his hard work earned him a promotion into the Political Desk as the primary season came to an end.
Aaron Rudenstine, Grassroots Fundraising - Aaron had a typical path to the campaign - was offered a role via one person, that person left the campaign, found himself looking for work, his skill and ability landed him with another group, he worked like the dickens, and then would find himself moving up the ladder a number of times - including becoming Mary Beth Cahill's assistant for a time, then working Political as well. When we first met, Aaron was ready to take on the world and build up our Internet fundraising effort - and he tirelessly made telephone calls to our sparce number of donors in the cold winter months, worked the data, and became all-around data guy on the success of our online fundraising in those early months.
Richard Rho, Bulk Email "Commander" - Richard had graduated from Duke University with a law degree - and wanted to practice law in DC. He joined the Kerry Campaign in the Finance Department, working on compliance (to make sure all of the Federal Election Commissions rules for fundraising were kept up). At the time, our inbound email was beginning to get out of control, and we needed more staff to help us with the effort. Richard was one of the people that Matt Butler "highly recommended" - and he joined our customer service group. Around the same time, our outbound email efforts were just beginning to ramp up and we needed someone dedicated to composing and delivering our emails. This person had to have HTML skills, a eye for detail, and an easy going personality. Richard was overhearing our conversations and came over to me and said, "Hey - I can do HTML. I use to do a little bit of programming." Two days later, Richard was driving our bulk email systems - and eventually went on to lead a team of publishers during the General campaign, handling all of the outbound emails for the entire nation.
Eric Wilfong, National Database Director - Later in the campaign, when we got short handed, we interviewed Eric (vitually) right out of school, on the recommendation from the owner of NGP, on the assumption that the installation would grow beyond simple usage of the web solution. Eric came on the campaign with energy and enthusiasm - and I do not think he ever expected what became his role on the campaign - an almost daily grind of managing the NGP installation, database requests from all parts of the nation, database integration issues, reports on various fundraising and campaign minutia, problems it had with other applications - all the kinds of things a true enterprise would hire an army of DBs and developers to manage. Eric kept his head about him and handled it with aplumb - and slowly began to crawl out of the insanity that was the database of the Kerry Campaign. Later on, he was able to get more support for his team's efforts - and today shows a maturity and breath that few people can compare with (save sites like Amazon or eBay or Yahoo!).
There are a number of other people from the early days of the Internet team to describe - including Nick Grouf and Dave Waxman, who came aboard to provide guidance and internal political management on behalf of the Internet team, and volunteers JR Boynton and Brian Villalunga who worked tirelessly for the relaunch of the new Kerry website in November 2003, and Daniel and Mike - two other compliance guys who became part of our first Customer Service team.
What became a mighty force in the campaign - the Internet team - started out with extremely humble beginnings. While the Dean Campaign got a lot of visibility for what it accomplished, the Kerry team did a tremendous amount with what little they had.
What a team they made - and then became.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
Recognizing the First Team
You know - so many people will never be recognized for the efforts that were made by the founding members of the Kerry Internet Team - and how the Kerry Campaign built up it's staff.
First off, it was the incredible fund-raising prowess of the Dean Campaign that caused the Kerry campaign to begin to notice what was happening on the campaign. A VC in California, Mark Gorenberg, was tasked with writing a memo for John Kerry in June of 2003. At a meeting on his boat, John tasked Marcus Jadotte, recently hired as the Deputy Campaign Manager to "get the Internet going".
Luis Miranda, Cyber Organizer - Marcus's first hire was Luis Miranda, a field operative in the Gore Campaign, Luis' family had been into publishing in South Florida (one of the first Latin newspapers) and had been involved in doing screensavers before high school. Instead of focusing on technology, Luis got involved in politics. After the Gore campaign, Luis worked for various Washington DC groups, setting up websites and other projects. Marcus' hire brought the first person into the organization who was focused primarily on the Internet, aside from Crossroad Strategies, the original team who had helped the Senator win his campaign against Bill Weld in his earlier Senate campaign.
Dave Patten, Volunteer Coordinator and Director of Customer Service - in terms of longevity, Dave Patten was the longest running staff member on the Internet Team - originally tasked with the overall volunteer efforts, but then became responsible for the process of responding to incoming emails into info@johnkerry.com. Given a simple laptop and Microsoft Outlook, Dave had to regularly wait 90 minutes before his Outlook would start while the 8000+ emails entered into his computer's memory - and then regularly crash. With a purchase of an email Customer Relationship Management service and a growth of his team, Dave was now able to reply to tens of thousands of emails - whether by an automated response or by targeted responses determined by his team.
Morra Aarons, Director of Internet Communications - Morra joined the organization in August of 2003 after being the Director of Internet Marketing for iVillage, a woman's site and eBookers, a very popular travel site in the U.K. (like Expedia). Through a personal connection, Morra joined the team working on various projects - and specifically focusing on the the connection between the Communications Department and the Internet Team - whose primary communication medium were emails.
In late August/early September, in preparation for the pending launch of the official announcement for Kerry in South Carolina, Marcus and the Internet Team engaged in a redesign of the website. With a last minute change of designs, the new Johnkerry.com website was relaunched in time for the Kerry announcement - with a lot of hard work on the part of Luis, Morra, Larry (from Crossroads) and maybe two other people.
During the months of August and September, additional members of the team came aboard, including:
Dick Bell, Blogmaster - Dick's political cred comes from way back - including his stint at the DNC as the first creator of a political forum for the 1992 Campaign (I would need to confirm the year). Dick had always been an ardent supporter of John Kerry's for many years. At the beginning, Dick's contribution was to be the direct connection between the Communications Department and the blog. Armed with his many followers (the Troll Patrol as we affectionally called them), the Kerry blog took a shape all its own. Ironically, in a bucking against the blogosphere tide, the blog volunteers pushed for the campaign to support a forum http://forum.johnkerry.com -- borne out of the problems that we had with the Movable Type implementation -- and the furious attacks we had with the many Dean and Bush trolls. It should be said that Dick managed both the blog and the forum -- and spent many a waking hour working those communities for our best efforts.
Erin Hofteig, MeetUp Coordinator and Community Manager - Erin was originally a volunteer -- and at some point, was given the responsibility of managing the MeetUp efforts -- a daunting task with limited internal support or resources. In addition, Erin took over the Kerry identities I had created on Friendster, Orkut and Ryze -- using the identities as a way of directly communicating with ardent Kerry supporters on these online community aggregation sites.
Mike Memec, Webmaster - Mike was Luis' righthand man -- after returning from working abroad, Mike took on the daily website publishing tasks -- all without having a lick of experience on the Internet. He dove in head-first into every project and came out swimmingly -- getting the job done by hook or by crook. His remit often was ensuring the tasks that needed to be maintained on a daily basis, whether it meant changing the content on the home page, updating the calendar, whatever. He was always there - making sure it got accomplished, and almost always in good humor. And, in addition, Mike was the team's comedy light -- he knew where the funny bone was -- and always knew how to drop a line that would make most of us laugh.
When I joined the campaign in September, the campaign had agreed to work with Mark Walsh, previously with AOL and the CTO of the DNC, where he was given the lead responsibility to manage the team. I arrived on what turned out to be Mark's last week with the campaign, for one week after I arrived, Mark had closed the funding on Air America, and went off to become the CEO of the country's first liberal radio network.
Next post: where we went from here...
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 9:20 AM | Comments (0)
Thinking about Nader
The Guardian profile: Ralph Nader
Was reading this profile and remembered that one of the funniest stories I had when I first joined the campaign was what the organization was like back in September 2003. When I walked in, the number of volunteers I had seen in the summer had evaporated - all of the desks were either filled with chum from events for the campaign or the rest of the Internet staff on terribly uncomfortable desks.
People never really understand what it takes to run a campaign - and I never had a clue. I walked into this world - and had my eyes opened - something I did not expect.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 9:27 AM | Comments (0)
Peter Lost, Frances Coming...
After four weeks of hard campaigning, sleepless nights, hand-shaking seniors in Sunrise Lakes, Century Village and Tamarac - it came down to the debate in Tampa - and the polls that followed.
That weekend, I spent every day and night hanging flyers for Peter. The day before, Jesse Jackson spent the day flying with Peter to get-out-the-vote in various cities. That evening, I enjoyed dinner with Peter, Craig Kirby (Edwards' Deputy Campaign Manager and Peter's Campaign manager) and the Reverand. As the dinner came to an end, I was tasked with being Peter's driver for the last night. We were to hit local diners from 10pm til 3am -- where Peter would be hand-shaking with voters. The next day, I worked the senior communities in Tamarac -- meeting most of the Broward County political candidates in from of the Senior Center -- and spent the last three hours in one of the black neighborhoods of Broward -- all to get out the vote. As the polls closed, I got a call from Jared Asch, Peter's Fundraising Director telling me that we were doing great in all of the major cities. We had a victory party set up at Bahia Cabana Bar - and I had to clean up from the day of campaigning.
Showered, shaved and freshly dressed - and in the car, I get a call from my friend Lisa Lindsey at Visions for Working Families. She told me the opening numbers - and they were not good. All I could do is pray they would get better - 20 point spread - that couldn't be right. But, by the end of the night, 25 points separated Betty from Peter - and Peter's concession speech was one of the toughest experiences I ever had in politics.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)
Eight Days from the Florida Primary
You know - eight days from the primary - and things are beginning to heat up. Most recently, we launched an ad that challenges the Sam Al-Arian story - and how Castor handled the issue. Funny thing, the argument seems to be how Peter is acting aggressively and being "negative", but the question I have is how did she handle herself in an important leadership issue - instead of addressing the issue head-on, it seems that she passed it onto a lawyer - and then handled it more like a "human resourses" issue rather than a "moral issue".
I can understand where someone could say - that was a mistake - but instead, the answers that have been brought forth from the campaign is a denial of information, then a presumption of action ("suspension") which may not be true (if the person could be suspended - with pay - then there was something to the issue) and then the accusation is an attack from Peter on Betty.
I used to say I was confused, but I am not any longer - the lesson is how to manage your relationships - with the press and with the stories - and to ensure that you communicate the message consistantly and effectively.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 8:56 AM | Comments (0)
Musings About the Florida Primary
I am sitting in the Peter Deutsch for Senate offices working on a number of issues - and once again, I find myself in a situation of not knowing how the election will roll. With John Kerry, the polls that we (in the Internet team) were aware of were coming from CNN - we had no insight to the surge that was occurring in Iowa. Here in Florida, it seems to be a different situation - where the organization is completely different.
In DC, in December, I remember how the entire campaign staff were shipped out to Iowa into the Iowa offices - basically crafting an entire field team from every able-bodied person in the campaign. Our email composer was in a little town in Iowa (see the Kerry Blog for Richard Rho), Morra Aarons was working the ground in Iowa - getting little to no sleep, and all that was left in the Kerry office was Luis Miranda (the original Kerry Cyber-Organizer), Josh Ross (who I brought into the campaign to lead the team) and myself watching the servers. Every day at the DC townhouse, in the midst of the winter, we were amazed when the Iowa polls continued their uphill climb for Kerry.
Here in Florida, the awareness is almost non-existant - with people barely aware of the election - and I sit here wondering how this election will turn out. The polls say Betty Castor is up by single to double digits (meaning that she can be either 5-15 points up) but there are between 25% to 33% of the expected voters still not decided. We are spending a lot on media (read: television) and Castor is getting a lot of umph from her relationship with EMILY's List.
From external sources, it is rumoured she generated $1.25M from EMILY's List supporters and has already had "independent expenditures" of close to $1M in TV advertising. It is an interesting set of facts since, in the past two months, Deutsch has been accused of "coordination" with a 527 - American Democracy Project which is headed by an old friend of Peter's.
But Peter, for all of his aggressive nature, has shown me to be a person of integrity and honesty - and has working pretty damn hard to avoid any interaction or coordination with anyone from ADP. No telephone calls, no emails, no conversations whatsoever. In contrast to EMILY's List efforts for Betty's campaign (e.g. staff from EMILY's List fundraising side-by-side with Castor staff, use of content from the same videographer, a speech where Betty recognizes the coordination of EMILY's List staffers in raising money), it makes one think - when are rules applied?
As a supporter of women's issues - I have been a supporter of EMILY's List and its efforts on women's issues. But in this particular case, the difference between Peter (and his standing with all issues regarding equality, NARAL, Planed Parenthood, etcera) and Betty is stark - Peter has an incredibly strong record and Betty??? That is the question I ask...
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 9:44 PM | Comments (0)
Databases are the 2004 Engine
Parties Are Waging Battle of the Databases (washingtonpost.com)
Funny thing about this article - is that the power of databases were understood by the RNC, but in the Dems world - it took a lot longer and a lot more time. The money wasn't there - the software was all open-source - and now the data is beginning to flow. Fortunately, DataMart is quite large - and cumbersome. There are other tools that help in modeling - and the data within DataMart is impressive. But what will be interesting is how DataMart will be exposed to the state parties - and how they will allow others to access it - with the security and other issues that come into play.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 1:51 AM | Comments (0)
VP-select John Edwards
So - is anyone surprised at John Edwards being selected as the VP candidate? After so much speculation and discussion - it is almost funny that Senator Edwards was thought of not being the primary candidate. If I was going to tell you my belief when the moment was that he was destined to be the VP was in the sit-down debate with Larry King - as the two of them were discussing the issues - and you could see the "easy" rapport they had. In the Internet Team, I remember someone saying "There he goes - applying for the VP position".
He brings all the things he says he does - and interjects the campaign with momentum as well. And, whether or not he is a trial lawyer or was against NAFTA - truthfully, he is campaigning - he is terrific campaigner - and, from people I work with that worked with him, he is a good person. And for that, I support him wholeheartedly.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
How *do* you build a mailing list?
Why are people so surprised about JohnKerry.com asking for emails to receive the VP announcement. This is the first Presidential campaign that finally got the power of the Internet when it comes to fundraising and money generation.
Twelve months ago, the Kerry Campaign had an email list of under 180,000 email addresses that could barely get a boost from any announcement - even the launch of the website in early September only
generated 7,000 new email addresses.
Today, a petition to fire Rumsfeld acquired 250,000 emails into the campaign's coffiers - and in two days, the campaign generated on the order of $5M into their coffiers. What is not clearly comprehended by much of the people in politics today is that emails are golden - they are the low-cost, high-tech alternative to direct mail. And in this world, the owner of emails that generate the return - gets the gold. In the dot.com era, we use to talk about the long-term value (LTV) of a customer. In this era, LTV is determined by the news cycle - and email and the ability to respond and communicate to a group of supporters - whether they are strongly tied to you or not - is the power the Kerry Campaign now has. And since the campaign is NOT the DNC and is not governed by all of the strictures that the DNC is governed by, it has been able to push the limits - the bounds - of what could happen. What Kerry has tapped into is similar to the subscriber model - once you give once, it is so much easier to give again - especially if you have only given something like $10, $20 or $50. Now, with McCain-Finegold, democratic politics and the connection that people have to the candidate is even stronger.
Why do I think Kerry will win? Simply, he has generated the most people who have "supported" him throughout the campaign. In this campaign, over a 250,000 people will have donated to the campaign online - and, when the numbers come out, over to 1M emails will have been captured.
The question will be - how will the DNC and the campaign use this list of names and performance to get out the vote.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 2:21 PM | Comments (0)
Meeting the Other Teams
Spent yesterday in Boston at Jock Gill's event - and another event that I have not remembered the name of. When I arrived at the breakfast, ended up meeting a lot of people - but the ones I spent the morning with:
- David H who was the Director of IT and Internet from the Dean campaign in the formative days,
- Frank Reta who was Dave's IT manager who is now running the Boxer tech side of the campaign,
- Mike Liddle from the Lieberman campaign who is now working the DNCC Online Communications
- Josh Hender and Austin Lin - programming geniuses from the Clark campaign.
I have heard all sorts of commentary on the strengths and shortcomings of the other campaigns - but I have been quite impressed with the other guys from the other campaigns.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 7:25 PM | Comments (0)
Dean and Super Tuesday
Thinking once again about what is happening in the world - especially with the bombing in Spain and the effect it is having with the markets - and then, watching how Bush first launches "positive" ads, and now launches some pretty "negative" ones.
What blows me away is the fact that they are intriguing distortions on "facts" that have beeen culled from various media reports and comments made by Democratic candidates. And what is "funny" is the fact that the plan from the Republicans seems to be highlight the negatives of Kerry so people will not notice the past four years of Bush. Very scary...
As for the challenge ahead for us - Super Tuesday was an amazing experience - in terms of fundraising - and endorsements (especially with the Governor coming by on Wednesday - check out this photo for a candid. The interesting thing will be what happens next - to keep our supporters engaged - and ready to vote come November.
Interesting efforts have begun with the tech supporters from Dean (Tech4Dean) and how they can engage the Presidential Campaign in helping GOTV and supporting our voter outreach. They are extremely enthusiastic - and we are in need of how to work with them in an effective manner. But we are discovering all sorts of interesting issues that require our research to make sure we work well together.
This weekend - Dick and I are heading to Boston to meet with Jock Gill and others about coordinating efforts with other volunteers. Will be interesting...
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 7:31 PM | Comments (0)
Sweet Smell of Success
It has been some time since I wrote about the campaign - and things that has been happening. Events like Super Tuesday were quite astounding - especially when Edwards decided to drop out. Then, the following day, the outpouring of donations has been so large that we broke all fundraising records - exceeding $1M in a 18 hour period - when all is said and done - we willhave come close to $2M in one 24 hour period - this with the help of Moveon.org and other supporters.
Now - with the nomination "sown up" - the question becomes how to handle the Bush juggernaught - and how to defend against his attacks. In addition, there is the need to demonstrate why JK is the person to be president given all of the opposition that the Bush machine is going to launch at him. His record is nuanced - but Bush likes to talk "black and white". Pundits and advisors love to say that the American public is only into these kind of statements - but can we leverage the Internet to demonstrate the nuance - and keep JK above the fray and speaking on the "vision" messages?
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 6:22 AM | Comments (0)
ETCon and Future of Kerry
So -- with the successes in TN and VA - eyes are turning to DC and WI. Clark's bow out has been extremely helpful - we are finding resources that were not available originally in the past few days.
Spent Sunday evening traveling to ETCon in San Diego -- where I met up with more tech people and attempted to communicate with various people about the entry they could have into the Kerry Campaign. Highlights of the trip:
- Met Trippi - he was extremely friendly - but on the stage, was quite adamant about what he thinks HD is going through and the benefits JK is having with the media's turn of events. People communicated with me on what they thought of his positions and how things have gone wrong - but I am learning more and more, this is all about what is the "message".
- Met with the Tech4Dean Team - one of the leaders of the team open communications - and now we are chatting about what is next. Their vision for extending what can happen in the Democratic process is inspiring - the challenge is that the campaign is a train barrelling toward a goal - and limited time and bandwidth to implement all of the ideas. But the door is unlocked and we are happy to listen.
- Met with Cam Barrett - interesting person and good egg. Did not know all of his credentials - but it was definitely worth the conversation with him and with Howard Rhiengold. Ed Cone and Phil Wolff joined us for dinner which made for an interesting conversation.
Myself - I keep feeling there are not enough hours in the day - which is exhausting to say the least. There are so many tasks to be addressed, and it never feels like there are enough hands to handle them. And then, with Drudge coming up with his sleaze - makes the coming weekend all the more exciting. We shall see what evolves.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 6:35 AM | Comments (0)
Washington and Michigan Success
Well - Washington and Michigan has come in - and JK has blown it away. Unbeleiveable. I still, no matter how many people tell me that JK is the nominee - I am not completely bought off until I see Florida, California or New York won (call it silly naivete). Once that is done, I think it is the best to keep a moderate thought. Though, people have chats about - even if JK were to have a "mistake", "misstep", or something - Edwards is better positioned than HD. Which makes me think - we need to make sure that the Dean
supporters learn more about the JK effort and to understand what JK.com and our team have been doing since the beginning.
To that end, I am heading to San Diego to go to the O'Reilly conference this afternoon (enjoying a late flight to catch people) and I will be there on Monday to connect. If anything can happen - it will be the chance to help people and get them to understand the efforts we are focusing on - and the input/help we could use. And to that end, I think I am going to open up the demtech Group to allow people to join and become part of the discussion - since the CTOs were unable to connect - I will attempt another way. Maybe - Adina's solution (using the SocialText wiki) will finally come to light. I will write some things up on my way out there - the idea of connecting will happen - and the challenge will be in organizing and find the people to help make this happen. We have been working on it - now is the time to get the memes out there.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
Making a difference...
"I am humbled and honored that so many Americans have joined our cause. And to those who have not yet joined us, I ask you to go to johnkerry.com. Make yourselves heard, enlist with us. And if I am President, you will continue to be heard -- because johnkerry.com will continue to be online everyday of a Kerry Presidency."- Senator John Kerry, at his win on February 3rd, 2004
Funny thing - this part of the speech started with a telephone call, an email and a chat with Andre Cherny found this paragraph inserted into the Senator's acceptance speech.
The phone call was from Andrew Rasiej, an ardent Dean supporter who I had met through other connections in my social networks. He and I were talking about Kerry's pending success - and he made a comment on how to attract the Dean supporters to Kerry. "Dean supporters feel they are going to have access to the Dean Administration, why not give it to them in the Kerry Administration?"
From that call, I walked in and crafted an email making the suggestion real -- and asked Josh if I should mail it to Mary Beth or Michael Meehan. He suggested they might not be the best people to send it to -- since it would be lost in the avalanche of communications the two of them were getting at that time. So, I decided to send it to Andre Cherny - and then made a call to David Thorne, John Kerry's brother-in-law.
On the phone call, I explained to David about how this would be a strong plus in the campaign - especially in terms of bringing access to everyone through this channel. I explained that this would be an excellent step in the right direction to bringing over the Dean supporters. He liked the idea - and would see what he could do to support it.
Next, I found my way upstairs to Andre, who was in his closet with the TV on CNN - and him furiously typing away at the keyboard. I asked him if he had seen the email I sent, and he said sure, but what did it mean. Five minutes later, he got the gist - and said he would see what he could do.
Later that night, downstairs in the basement of the townhouse, we were watching the victory speech - and when he said that paragraph, I about leapt into the ceiling with the biggest grin on my face. Something about making a difference in a national way was so fulfilling - I smiled for hours on end - all the while watching the server load as the contributions continued to tick in...
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 7:38 PM | Comments (0)
JK's Lifetime of Fundraising
Sunday morning news programs are going to go into the discussion cycle of how John Kerry received more money from individuals that work or worked as lobbyists than any other Senator in 15 years. Funny thing is, when we worked on the particular issue that JK did not take money from lobbyists and PACs, it was researched that JK had not taken any money from PACs or lobbyist groups for both his Senate and his Presidential Campaign. It is funny -- two facts come to light here.
One, if you worked as a lobbyist, you are now not allowed to give money to a political candidate for fear of impropriety. Every American is entitled to contribute $2000 to a candidate -- no matter what job they have. And two, the largest portion of the "lobbyist" money (as reported in the Washington Post) came from John Kerry's brother's law firm. Of the $640K of money, a little over 1/3 came from Cam and his partners. Is this a bad thing?
The fact that he was able to raise money for his brother over the years -- is that not what we try to do in starting a business? Only we would call it "friends and family" money and call those people "angels". But in the realm of politics, we have to be worried about "propriety" and how things are perceived.
And, being a Silicon Valley guy -- I am amazed at how the news cycles work. Four weeks ago, we were dead on arrival. The candidate's background was no different than it is now, the message has been honed during the last two months -- but it is a distillation of what he had been saying for quite some time, and now Kerry is the frontrunner. And with this weekend being dominated the SuperBowl, the threats of al-Qaeda and airflights, and now this. I wonder how long this will ride -- and how much it will impact the primaries/caucuses? JK has nothing to be ashamed of -- and a record to stand on.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 9:13 AM | Comments (0)
NHPrimaryWin.com
Been a couple of days -- and again, the change in the campaign is indescribable. But, in an interview with a new volunteer, I realized the similarities of this campaign with another situation I was intimately involved in -- the dot.com experience. We were fighting in a market that the leading company was generating all of the attention -- both in terms of media interest, customer attention, vendor attention, and purchase orders. All without having the product "sold" to a single customer. And then, the first consumer reports came out that were not statistical samples -- but the real purchasing patterns emerged. And suddenly, the customers took another look at the other products.
Our little company, in the wake of this domination of the media and mindshare, we took stock of what was happening. Our original efforts were stymied -- both from the outside and from within. But we spent time looking, listening and learning -- we refocused our efforts, we changed tactics and started to address some of our major issues -- and we waited. Because no matter how good our site was, no matter how good our product was -- until the customer decided to sample our product and decide to purchase it -- we had very little justification for our efforts.
One person should be noted that will not in the wake of all of the media that will begin to swirl about the campaign and the Internet effort -- David Thorne. You ask, "Who is David Thorne?" Well, David is one of JK's best friends from college and from the military and is related through marriage (David's sister was JK's first wife). David has been the outside person pushing for Internet related issues more on a fundraising effort before anyone else had in the very beginning -- and even brought in Nick Grouf (ex-CEO of Firefly, ex-CEO of PeoplePC) into the team in order to help us go through our initial re-evaluation of the Internet efforts. And through Nick, the campaign began to change in it's focus on the Internet -- but it should be noted that David has been the person pushing for the team when Dean was trouncing the campaign in the 3rd and 4th quarter.
What is it like in the wake of the NH primary? Funny thing -- the office is still a-buzz with work and everyone is still cranking along in a normal fashion -- but nothing is certain and there certainly is no air of ineviability. As far back as three weeks ago, we were on the trash heap of history with articles written about our campaign being completely dead (my favorite is the one where a history teacher recounts the 2004 election year cycle and how Kerry, with all of his strengths did not win the election) -- it is no where near considered a done-deal. The Feb 3rd States are coming up -- and that will begin to consolidate the forward reaching efforts of the campaign. If we are successful there -- maybe we will breathe a little easier. But not terribly so.
Funny thing -- it was my assumption that after the primaries, we would get a chance to relax -- maybe for a month -- but I have learned that this assumption is false. If we were to win, we are in this for the long haul -- and the game only gets more busy and more intense. We are in this for a period unheard of in my personal experience. At the beginning of this post, I drew a parallel to my dot.com experiences. I was with a number of those dot.coms -- and my favorite (eGroups) barely came close.
In that story, the money came in, and we had heady times -- but the story was even more free since the schedules were not determined by outside forces. In San Fran, when the weekends came -- you could have time with your friends and family. Here -- government works 24/7 -- I am awake at 5:30/6am -- onto the computer and watching the cycle. Funny thing -- the next month will help shape the direction and focus of the team and campaign. And, where the IPO effort was all about closing customers (GOTV), bringing revenue to the bottom line (fundraising), and generating the hype about our position is the marketplace (polling and press) -- it was all about the vision of the CEO and the operational team (campaign manager and staff). And it is funny, our VC (JK) had a management change -- and whether it was the change or the hype for the other product -- the product is beginning to sell. And we believe for the better.
And -- as a placeholder for another post -- I will try to remember to discuss whether or not the Internet has changed the face of politics or is it just an improvement on the earlier processes.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 5:52 AM | Comments (0)
Waiting for NH Polls
Okay - an hour before the NH polls close -- and we do not know specifically what will happen. We spent most of the day dealing with various issues -- from the urgent (priority to launch new content for a VIP) to the important (spent time with setting up backup servers, emergency procedures and fundraising emails). But as the day wears on, people who were caught up in the energy that was Iowa are asking -- why is it so quiet?
Life in the DC Townhouse (National Office) is more on a macro scale, things are not as active as in the individual states. Strategy is more on how we will be able to reach the groups on a national scale, both targeting our message to the individual states while ensuring our current and potential supporters get the information they need. So, while the people in the state offices are connecting with the field ops at the polling places or with the political operatives or the national press, we focus on maintaining the operation and delivering what the overall campaign requires.
Funny thing -- we spend more time here thinking about how to deal with the same constraints of a typical business -- the same unspoken "expectations" as to how Communications will want a particular message to match the talking points or how Fundraising will response to an email that goes out to our donor base or how the home page will be received. One of the strangest complaints came from a typo which had the word "onto" instead of "on to" -- of which I heard so much comments on...
But, as for the campaign, not a clue as to what will actually happen -- Drudge keeps making predictions that we will win and Dean will come in second with an ever shrinking lead. Conventional wisdom is that there are "two tickets" (only the top two winners ever make the Presidency) out of New Hampshire. I believe that with the shortened primary schedule, there will be three -- and Edwards, not Clark, will get the third. Question is -- will Clark leave or keep running? My guess -- Lieberman might leave this week, and Clark will stick it out until Feb 3rd. Kucinich -- not sure how much longer he will stay in, but he will be quite the candidate who sticks it out with minimal cost-base and such. And, not to forget Al Sharpton, but he will be around in Feb 3rd -- and then?
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 6:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Zogby says we'll win?!?!
Wow! This morning, after seeing yesterday's Zogby poll, I was blown away:
"Kerry had a 19-point lead in Monday's one-day polling. In the final analysis, voters raised doubts about Howard Dean. Through the second half of 2003, New Hampshire voters indicated that they were angry but overwhelmingly felt that President Bush was a shoo-in for re-election . But as in Iowa, the closer Democrats got to actually voting, there was a renewed sense that President Bush could and must be defeated. In our final sample, just about half (49%) told us that Dean was unlikely to defeat the President (that is fifteen points worst than his worst day in Iowa). At the same time, only fifteen percent said it was unlikely that any other Democrat in the race could defeat the President. Howard Dean was the man of the year, but that was 2003. In 2004, electability has become the issue and John Kerry has benefited by developing a sharper message, by his veteran status, and - this is particularly significant - New Hampshire Democrats tell us that he looks like a president."
Unbelieveable. But, as I keep saying, New Hampshire voters are not guaranteed to vote one way or another. The news likes to say voters in NH will vote the way they want to -- and not the way the pollsters tell them to.
Funny thing, with the new "front-loaded" Primary schedule (just learned what this actually means -- there used to be a six-week break from NH to the next primary), I do not think the typical IA/NH dynamics with three tickets from IA / two tickets from NH is actually what will happen. All of the candidates will carry on into the Feb 3rd States -- and it is there that HD will truly find his stride. He has had his volunteer teams in place for some time -- and, while they might be disillusioned from IA, they might get a boost from NH and then Feb 3rd could be the watershed for his candidacy. For a simple reason -- it is there he and the other candidates are looking for their momentum. That is what I wonder about. For NH, I do not know if we will win -- I am not a believer in polls -- I believe people want to make their own minds up and polls, while a short-cut in making people notice other candidates, I think they will make a choice based on what they want to happen.
Best thing that happened to us -- we fixed our site. The number of emails we get thanking us for the ease of use and how easy it is to actually find information on our site is wonderful. And the hits (traffic) keeps on coming. The press reports on our traffic increase, but it goes way beyond that. The email responses are incredible, the contributors, the number of volunteers...it is astounding. Now, the question is: how do we leverage all of this enthusiasm to give GWB his ticket to Crawford, Texas.
Tongue-in-cheek thought: do we really think that GWB will move back to Crawford, Texas?
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 8:07 AM | Comments (0)
NH Close...
Now -- it is getting close once again -- we are waiting for the next shoe to drop -- and whether or not Kerry will be able to pull off New Hampshire. What I believe is that, with Dean wounded at the moment -- his supporters know that NH is the "Waterloo" as the press calls it. And Kerry's team is truly working the voters -- trying to pull the same story in NH as he did in Iowa. From MSNBC, they write:
Siphoning from Dean
He hopes to keep siphoning voters from Dean, whose temperament and judgment came into question during the Iowa caucus campaign. Crowds at both Kerry and Dean events are filled with people torn between the candidates, their hearts for Dean and their heads for Kerry. "I like Dean a lot but I'm concerned about his electability," said Art Hayek, 50, before Kerry spoke to a crowd in Concord. "I fear he might not have the experience and support beyond voters like me. Kerry might have a better shot against Bush because of his war experience."At a Dean rally, Gloria Kelly, 55, said, "His Iowa speech turned me off and I started thinking about Kerry. But if I had to decide now, and I don't, I'd go with my heart and Howard."
Kerry is solidifying his claim to be the party's establishment candidate. In addition to the League of Conservation Voters endorsement, Kerry in recent days has won support from former Vice President Walter Mondale and South Carolina Sen. Ernest Hollings.
The line "Heart says Howard, Head says Kerry" -- was the line that was being brandied about back in June/July -- when people were amazed at the prowess that HD had accomplished back in June/July. And I had the same issue going through my mind. What I believe in is the power of the "movement" that HD has created, or more appropriately, been the focal point of. All of the progressives -- the people who believe in the transformative effects of the Internet had (to some degree) successfully accomplished the goal of changing the process and structure of business. Now, you can not expect to see a successful company without a quality website and/or a method of handling customer feedback/complaints from email or forums.
As recently as 1995, I worked in a software company that tried to minimize the effects of having a user forum on Compuserve -- since the company did not listen to the customer complaints or even have someone on the forum, it became a dumping ground for the company -- and a poaching ground for our competitors. Now, flash forward to 2003/04 -- Washington politicans are focused on "retail politics" -- connecting with the voter and building the relationship though the typical channels they are used to: press, reporters, party officials, and "regular" voters.
With HD and Trippi, the other people who are not party to this exclusive power channel are now given "access" to the channel -- blogs become the single-threaded forum that allows other people to connect. The open-source efforts pushed by the DeanSpace are fostered by Zephir's need to connect with the online community -- have someone commit something to a cause, whether it be money or time, and you get an even-stauncher volunteer and activist. DeanSpace might not be the enterprise-quality software that most corporates are looking for, but it is the AIDS quilt that is causing people to become supporters because they are part of something.
Where we (the Kerry Camp) has focused on has been the typical machine that is the political arena -- Dean focused on capitalizing on the grassroots effort -- with the message. Zephir built the community relationship, Matt with the blog and Trippi making Dean speak to the MeetUp and the people on the stump.
The message of "taking back America" resonated -- and it fed upon itself -- with people making blogs, websites, eGroups and other cyber ways of expressing their "endorsement" of the candidate. With this outware reflection -- the movement grew -- to a degree that allowed people to associate with HD -- and thus became self-reinforcing. When HD did the Iowa speech -- I watched with the enthusiasm of the students on the floor. What amazed me was that he did not think of speaking to the world -- but rather the people assembled in the room. It was there that he got people fired up -- and he was not "worried" about the world's perception. To that end, he speaks with his heart -- it is from that place that he both has his greatest strength and greatest political weakness. It will be interesting in the last few days to see what happens.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 3:57 PM | Comments (0)
What a difference a win makes...
So far -- dollars keep rolling in -- we will hit our million dollar goal within the time frame we set for ourselves -- if not sooner. Our front office staff has had to increase by having not one, but two people manning the phones from 7am til late at night on the weekdays. Weekends run into weekends -- you barely remember that it is Friday -- if it was not for the calendar that reminds you of the coming NH primary.
It is funny -- when I first came here -- the organization was relatively small -- there was the Cyber Organizer, an Online Media/Email person, a Web Content Manager and a person handling a deluge of emails with an Outlook client. The team had just launched a new version of the website (personally opinion, I was not a big fan of it) and we were dealing with end of quarter email campaign trying to raise money with a gimmick of Hammer Bush with a cute Flash piece.
Emails and database integration was an interesting hodge-podge, and the website management consisted of handling emergency requests and making sure we were abreast of content that was never purposed for the web.
What a different a few months makes. The team has grown to handle technology issues, a person who was a fan of Kerry happened to be *very interested* in revising our site -- and created a mock-up when he was sick over the course of six days which we then spent the time implementing it, we expanded our customer service team with a kick-a** eCRM solution that has made responding to emails a breeze, we expanded our community efforts with a blog update to handle the trolls, installed a forum (all volunteer driven) and even expanded our MeetUp connections with another "group communication platform" tool.
The fundraising system/engine has been upgraded, giving individual supporters ways to show their support and to get donors to donate on their behalf has been amazing, and we have triple redundancies when things get really heavy. Our email communications have been upgraded -- and we coordinate with the other communication channels much more effectively, by improving our processes and communications.
It was JK's decision to shake up the campaign that had the biggest impact on the overall organization -- things have improved with Mary Beth at the helm -- she deserves a lot of credit for the energy and team-building she brought. One of the hidden team members is David Morehouse, a plumber in a former life, David and his team have done wonders for the campaign in ways I would never expect. Not to discount our former team, but this group has been exceptional. And, with JK on message, the site providing ease of use, and the systems percolating -- the challenge is the growth and how to push the true vision -- connecting with the the people outside the beltway. Be part of the great change that is occurring in the cyberspace community and provide the connection that needs to be there. The Dean Team and Joe Trippi have done a fabulous job in connecting with the world -- giving distributed power to the rest of the world -- whether a volunteer coordinator in Wichita, Kansas or a blogger in the blogosphere -- people are connected and are involved. This needs to be directed and retained -- something that, if we are successful, I will work to have happen as much as possible.
But, with all good things -- life can intrude upon the dream. I look forward to see what happens next.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 6:29 PM | Comments (0)
Wow! What a difference 72 hours makes!
From spending three months with and people saying "What are you doing working for Kerry?" to emails that continue to congratulate me for being part of the Kerry team - unbelievable.
As we were watching the polls prior to the Iowa caucus - we were amazed at the growth of the stats - showing JK's increasing popularity in Iowa. My biggest concern was the vaunted "labor support" and 3,500 volunteers that Team Dean had brought out. But even as the entrance polls said we had a lead, I still wondered what would actually happen. When we came out with a 20 point lead above HD - it was unbelievable. We were astounded and excited.
After CNN announced their choice of JK as the winner, a group of us came back to the National HQ to watch the post-caucus analysis and get ready for the outbound site issues. What was the most amazing thing was when JK, in the midst of his speech, said "JohnKerry.com" -- our entire team bounced up and cheered -- finally, on national television, he had fit in the website into a speech. We did not hear the next three minutes of the speech, we were so excited. What happened next was amazing -- as the load on our contribution engine ballooned through the roof -- which caused us to engage the backup server and capture our donations with both systems. It was unbelievable -- after four months of building -- the system worked incredible well -- and we had the most successful night of the campaign.
The rest has been something of public record -- we hit $250,000 with online donations as of noon the next day -- a short 12 hours after the announcement. We hit $500,000 after more than 24 hours -- and the numbers keep rolling. Emails generate tremendous response -- and people that would not reply to emails are now excited to communicate and offer their support. I wonder if the Edwards campaign feels a similar way - with their hard work finally being recognized as well. And one thing that was incredibly touching -- when Congressman Gephardt spoke on national television and announced his decision, this hardened team of people in our office went incredibly quiet and was almost reverent. He is a terrific person and an incredible congressman -- and a terrific competitor. We are better people for his involvement in this campaign.
Myself -- I find that I am up at 2am working on the next volunteer email -- prepping for New Hampshire. This is going to be an incredible race -- one in which we are making a difference. Only casualty I have had recently is the fact I could not be at Decom in London this evening -- which sounded wonderful. I so look forward to the photos that someone took.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 1:36 AM | Comments (0)
JK up to 25%
Kerry comes up to 25% in the Zogby poll - but what does that mean? With the complexity of the Iowa caucuses and the need for highly roganized coordination in Iowa - it is going to be quite a race.
Interestingly enough, listening to the pundits on the TV - you hear from CNN that "it is a four-way race" - and rarely hear about how Kerry is truly doing. At times, it seems as though FOX loves Kerry -- always speaking highly of Kerry. From the DC office -- the campaign is operating on all-cylinders -- but the excitement is in the offices both in Iowa and New Hampshire -- feeling the excitement that only a Presidential Campaign can provide. The other offices -- especially the Feb 3rd States are getting teed up.
What will be interesting is what happens on Jan 20th. When it happens -- watch out.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)
The Big Mo Arrives?
Today, as I was doing my early morning email check, I learned that Kerry broke expectations and now is one point ahead of both Gephardt and Dean in Iowa. While statistically this is still considered a dead-heat between the three (and Edwards at 17%), it brings the big "mo" to the campaign that was expected so long ago.
How does this show up? In our inbound emails which has gone overwhelmingly positive with comments like "Way to go!" and "I always knew you would be the one" and "I have always been a Kerry supporter" to the online donations which have increased incredibly in this month - compared to the month following last quarter. Site usage is up, volunteerism is going through the roof - and all because of a simple poll that is a statistically moving average of a three day polling sample.
What does this say? Kerry and our team have been working incredibly hard in the past few months - working to overcome the comments from the "washed-out front-runner" and "troublesome campaign" - which in my five months with the campaign has shown nothing but growth and improvement.
The teams are tighter, the energy is focused, the growth in measured and enthusiastic. While there are always things to improve, a campaign is not the glamour it promises from the outside. In ways, I envy the person who I was when I contemplated joining the campaign six months ago. It was a magically thing - to be part of changing the course of history and all that rot. Now, it is a race -- not a sprint as it might seem, but as Marcus put it "a marathon". And our team is definitely a bunch of marathon runners.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 8:13 AM | Comments (0)
Seven Days to Iowa
It is seven days away from the Iowa Caucus and I watch the pundits and pollsters speak on behalf of what they expect to happen. Just recently, they showed the fact that polls - even as close as seven days from the caucus - can not effectively determine ranking. It is obvious that all of the candidates are jockeying for position - Gephardt wants to be the Dean spoiler in Iowa, Kerry wants to be the Gephardt spoiler and Edwards wants to be the Kerry spoiler. It seems almost incestuous - which makes this whole effort sound like watching a football match - without any idea what the players are capable of doing.
Wouldn't it be interesting to have a way of measuring the performance of the candidates in the election with certain metrics - similar to pass completions, touchdowns and such. I wonder if anyone has actually built such a model to help determine the impact of endorsements (personal, institutional), size of field support team and when launched, size of phone bank, etcera.
Will Gephardt spoil Dean? I think not. Will Kerry beat Gephardt - that might be the surprise that we do not expect. You might suggest that I am a bit biased, but I am curious how the Midwest sees Dean and Kerry as the "liberal, East Coasters". And will Edwards surprise others? Not sure - but he is trying his hardest. The question will be - what happens in New Hampshire - and then onward to Feb 3rd States.
Posted by Sanford Dickert at 9:09 AM | Comments (0)
