How the Barack Obama Campaign Uses Wikis to Organize Volunteers
The Republican nominating contest for President of the United States is all but sewn up -- Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee are footnotes and with 256 GOP delegates at stake today, John McCain may have enough pledged delegates to have his party's nomination in hand by morning. The Democratic contest, however, is still close and all-important primaries today in Texas and Ohio (and important-but-less-so elections in Vermont and my own home state of Rhode Island) could decide the fate of that party's nominee. Yesterday I had a chance to talk with Isaac Garcia, CEO of Central Desktop, whose software is being used by the Obama campaign to manage field operations in Texas.
The biggest prize for the Democrats today is Texas, which has 193 pledged delegates at stake, and the winner of today's contest, where polls have Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a dead heat, may be the one whose campaign has the best get out the vote effort. However, organizing a campaign across a state the size of Texas, both in terms of number of people and geographical size is a daunting task. There are 254 counties and over 8,000 voting precincts, and a population that falls into all different ethnic, economic, and age demographics.
The Obama campaign is using software from business intranet provider Central Desktop to manage "precinct captains" -- volunteers who get out the vote and spread the campaign message in specific precincts across the state. The campaign started using the software during the run up to an earlier nominating contest in California -- the nation's most populous state. "The Web-based collaboration platform combined with a strong organized grass-roots effort, created unprecedented public involvement that is revitalizing politics in America," said Patrick DeTemple, the California Data & Systems Manager for the Obama campaign. "Not since Bobby Kennedy has there been such an extensive Precinct Captain operation for a presidential candidate in California."
Central Desktop is a wiki-based collaboration tool that competes with 37Signals' Basecamp (to put it in some perspective). Though most users are business clients who utilize the software as a private intranet, the Obama campaign is using it to power a public facing wiki to organize information for precinct captains in Texas. According to Garcia, the campaign is using the software on their own without much input beyond basic support from Central Desktop -- or in other words, the campaign has been savvy enough to figure out how to utilize an existing tool for a completely new use case.
In fact, Garcia told me that Central Desktop was actually unaware that the campaign had planned to use their software for additional states following California until they noticed an influx of traffic on their servers going to the campaign's new Texas site. Further, according to Garcia, the idea to use collaboration software to manage precinct captains was actually something that bubbled up in the campaign from the grassroots volunteers who were out in the field.
That the Obama campaign is so tech savvy and so open to using social software is unsurprising. They have run one of the most comprehensive online campaigns in recent memory -- perhaps ever -- generally outperforming opponents on nearly every social network or social media site, and according to a recent post from Ning's Marc Andreesen, Obama has long been very interested in social networking and how it can affect politics.
The specific appeal of Central Desktop's wiki-based approach is that allows volunteers to shape the messaging and quickly collaborate with each other without the need to go through a webmaster. The Texas effort, some of which was cloned over from the previous California site, was literally launched a couple of weeks ago in mid-February.
In 2004, the Howard Dean campaign famously used Meetup.com to mobilize supporters. But Dean's use of Meetup was mostly about bringing supporters together to share a common experience. It was not so much a focused and organized campaigning effort, as Obama's use of Central Desktop's software has been. Garcia was hesitant to say for sure, but he thinks Obama's may be the first campaign to make heavy use of collaboration software to help manage on the ground organization (though, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul both utilized Salesforce.com in their campaigns).
Update: Jason Fried pinged us to let us know that the Obama campaign is actually using Basecamp as well. The new media team at the campaign's national headquarters in Chicago (where 37Signals is based), for example, used Basecamp to collaborate while building BarackObama.com. Basecamp is also being used by some parts of the campaign in New York City to manage events.
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Posted by: Roger Linn | March 4, 2008 8:24 AM
What's important here is that CentralDesktop is an easy, egalitarian tool that can help to organize a massive number of supporters and users with minimal cost.
A couple of days ago, on CNN Money, there was a nice article on the Obama campaign's online marketing prowess:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/29/technology/leonard_politics.fortune/index.htm?section=magazines_fortune
Seems like an understanding of online marketing and the ability to utilize easy to use but effective web technologies are giving a nice assist to an already strong platform and campaign.
Posted by: WebUser | March 4, 2008 8:36 AM
I believe this campaign season gives us examples of both positive and negative leveraging of Web 2.0.
Obama (whom I do not support but am impressed with his organization) was able to use Web 2.0 to keep a strong and unified message that was in line with the overall theme the campaign wanted to portray.
Ron Paul (whom I also don't support), on the other hand, did not keep a reign on what was happening in the Web 2.0 world. Instead of having a unifying message with a positive outreach, we saw nothing but chaos and a grassroots Web 2.0 movement that spent more time attacking other candidates and making their own candidate look bad. I know several reporters who said they didn't write anything about Paul simply because they didn't want to put up with his followers.
In the former case, you have a movement that resulted in a unified message that equaled votes. In the latter case, you had a very loud Web 2.0 presence that held the candidate down in the single digit range, not much better than he polled prior to the campaign kick-off.
It will be interesting to draft some case studies of Web 2.0 usage once this is all over.
Posted by: MatthewN | March 4, 2008 8:42 AM
McCain won't officially be his party's nominee until the convention.
Posted by: Jeffrey McManus | March 4, 2008 8:49 AM
@Jeffrey: Touche. Posted updated. :)
Posted by: Josh Catone
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March 4, 2008 8:54 AM
Congratulations to the Central Desktop folks for such a great implementation of their product.
Posted by: Mike Doeff | March 4, 2008 9:34 AM
Some ideas for some future posts:
"How Barack Obama eats a sandwich"
"What Barack Obama ate for breakfast"
Posted by: Adam | March 4, 2008 9:50 AM
As a follower and enthusiast of web based collaboration tools it great to see web 2.0 technology making a difference in the lives of technical and non-technical people alike.
Our company works with Joint Contact (www.jointcontact.com) for web project collaboration, but have also researched Central Desktop and the work they've done with providing turn-key wiki's and intranet solutions.
Posted by: Wayne | March 4, 2008 10:29 AM
Obama is a lying, racist, cheating, 1 year old senator turned presidential hopeful. Hillary is a PRO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT presidential candidate.
What do both have in common? Both HAVE NO CLUE how to run our country, and are merely banking on American's to vote them in for HISTORIC REASONS and to give the Democratic party (Who pretty much want to raise taxes, legalize illegal CRIMINAL immigrants, let GOVERNMENT CONTROL EVERYTHING) so that they can achieve their goal of CONTROLLING America in a NEGATIVE mannger.
How can you, Read Write Web, be so blind by the fact that Obama sees things as Black and White, and Hillary merely wants us to believe that since she is a woman she should be automatically qualified as the ideal president???
I'm ashamed in you, and will never use your service again.
Posted by: Jonathon | March 4, 2008 11:33 AM
It's good to know we have a tech savvy candidate who can be a true leader for the next generation. We need such leaders who can and are willing to use technology for good.
Posted by: raj | March 4, 2008 12:30 PM
"Some ideas for some future posts: How Barack Obama eats a sandwich, What Barack Obama ate for breakfast"
That's exactly what I was thinking...
How about an article about Mike Gravel and his youtube video, how he's on top of all the anonymous issue based online polls while being completely censored from mass media. You could tie this in nicely with a piece on the role of the internet and the way it relate to freedom of speech...
But yeah, you probably gonna serve us another Obama piece of propaganda instead...
Posted by: wack | March 4, 2008 2:06 PM
Wikis are probably the best web app idea in the last 5 years.
Posted by: TenTenTwo.com | March 4, 2008 2:15 PM
All politics aside, this was a great post about the effective use of ReadWriteWeb technology. I've used Wiki's but didn't know that Central Desktop had such a compelling application
for non-technical users to collaborate.
Unfortuntely, for a black man or a woman in America to succeed they have to be significantly more qualified then their competition. I supported John Edwards but he didn't connect authentically to people and this race between Obama and Clinton is proving once again that the Democratic party is "disorganized politics".
Obama's campaign has out scored Clinton's by a wide margin which plays directly to the question of who's better able to manage a huge complex organization on day one and make good judgements.
Clinton's fight to the end will help expose every dent in Obama's armor before McCain lines up to repeat the same claims.
Can anyone see the benefit f having a Constitutional Law Professor run the country for 4 years to fix a few misteps:
like the rejection of habeous corpus, the institutional sanctioning of torture as legitimate, and the right to invade and occupy a country for it's resources in our own interest? I think the qualifications are more than on point.
And I also think he's got the judgement to fix some serious economic trends that we will spend 10 years trying to reverse (unregulated banking practices, the influence of large corporations on public policy).
Obama is the real deal and his race have nothing to do with the qualifications. Calling him a racist seems incredibly absurd. A racist black man wouldn't gain any following at all. Obama success at connecting with people stems from the conviction that he actually intends to serve and NOT manipulate people.
Great article.
Posted by: McD | March 4, 2008 3:17 PM
Well, I agree, that Obama's idea to use Web 2.0 tools for collaboration is wise. The thing is, does he use the right tools? I know, that Central Desktop and Basecamp have been there for quite a while now. This doesn't mean though that these tools are the best. I've tried both and had to reject them. Now I'm with Wrike, which offers me more on the project management side.
Posted by: Diego Alexis | March 6, 2008 12:20 AM
Based on this, it seems to me that in 2012, we should nominate a professional SEO to run for president...
Posted by: Beetle | March 6, 2008 5:16 AM
Hillary'ous discussion with obama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7150u9sfCo
Enjoy,
Posted by: Mike | March 6, 2008 9:48 AM
Diego: I agree with you - there are many other great tools available. We use OnStage Portal but there is also a great list at whybasecampsux.org
Posted by: Kevin G | March 6, 2008 1:55 PM
Hello Mr chairs him (it)
I apologize for the quality of my English, I am from a French-speaking country and I indeed think of communicating with you.
I followed since the beginning with attention your route (course), I it is Rémi HOUNKPATIN I am Beninese and I took God so that it can walked (worked) well. I would like to Propose you an idea for the video of Clinton.
I also suggest you playing on your youth to show that to be you the ideal man for the planet is in hiding from January 1st, 2009 and that the protection of the children and the woman will pass, Good and of the environment crosses(spends) of the beach and forests.
I suggest you thinking about this idea: " you go to make a Video on which 1-you squeeze (tighten) by the telephone 2-you squeeze(tighten) in a office with generals of the armed 3-up in front of the generals and in front of the card(map) of the World(Monde) 4-by the telephone with the Queen of England "
I shall be very happy to see you in the head of the world in 2009 and I support you On behalf of the one who thinks you more on the earth (ground)
Remy HOUNKPATIN of Benin in Africa
Posted by: Remy HOUNKPATIN | March 11, 2008 9:40 AM
Many a man think that only whites can lead. This is nonesense. It is an outright lie. Barack Obama has shown the world that even other people not necessarily the whites can lead societies. I believe the American youths should know that Obama is the right way to success and believe me He can at all odds.
Posted by: Jacob Nyende | March 16, 2008 7:31 AM
You may find my article "The Coming Digital Presidency" of interest: http://mathoda.com/archives/189
Posted by: Ranjit Mathoda | March 21, 2008 1:37 AM