Obama's team reinvents Democrat Field Operations

techPresident – Power to the Edge: Obama's California Field Operation from the Future

I have slobbered on Obama's Field Operation on my blog before...and yes I will do it again.

In 2004 and 2006 the GOP utilized a system we called the Extranet, in a nutshell it sucked and seemed to have been designed by desk warriors and not Field guys. I am sure all the intentions were great but there was little if any practical application for it. In 2004 BC04 ran laps around Kerry and his allies because we used MS Excel and concrete goals and results.

Obama's team is taking it to the next level with mybarackobama.com (I admit I have an account just to check out the functionality).

"The Obama campaign is distributed and bottom-up in a way that is the clearest example of what a post-broadcast, distributed and participatory democracy is going to look like. The evolution in campaign tactics happening right now closely parallels what's happening in the military, corporations, government and other large organizations. The dropping costs and increasing reliability and flexibility of information technology is having profound effects on how these organizations make things happen."

I read Wikinomics last year and it really caused me to ask myself -- why we do some of the things we do on campaigns the way we do? Usually it always comes back to control. We love to have it. Embracing a true decentralized campaign is tough for any experienced campaigner to accept but it is necessary to evolve and win.

Some of the organic stuff that Ron Paul, Obama and Huckabee have done this year is truly ground breaking. I look forward to seeing how Campaign 08 will change and progress from 04.

Thanks to Ruffini for getting my brain moving on this. I am going to digest this article on McCain's 10 regions and blog on it later.