Online technology fueled the Obama campaign win, reports Steve Lohr. Customized open source software and cloud computing enabled volunteers to work at their own pace and in their own neighborhoods — without needing to travel to a campaign office. It enabled voters to be identified by precisely assessed data mining. Those are just two reasons why the Obama technology team deserve accolades.
“Often the profiles of volunteer callers and the lists they received were matched,” writes Lohr. “So the callers were people with similar life experiences to those being called, and thus more likely to be persuasive.”
Open source software is free and available to anyone online. Because cloud computing stores data on the internet rather than on any one computer, it makes files available to anyone, anywhere, on any platform they use: smart phones, IPADS and home computers.
The tools and techniques utilized by the Obama technology engineers are promising because they can be adapted in campaigns everywhere: not only in politics but to raise attention for human rights and other issues that affect global civilization. Our hats are off to them.