On Tuesday, March 10, NDN hosted a special forum with Joe Rospars, the Obama campaign’s New Media Director and founding partner of Blue State Digital. Joe and NDN President Simon Rosenberg had an informative, thought-provoking discussion about the role that new media and technology played in Barack Obama's quest for the presidency. During the back-and-forth, which was viewed from all over the country and even internationally via our live Web cast, Joe made clear that the cutting-edge use of technology that resulted in the most bottom-up political campaign in history started with the Blackberrying candidate himself. A former community organizer, Obama is also very conversant with new media tools and technologies, and understands their power and how they can be combined with traditional field organizing to create a political juggernaut.
Simon also asked Joe about what new media strategies his team found most effective during the campaign, the digital divide between Democrats and Republicans, and what Rospars and his crew might have in store for us in the future. This is simply must-see viewing for anyone who wants to understand the changing political media landscape. Check out Simon and Joe's conversation, and the Question and Answer session that followed it, below:
Here's what Nick Baumann of Mother Jones had to say after hearing Joe and Simon speak about the GOP's efforts to catch up technologically and organizationally:
Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, has promised to take his party "beyond cutting edge." But Joe Rospars, the man behind the Obama campaign's incredibly successful new media outreach, said that the RNC's current internet strategy is "all smoke and mirrors marketing."
On Tuesday, Rospars took part in a question-and-answer session about the impact of technology on politics hosted by the left-leaning think tank NDN. Rospars dinged the Republicans' much-criticized request for a proposal (PDF) to redesign its website, laughing that his company, Blue State Digital, certainly won't be competing for the business. (Lefty BSD probably wouldn't respond to the RFP anyway, of course, but Rospars brought it up out of the blue—he was obviously referring to the widespread mockery it had already received.) He criticized the GOP's email list, boasting that the Obama campaign's 13-million-strong list was developed in an "organic" way. "We didn't purchase lists and just add people to our email list," he said. "The point of having a big email list isn't just to say you have a big email list. The RNC says they have a however big email list, but the point is to actually have relationships with people so they open the message, they listen to what you're saying, and they're willing to do something," he said.
Rospars suggested that it's a mistake to see the use of social networking technologies and new media as ends in themselves—in other words, using tools like twitter and facebook are ways of mobilizing a following, but they don't ensure you'll get one. Without adopting "the ethos of building an organization from the bottom-up," the GOP will have trouble catching up, Rospars said.
Meanwhile, Rospars is doing his best to make sure the GOP doesn't catch up. He says that of the 100 best ideas he and his team came up with during the campaign, they only used about 15. He's won't be talking about those in public. He doesn't want to "give anybody any ideas."
I am excited to be announce that on Tuesday March 10 we will be holding a special event here at NDN - a luncheon conversation with Joe Rospars, the new media director of the Obama Presidential Campaign and founder of Blue State Digital, one of the nation's leading new media consulting firms.
There is little argument now that the way the 2008 Obama campaign used new media and the internet has changed politics here, and around the world, forever. Joe was the director of this historic effort, and I am very pleased he will be taking the time to reflect on their remarkable campaign, and offer some thoughts on what we might expect in this space in the years to come.
We will be making a more formal announcement on this in a few days, but in the meantime mark your calendar for this midday discussion with Joe Rospars. For those not able to attend the event here in our offices be sure to watch it live on our new high-end webcasting system.