Tech Stream

President Tech

18 February 2009

Barack Obama’s use of the internet during last year’s US presidential campaign transformed politics. In terms of online marketing, organisation, and fundraising – the campaign was a watershed. And the statistics are amazing: Online donations totalling AU$750 million dollars and the campaign social networking site mybarackobama.com attracted 2 million registered users.

Managing this online presence, was Ben Self, the founder of Blue State Digital, and until last week, the Technology director of the Democratic National Committee.

He spoke late last week with Fran Kelly from ABC Radio National Breakfast. You can download the interview as MP3.

President Barrack Obama seems to be quite the tech savvy president too.   Former-President George W Bush claimed he never used email, but Obama is a self-confessed ‘Crackberry addict’ (meaning he uses the Blackberry as his mobile device of choice, which is lucky since there’s no computer in the oval office. Weird.)

There was also a minor scandal before Christmas when a writer from the Philadelphia City Paper claimed he saw Obama at the gym working out with a Zune, Microsoft’s portable MP3 player. It caused a few tech-snobs to gasp in horror, but we were quickly reassured that in fact the President elect rocked an iPod.  Now, if only we can find out what tunes he has on it? We do know that he now has acces to the White House Record Library: several hundred pristine LPs that include landmark albums in rock, including an Obama favourite – Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run.   Bush had his iPod stocked with country and baby boomer pop artists as you can see in this classic video on Youtube.

Peter Marks, the technology reviewer on ABC Radio National Breakfast, spoke with Steve Cannane just after the inauguration about technology in the White House.  Download the interview as MP3.