What Happens to the Obama Network After the Election? (2)

What happens to Obama's network after the election? The answer depends a lot on decisions Obama and his top aides will make, but thanks to the lateral networking tools available to everyone online, the answer to that question is also up to his base, and the organizers and grass-roots leaders who are the nodes of his network. Thursday, I'm going to be speaking on a panel with Al Giordano of The Field and Nate Silver of 538, that Al has put together called "The Organizing of the President,/a>," where we'll offer some thoughts on this topic. (More details on exact location soon, but I think it's 7pm somewhere on the DePauw University campus). But, as expected, the answers are also starting to bubble up on their own.

Take this email exchange that I have had in the last 24 hours with some of the core activists in Connecticut for Obama. Monday, Stephen Wilmarth, the site owner of a Ning social network group called ctobama.org wrote techPresident the following note:

Thought you'd want to keep your eye on this....

As we approach election day, our Connecticut for Obama (Ning) grassroots organizing network Web site will undergo a profound change. Unlike traditional campaign Web sites that will shut down as the activities associated with the election process draw to a close, our netroots organizers will convene and discuss how we turn our registered network users from the task of electing Barack Obama to the office of President, to a network of organizers who can participate in the governing process. Having found our voice, we intend to keep it alive and flourishing and growing long after the campaign has ended, and turn our energies toward the challenges of governing. Our mission is to continue in our role as a group motivated community organizers, to advocate for the issues that brought us into the process in the beginning. We will continue to make use of the rich social media tools and online resources to keep our group of over 1,000 grassroots organizers and campaign workers, many of us new to the political process, highly engaged. So, watch this space!

[emphasis added]

I wrote him back, asking "Who are you? Do you just speak for yourself or for the whole group? Can you point me to where the group came to the decision you emailed me about? Are there other members I can be in touch with about this?" Wilmarth wrote a much longer email back, which I excerpt here:

I'm the site owner for www.ctobama.org. I only speak for the group if what you mean is that there's an informal set of site admins and grassroots leaders who have discussed what we do with the site after the election. Jen Just, the CT Field Organizer for Obama for America, and Val McCall, Connecticut Volunteer State Chairwoman for Obama for America, are the 2 most active members, but the site was designed to be a grassroots, loosely affiliated organization from the beginning. In October, 2006, I formed one of the first CivicSpace draft-Obama Websites in the country. The idea of a grassroots organizing network not formally affiliated with the campaign (my.barackobama.com) and organically developed sprang out of discussions I had with Zephyr Teachout, Colin Maclay, David Moore, Liza Sabater, & Aldon Hynes at a Berkman/Sunlight working meeting on political information in the Internet era in January, 2007.

My personal vision is to create a grassroots network around the election of Barack Obama that extends beyond the election cycle and becomes a vehicle for engaging newly enlivened, active (not the traditional party types) volunteers as a force in the governing cycle. Unlike national organizations like MoveOn.org, my hope is to add social media and civic engagement tools to the local site for activists to organize and mobilize on a state-by-state, CD-by-CD basis, with "dashboard" information pulled from the Sunlight Foundation and other civic engagement tools for "location-based services" assisting future organizing, volunteer mobilizing, and issues education challenges. I have always sought to make the site as open and self-empowering as possible with no particular locus of control over issues, tool sets, or agendas. We've been generous and impartial at providing admin. rights to "trusted" volunteers. We've also decided to be governed by "community standards," encouraging users to add their voice or file complaints for abusive practices as they see fit. There have been surprisingly few complaints or reported abuses.

Do other people share Wilmarth's vision? We're going to find out just how many pretty soon. Jennifer Just, the Obama for America Connecticut field organizer, wrote a quick note affirming Wilmarth's messages to me, saying, "[Obama] wouldn't be here, nor would we, w/out new media...I especially love the book 'here comes everybody' & am v. excited about the future of grassroots organizing after this." I asked her if she thought many of the volunteers working on the campaign now were in it for the longer haul. She wrote back, taking a break from entering data, "MORE than up for it...we can't stand the idea of not working together so we've already talked about ways of working together...likely that we won't all stay together but at least use these tools etc. to move forward on those things that compel each of us."

It's worth noting that the tool these Obama organizers are using to connect with each other, Ning, is more robust than the myBO social network platform built by the campaign. Wilmarth says, "The Ning site has been a ready, out-of-the-box, evolving tool for deploying social media applications on the fly during the campaign. Plus, it's allowed us to use data that traditional campaigns managed by the State party have not collected or are reluctant to share. And best of all, we have maintained a degree of local control over the apps that best suit our needs. The current site is a work-in-process. The hope is to sit down after the election with other interest groups and form a network of networks aimed at empowering local grassroots efforts for systemic change, based on the unique issues facing our geographic region, but with insight into, and feedback from the greater national and global issues debates."

(Ning, by the way, was built by Marc Andreesen, who had a long, in-depth conversation with Obama about the power of the social web about 18 months ago. He reported that "the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, Youtube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us on what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics -- with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more." Isn't it interesting how the worm turns?)