American Election, The Internet & Thanks

Well just over a week ago I was presenting at Octopus Books about the elections and the Internet.  Last night showed the first decisive electoral victory in a US presidential election using the Internet as a primary force of communication, community building and fund-raising. 

The talk at Octopus was lined up between the Canadian federal election & American election, and there were some good examples that we could look at from the Canadian experience too.  In organizing the talk though I thought it would be most beneficial to look at the history of the relationship between USA presidential elections & Internet use since 1996.  With the adoption of the Internet, election campaigns have changed to reach it's users.  Likewise the flood of $$ from the USA election cycle has had a huge impact on online campaigning in general. 

In researching this presentation I was struck by how much the 2008 election was different than previous efforts.  There was so much to talk about that I wasn't able to cover important elements like the community building websites that both the Barack & McCain teams implemented.  Both used virtual call centres to encourage their supporters to call the undecided voters in critical ridings. Both sites also had dashboards to allow folks to monitor their contributions. 

One of the highlights of the presentation was provided by Eric Squair who had just received MoveOn.org's get out the vote viral video earlier that day.  It was a totally innovative way to personalize the message and in the last week of the campaign get folks to commit to vote.

In seeing that a historic victory was evident we started putting together a small campaign site to get people to thank the American people for their choice.  SendAMessageToAmerica.org to provide a personal appreciation.