A MP3 drum roll plays in the background, digital camera lights flashing all over, YouTube video camera rolling, and as the twitter volume starts to explode… for what is the first ELE award in government to ever be awarded (ELE stands for Enterprising Leverage of elePHPant technology, aka "super-powered by PHP" — the award is pronounced “elly!”) – and the excitement is simply electrifying here. It is award season after all and from the Oscars to the Golden Globes shows, the crowd has only just been warmed up for this online one. As the email envelope is struggled to be opened… the presenter continues chatting on Skype... "And the winner is?" … pause … then a longer pause … and then an even longer pause for that extra percentage of traffic on twitter and advertising revenue:
And the winner of the 2009 ELE is … President Barack Obama and his team at political social network sites on FACEBOOK and MY.BARACKOBAMA.COM for the most technically savvy use of open source and PHP in government ever!Obama’s presidential campaign was praised for being one of the most technically savvy and what most people don't realize, was that a lot of their technology was powered by PHP:
- On My.BarackObama.com, Obama's own social network powered by PHP, 2 million profiles were created
- In addition, 200,000 offline events were planned
- About 400,000 blog posts were written
- And more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created - at least 1,000 of them on Feb. 10, 2007, the day Obama announced his candidacy
- Obama has gained 5 million supporters in third party social networks.
- On Facebook (a PHP powered site also), where about 3.2 million (during the campaign) signed up as his supporters, a group called Students for Barack Obama was created in July 2007.
- It was so effective at energizing college-age voters that senior aides made it an official part of the campaign the following spring.
- And Facebook users did vote: On Facebook's Election 2008 page, which listed an 800 number to call for voting problems, more than 5.4 million users clicked on an "I Voted" button to let their Facebook friends know that they made it to the polls.
There is a presentation being offered at the Boston PHP User Group in April called "Lessons from My.BarackObama.com" presented by the creators at Blue State Digital. Both Josh King and Chuck Hagenbuch will share their experiences building and scaling some of the tools which powered my.barackobama.com and the millions of phone calls and over a billion emails that helped make history this year. I plan to attend this meeting on April 1st and deliver the ELE award in person to both Josh and Chuck. Mark Zuckerberg and Chris Hughes from Facebook will be contacted by our HQ in Zend’s California office for his award. If anyone from the Obama organization would contact me and let me know how I can deliver Pres. Obama's award in person, I would be honored to meet the most technically savvy president in history. Send email to edwardk@zend.com
In one of his first official acts as president, Obama ordered more government openness and transparency. In an excerpt from his memo:
"Information maintained by the federal government is a national asset. My administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public."
From another Obama speech in 02/2007: "Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age. Let's set high standards for our schools and give them the resources they need to succeed. Let's recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability. Let's make college more affordable, and let's invest in scientific research, and let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America.”
And already in the first 100 days there is a US stimulus bill that pushes e-health records for all medical records online, read more. So congratulations to the entire Obama campaign team for your win and using PHP to make so much impact in politics via web technology. After all it is the people that use tools like the hammer and nail that will rebuild america, and you used PHP to implement your creative digital ideas on the information highway. You needed your ideas built fast, low cost but built well and that's why you picked PHP (it can be the nail gun when you're rebuilding on the information highway)
He's not the only one in government making big changes with open source and PHP, here's a great audio podcast from 2006 of someone I admire in government Tim Vaverchak (Director of Open Source Strategy) at the Commonwealth of MASS IT (ITD) when he began to use LAMP a bit over 2yrs ago. Contact me if you know of other great PHP examples in government, I am always eager to learn more and as I live near the North East Corridor Amtrak line in Princeton, NJ, I am close to Washington DC. My email will accept all invitations from the oval office as well as your office edwardk@zend.com :-)
My Research Articles:
- Propelled by Internet, Barack Obama Wins Presidency
- Obama Raised Half a Billion Online, How?
- Case Study: The Barack Obama Internet Strategy
- Learning from Obama: Lessons for Online Communicators in 2009 and Beyond
- The Secrets of My.BarackObama.com
- What Next for My.BarackObama.com?
- My.BarackObama.com is RESTful, a techie review of the website
- Why is the award a Blue elePHPant? and why do you keep misspelling it?
------------------------ end of article ------------------------------
As you read this article, click here for audio of a band I first saw in a small club in NYC in late 90's
Posts
