MyBO on CNN, and my "Obama Rapid Response" Rapid Response

Hi folks!

Below is my letter to CNN in regards to their coverage of MyBO.

Ironically, their little web-mail-response page barfed, so Lisa in Buffalo FAXED it to them for me (thanks, Lisa!).

As Charlie Brown would say: "Good grief." ;~)

-enjoy!

-chris

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TO: Rick Sanchez - CNN
FROM: Chris Blask - Obama Rapid Response

Hi Rick et al!

I just watched your coverage of Barack Obama's Internet campaign. Bless their hearts, but your panel just embarassed themselves in front of the entire American population under 45 (and quite a few over) with their complete lack of understanding of modern communication. I got the impression of a group of county elders gathered on a porch trying to give comment on the New Fangled Teler-Fone down at Mable's place and how it "wasn't the same as just goin' down there and chawin' with a man".

barackobama.com is not a "new-fangled Internet thing" - it is a use of communications methods to promote messages and connect people. No different than a printing press and a coffee social - just a billion times more effective. To use geek terms you could say it is "an application of communications technology" - and frankly you folks are, too, so it shouldn't stump your Talent to discuss it - but that is to miss the whole point. I *am* a geek - but a geek who has moved more than $3B worth of hard goods - because I understand that all of this Internet stuff does not matter when it is all about geeks. It matters when my mother (and to her grave at 96, my grandmother) adopt it for *their* purposes - and that is what has happened with Barack Obama's campaign.

Let me give you an example. Obama Rapid Response (ORR) is a group of volunteers who monitor the media - we monitor you - and the opposition campaigns, discuss how to respond to spin we preceive in the media, attacks by other candidates and statements for/against our candidate around the country and around the world, and deliver our message effectively to appropriate venues and individuals.

Obama Rapid Response was setup by Neil in Vermont almost a year ago. Neil is not a technical person, but he wanted to get involved so he went to barackobama.com and created the group - everything was there for him to do it.

Lisa in Buffalo has trouble getting her caps-lock key off and her browser working, a fax machine and two cats. Lisa is passionate about her candidate, and despite the fact that she knows less about computers than you do about cold fusion, she was part of a team that picked up the Lord Trimble story (that I still haven't seen you folks pick up on) that hit the UK wire late Friday night ET and pushed it out to *every* newspaper, radio station and TV station in Wyoming before the polls opened (here's that story, in case you are still sorting through your lithographs for it: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/08/wuspols108.xml ;~).

This past week, the site got so much traffic that the email server slowed down. This impacted the ORR since emails were not able to get out to the membership fast enough. Without prompting from the campaign (who are understandably rather busy), I created a Google group (http://googlegroups.com/orr-backup), dropped the key ORR membership into it and got all of the activity up and going again.

Your panel pointed out how the MyBO site allows volunteers to organize shoe-leather activities - which is true and impossible to overstate the effectiveness of - but their handling of the story underlined the complete lack of understanding of what is going on with MyBO and in fact the entire Obama campaign.

It is not only about delivering bumper-stickers and T-shirts faster (the graphics of which are online and can be sent directly to the printers). It is not just about drawing people to coffee-socials (thousands of which are organized through the site for every primary day, as one small example). It is not even just about enlisting and organizing door-to-door and phone campaigns (those, too: 1.5M calls from people at home to Wisconsin voters, as another small example).
It is about doing everything you've even seen being done by the handfull of people in a campaign office in Docudramas recounting past campaigns with a cast of thousands instead of dozens. It is about creating a center-less operation that enables free people to assume responsibility for themselves and act on their beliefs. It is about implementing on the largest scale the fundamental and foundational beliefs of America, namely:

o That all people are created equal.

o That Freedom of speech and freedom of action are the key to personal, national and global success.

o That Free Enterpise in business and thought enable the Individuals who make up the Population to be more powerful than the established Powers that hold all the advantages out of the gate.

Obama's success is not "cheating" as you asked on the show. Obama's success is an acting-out of the basic principles that underly every success in American history. Obama's success is a re-enactment of the founding of the country, where citizens met and decided to stand up to massively disproportional powers and tradition based on their belief in themselves and in the strength of individual freedom. Obama's success is the tactical and tangible proof that this country is, in fact, based on the strongest set of ideals in human history.

-best regards

-chris

PS - CNN is, oddly enough, the least available media outlet online. All of your competitors provide actual email addresses - for example - not just these silly boxes.