5 Tech Highlights From the First 100 Days

100 Days into his presidency, and Barack Obama is using online tools as if he was organizing a campaign. Normally, the campaigning tools and functions that are used to win an election are put aside while the country is being run. But Obama and his team have turned that on its head, sending email blasts, building projects and continuing to campaign. The exciting feeling is that there is a real sense of the value of the few days they have there in office. Eight years will fly by, and there is a decade to catch up on when you are staffed with the same exciting minds that were building the sites and communities that we have all grown to know and love. His online organizer during the campaign, Chris Hughes, was a founder of Facebook. Now his Tech Council includes Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

But to keep it simple and light, here are 5 awesome things that Obama's team has accomplished in the first 100 days.

1 - Obama uses YouTube, Big Time. 5 STARS

What a way to make everyone remember the previously significant presidents that first adopted new media as a form of communication to the people they represent. His YouTube channel gains 21,399,310 views to his videos. Cost to the government? Nothing.

2 - Obama Holds on to the BlackBerry. HUGE WIN! 5 STARS

It is morally damaging to lose to bureaucracy and security over creativity, innovation and communication. If all you can do is lock down a box, then what's the box worth anyway? Keeping the Blackberry was probably one of the most exciting signs that I personally got from Obama that the change talk was walking.

3 - Appoints Macon Phillips from Day 1 - 5 STARS

The end of an amazing campaign was started perfectly, bringing on the guy who had made things work during the campaign, Macon Phillips to get things working in the same style. " At precisely 12:00 p.m.ET during the Inauguration of Barack Obama, Phillips oversaw the conversion of Whitehouse.gov, the official website of the President of the United States. At 12:01 p.m., he posted the site's first blog entry, titled: Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov."

4 - Uses Google Moderator for Town Hall Meeting - 5 STARS

Completely bypassing the limitations of white house technology, Obama's team was able to use Google's AppSpot and the Google Moderator tech to power an impressive massively multi-user engagement online. Given where we were just a few months ago, this is insane. Check the usage stats summary in this video clip:

5 - Appoints Eric Schmidt and Craig Mundie (MS Exec) To the Tech Council - 5 STARS

While his CIO and CTO hires where very polished and accomplished health care technocrats, the appointment of top level Google and Microsoft execs to the tech council is a great sign of the continued vision to work with the companies that are changing our landscapes.

There's no doubt that the Obama team has some awesome things coming even in just the months ahead. And the next 4 years I think tech can expect a huge boom in the mass adoption of concepts that started out niche. Obama's insistence on campaigning after the race was already over sets him up.

Comments

[DryBrook]

Of that "top 5", only #5 qualifies as a policy accomplishment. The others are all process and trivia.

Let's talk about how many newly appointed DoJ lawyers previously represented the RIAA. What's that going to do to tech policy? Nothing good.

See
http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2009/04/copylefts-plea-to-obama-falls-on-deaf.html

[iblogleft]

This technology is great. I am worried that there is little support from the administration on keeping these upcoming tech jobs at home. A year after studying (and spending 10k on school) for my MCSE, my very well paying jobs were shipped to India. Our $140,000 a year jobs became $60k jobs overnight, and that was for the few that could compete with H1b, who demanded even less.

In order to be successful as an I.T. administrator these days, you must have 5 times the qualifications that the same position would have required in the past. Instead of a team of 8 or 10, the expectations were that one person would have the knowledge, and farm out tasks to low wage earners in other countries. Now that is progress.

We are going to have another tech explosion. The question is, how do we compete with countries that provide ultra low wages, social healthcare, and masses of low skilled button pushers. The continuation of contracted labor, immigrant visas and farming out of steady American labor is just another lost opportunity.

We have made great strides. Lets make sure we keep our eye on the brass ring.