The Boston Globe?s BSD Spotlight
On Friday, the Boston Globe ran a great feature on Blue State Digital, BSD partner Jascha Franklin-Hodge, and BSD’s work with President-elect Obama’s campaign:
While Blue State is based in Washington, D.C., the choice of technology headquarters was no accident: Boston has the political activism of D.C. and the technological edge of Silicon Valley; it's the Hub of the progressive geek universe. And by 2007, everything came together for a national Web-centric political campaign -- the technology, its acceptance by more Americans, and, of course, the BlackBerry-bearing Barack. The Obama campaign "embraced what it was we were trying to do: show that technology wasn't just a tool in the arsenal, but a transformative force," Franklin-Hodge recalls. "They knew they didn't have the kind of political machine Clinton was going to come in with. They had to build their own machine, and the way to do this was with the online tools. The campaign understood the power of the Internet to get people engaged in the process on a scale never done before." One of Blue State's cofounders -- Joe Rospars, another Dean alumnus -- became embedded in the Obama campaign as its new-media director. Franklin-Hodge, who is Blue State's chief technology officer, ran the Boston technology boiler room. By the time Obama wrapped up his Springfield speech, the company's main bank of servers, in Somerville, was getting hammered with hits.
The profile is a great look back on how far Blue State Digital has come over the past two years – and just how powerful online organizing can be for any campaign, nonprofit or company.
PS: There’s one part of the story not entirely accurate. I don’t really think we’re geeks (at least, not all of us). Nerds, maybe… but not geeks.
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