Cloud Computing: How Obama’s tech team helped deliver the 2012 election
November 13, 2012
Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.
Obama for America CTO Harper Reed had helped build Threadless, a site for selling hip t-shirts, but he had never done anything like this. Here’s how he and his team built a tech platform that might forever change how presidential campaigns are built.
When it comes to presidential elections, it helps to know your way around some disruptive technologies. The team of technologists that helped re-elect Barack Obama – led by Obama for America CTO Harper Reed and comprised largely of other political novices and accomplished hackers — certainly had that going for them. However, when the prize is the highest office in the land — and possibly the fate of the free world — it also helps to know your role…
A presidential campaign is not a tech startup; it has to innovate on tight deadlines and in an environment where failure really is not an option. So although it had to move fast, for example, Reed’s team couldn’t afford to re-invent the wheel because it could maybe shave 5 milliseconds off of page-load time for a web page. Or, as Reed put it a phone call with me on Monday morning: “Our goal [was] to be the force multiplier, not to be a technology experiment.”…
Read more from the source @ http://gigaom.com/cloud/how-obamas-tech-team-helped-deliver-the-2012-election/