One thing I’ve noticed many times is the value of agility.

UserVoice is software that allows companies, groups, or whatnot, to gauge interest in a solution to a problem.  There are some open source programs out there as well, in addition to Google’s Moderator (which takes a long time to find btw - I think they want to tease out some logistics first).

Anyway, UserVoice launched http://www.obamacto.org recently.  This was a brilliant move for a few reasons.  First of all, they’re hitting their target audience - people who want to be or are a CTO (or at least have something to say about it).  For their product, a moderation system, it’s a perfect hit.  Secondly, it’s a proof of concept of how well their system works in a large environment.  If it can handle a few million Americans, it can surely work at a Fortune 500 company.

Companies should always be ready to spin this kind of stuff out.  The best way to do that is to not plan too much ahead of time.  Hire as many smart people as you can afford and go.

Right now I can afford to work for myself for free :-)

Ok, I’m back from NC and back in the loop.  I’m not sure if other people have the same problem, but when I start doing about 6 different things, it seems like I get nothing done.  Anyway, I’m glad I gave away last weekend to the Obama campaign in North Carolina.  I went to Wilmington and canvassed the neighborhood with flyers - I also visited my Dad and other people.

As noted in many blogs and articles over the previous months, the Obama campaign is very well designed.  We were given sets of door hanging flyers with the local polling place as well as state-specific information.  In addition, the list was in street order and had a Google Maps printout with pins for all the houses.  I can already imagine 2012 when the parties have iPhone apps and integration with people’s GPS units in their cars.

The thing that made me most happy last week was change.gov.  For me, this is the first real difference between what I think would have happened with McCain and what did happen with Obama.  Within a day, Obama had a real website, with a real government TLD, communicating with the people about what is coming.  The best part was that it wasn’t complete.  Many pages only had ‘Need Content’ on them.  This is our Web 2.0 presidency starting from scratch and it’s really amazing to see in action.