Practical Data Strategies for Mobilization
Draw from the experiences, successes, and occasionally the failures of
those who have gone before. A case study based discussion on database
optimization for grassroots organizing.
Co-Chair: Dave Leichtman - Technical Project Manager, Blue State Digital
As Technical Project Manager at Blue State, Dave is responsible for working with clients on custom development projects. When customers come up with new ideas to expand the functionality of Blue State’s platform, he works with them to transform their plans into real, workable solutions that best meet their needs.
Dave has extensive experience with online communities and project development as well as an extensive technical background. Previously, he was Vice President of a web consulting firm that helped universities and small cities create online communities. He has also been served as an assistant to the Vice President for IT at University of Oklahoma, and as a Director of online communities there and at William and Mary.
Dave is an active Arlington Democrat and is very active in Virginia state politics. He was a head volunteer organizer for the Webb for Senate campaign and continues to spearhead volunteer organization efforts in Virginia. He holds a BS in physics, computer science, and mathematics from William and Mary, and a MS in physics from University of Washington.
Co-Chair: Clay Johnson - Founding Partner, Blue State Digital
Clay Johnson is a founding partner at Blue State Digital and is responsible for business development at Blue State Digital. He has many years of experience building online communities and has played an integral role at the forefront of Internet technology, including starting and directing three of his own companies.
As a college student, Clay founded KnowPost.com, the first Internet-based knowledge exchange, which connected people who had questions to people who had answers. Clay's work at KnowPost included building a community of over 100,000 people who participated in this information exchange. Clay's interest in knowledge management also led him to work at Ask Jeeves as their lead syndication engineer.
Before starting Blue State Digital, Clay was the lead national software engineer behind the online grassroots organizing technology for Gov. Howard Dean's presidential campaign. He built numerous software programs, including one that enabled over 300,000 people to write letters and make 50,000 phone calls to undecided voters.
Clay has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, TIME, Entrepreneur, Chronicle for Higher Education and USA Today; he has also been interviewed on CNN. He is an advisor for the New Progressive Coalition and is a founder of Georgia for Democracy.
Ben Self - Founding Partner, Blue State Digital
As a founding partner at Blue State Digital, Ben Self directs the day-to-day operations of the client services division. Ben works with many of our clients on a daily basis to ensure that all work delivered by Blue State Digital far surpasses any client expectations. In addition, Ben advises our clients on how they can leverage the tools provided by Blue State Digital to reach their goals in the quickest and most cost-effective way possible.
Prior to Blue State Digital, Ben was a chief data architect for the Dean for America campaign. At the campaign he was responsible for reporting on, maintaining, and analyzing the large amount of data that was gathered by the campaign's interactions with its supporters. This analysis gave him extensive insight into how to attract new supporters and move those supporters into higher levels of engagement with the campaign.
During his career, Ben has garnered extensive experience in data analysis, data warehousing, database architecture and administration, system design, and system development. He built the FEC's system for gathering and reporting on campaign finance data, and architected the largest distributed Geographic Information Systems database ever deployed for the USDA. He has created data warehouses for a variety of industries, including health care, telecommunications, and insurance. In these industries, he has worked at all levels of system development and design -- from designing and writing the software itself to managing large teams responsible for developing systems to be used by tens of thousands of users. In addition to this work, Ben has performed extensive research and written a thesis on object-oriented design.
Ben has both a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Judith Freeman - Co-founder and CEO, New Organizing Institute
Judith Freeman is the co-founder and CEO of the New Organizing
Institute. Previously, she was the senior political strategist at the
AFL-CIO. During the 2004 presidential election, she worked on the Kerry
campaign's internet operations. She advises political and non-profit
campaigns on organizing and campaign strategy and technology
infrastructure. She worked for 5 years as a Network Engineer and
Systems Programmer for the Network Security Center at the University of
Chicago.
Luke Peterson, Obama for America
Luke has been hacking together databases since 2000 with various organizations in three fourths of the lower 48 states as voter file manager, redistricting consultant, and union organizer. Most recently Luke maintains the national campaign data for Barack Obama in Chicago. Although he claims Illinois, Iowa, and Texas all as home states, Luke has lived in the DC area for 5 years.
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