If you’re looking for amazing evidence of youth’s new political power in America, start in Georgia. Once heralded as an Obama no-win state, when his campaign downsized (in a “pullout”), it is now a strong contender for most surprising Obama upset victory. The secret: an unbelievable mobilization of youth organizers, especially Alex Lofton, an extraordinary 23-year-old. Read the following snippets from www.fivethirtyeight.com, which has done a fantastic job staying on top of the Obama groundswell of volunteer and staff organizing:
“If there is one shocker on election night in the presidential race, cast your eyes to Georgia. 1,994,990 people voted early in Georgia. 3,301,875 total voted in Georgia’s presidential race in 2004.
Let that sink in. [Early voters are overwhelmingly organized by the Obama campaign. – ed.]
“The pullout was greatly exaggerated,” began Caroline Adelman, Georgia Communications Director, Obama for America. The pullout, of course, refers to the publicized redistribution of Obama staffers to other states when it appeared the Illinois Senator had no chance to win. Obama’s skeleton staff of 53 is at least four times bigger than any other Democratic presidential effort in Georgia’s history…. With 33 offices and 175 separate staging locations, at least one in every one of Georgia’s 159 counties, Obama’s operation seemed shockingly energetic for a state not on most pundit radars.
Adelman credited wunderkind field operator Alex Lofton, now in Ohio, with setting up the infrastructure before he was considered too valuable not to have in a more competitive state. “He opened up all the offices, he trained all the kids, did conference calls twice a day,” Adelman explained. “He was 23 and doing things in a way twice his age couldn’t accomplish.” Such are Obama’s young brilliant organizers the campaign’s great underwritten story. [My emphasis.]
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This Saturday, I’m going with my wife Alex to see Leonard Cohen in concert. We’re really looking forward to it!
But I’ve got to say, there’s a reason why we do so few of these live events these days. It’s not just the $200 tickets — @#&#! the Rolling Stones for setting a new standard in crazy live-event prices! (>smile< — Really, they deserve it.) It’s the pain in the ass of dealing with all these media oligopolies just to have a little fun. Anytime you want to show up to something in-person, it’s a nightmare of logistics. Wanna watch at home, at your leisure, when and where you like? That’s easy, thanks to BitTorrent.
Why would anyone go to a live event again?
I know it’s old news, but it still rankles. Almost every media business has been built on a natural oligopoly model, which is why we have 1 TicketMaster, 4 TV networks, 1 local cable option, and 1 or 2 major theatre chains (in disguise, by the way, under multiple seemingly competitive brands). The internet, of course, has cleared the way for digital delivery of most media content — which is why we can get it easier, faster, simpler there (let alone free).
The media companies are like the pharmaceuticals. They claim they need high prices to pay the talent (in pharma, the R&D). But in fact, they pay more in sales and marketing costs than to talent! Give us an optional “pay what you believe is right” button, and many of us will take that over the current obsolete models every time.
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Goldcorp has been one of our Wikinomics poster children for their Goldcorp Challenge, in which they engaged the outside world to help find gold on their property. What a great success that’s been!
Today, another part of the outside world disrupted (mildly) Goldcorp’s shareholder meeting in Toronto. “[CEO] McArthur faced a barrage of questions from protesters upset over the company’s policies with its open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and arsenic to extract gold from rock in Guatemala and Honduras” (CP).
It will be interesting to see — can Goldcorp engage the protesters as they engaged the world’s creative minds? Or will they feel the need to shut the protesters out, as so many corporations seem to find expedient?
Photo: Deepak Ramachandran, walking to work.
Last week, the SEC officially proposed a timeline to make XBRL reporting mandatory for large US publicly-traded corporations (see press release here). The great news: this should eventually give individual investors the same kind of analytic capability — especially cross-company analysis — that now only exists for people who can afford a $25k Bloomberg subscription. Even bigger: it may help create a new generation of “provestors” (producers-investors) who *interact* with corporations and each other around financial data, rather than just “consuming” it.
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I recently came across a new term, “Worldsourcing”, that expresses beautifully the next generation of global enterprises. Take a look here, on the Lenovo blog.
The idea behind Worldsourcing is really the dawn of the truly global enterprise. Global enterprises operate on a truly global scale; operate with porous corporate boundaries (interacting with “outside” partners in much the same collaborative way that “internal” departments work together); and bring that global approach to all functions (not just manufacturing and customer service). Let’s look at each in more detail: Continue reading…
We visited Google on Monday, and got a briefing on their latest Google Apps. Of course, the facility was beautiful, with a great cafeteria and environmentally-friendly cutlery. But it was empty. The Apps provided similar great promise, but at the moment are a bit lacking too.
On the location: nice part of Detroit; fun workstations; colour scheme strong on primary colours; and the expected great cafeteria. Kudos for the healthy food, and the plates and cutlery made from sugar cane and corn starch. Everything was compostable, and they tell me they do in fact compost it with the food.
Oddly, the building was empty. I gather they’re new in Detroit, and I’m not totally sure why they need such a big space anyhow for a sales office. Perhaps growth will make the place buzz, but it’s not obvious how.
The Apps themselves have made a bit of progress over the past year, when I last looked at them. Most notably: Continue reading…
