A Matter of Days
On October 2nd, I directed the launch of Obama for America’s iPhone app, Obama ’08, after an intense 22 days of development by a stellar team of ten people. You can read more about the project in my blog entry, Obama ’08 for iPhone. My first contact with the campaign took place on August 19th. I had the opportunity to visit the campaign headquarters on September 6th to finalize project details with Scott Goodstein, Director of External Online, the internal champion for the project. 32 days after the application launch on November 4th, Senator Obama (now President-Elect Obama) was elected as the next President of the United States, to be sworn in 77 days later on January 20th.
Today marks the end of Obama ’08 for iPhone as the application has been marked for removal from the App Store. The application had a lifespan of just 61 days, 32 of those pre-election, the period of time that really mattered. Unlike the vast majority of iPhone applications available in the App Store, Obama ’08 was tied to specific time-based goal – supporting the election of Senator Obama. It had a defined objective with a clear timeframe.
This was a great project, and I will be sad to see it come to an end, but by all measures this application was a tremendous success for the campaign, in terms of downloads, calls made, and media attention. Many of the concepts will live on, and I hope to see the future President Obama look to mobile technology as a means to better connect with the citizens of the United States. I also fully expect to see the promulgation of mobile applications for diverse causes and brands. It’s a proven model. We’re at the beginning of something exciting here.
The Obama ‘08 for iPhone Team:
Raven Zachary (Project Director)
Jason Grigsby (Project Management)
Jonathan Wight (Lead iPhone Development)
Lyza Gardner (Server Development, Design, Copywriting)
Aileen Jeffries (Design)
John Keith (Server Development)
Dom Sagolla (QA, Community Development)
Mike Lee (iPhone Development, UI)
Louie Mantia (Design, UI)
Tristan O’Tierney (iPhone Development)
Was there no way to evolve it into a vehicle for inclusive democracy? It seems such a shame to just vape all those relationships with passionate people.
2 December 2008 at 1:37 PT
[...] A Matter of Days | raven.me Raven Zachary writes “Today marks the end of Obama ‘08 for iPhone as the application has been marked for removal from the App Store. The application had a lifespan of just 61 days, 32 of those pre-election, the period of time that really mattered. Unlike the vast majority of iPhone applications available in the App Store, Obama ‘08 was tied to specific time-based goal – supporting the election of Senator Obama. It had a defined objective with a clear timeframe.” [...]
3 December 2008 at 0:02 PT
[...] A Matter of Days | raven.me Raven Zachary writes “Today marks the end of Obama ‘08 for iPhone as the application has been marked for removal from the App Store. The application had a lifespan of just 61 days, 32 of those pre-election, the period of time that really mattered. Unlike the vast majority of iPhone applications available in the App Store, Obama ‘08 was tied to specific time-based goal – supporting the election of Senator Obama. It had a defined objective with a clear timeframe.” [...]
4 December 2008 at 0:30 PT