I attend a session on the Obama presidential campaign’s use of social media. A guy from Howard Dean’s online team and a female Republican digital strategist (just how oxymoronic can one person get?) also sit on the panel, but when they speak, the crowd gets restless, like Sasha Vujacic is handling the ball instead of passing it to Kobe. People want the Obama narrative.
I get in line to ask a question. The moderator, Michael Bassik, the Chief Digital Officer for Air America asks me to keep it short. I say it’s a yes-or-no question. After explaining what I do, and noting that Hyde Park, where the Obamas lived before the election, is the birthplace of modern improvisation, I ask the Obama people on the panel if, to their knowledge, anyone on the Obama team used ‘improvisation’ to describe their candidate’s methodology.
“No,” says Bassik.
“Thank you,” I say.
The instant the panel is over, I make a beeline for Bassik, hand him my card and say “What Obama does is learnable.” This gets his attention. A week after the conference, Bassik and I are corresponding about how GameChangers can help evangelize and scale Obama’s style and a progressive political agenda.
Tags: Air America, Barack Obama, Communication, Improvisation, Michael Bassik