empathize with Obama and the vision he presented.  But how did he persuade them to do that?

Many of us, each for our own reasons, want to pull back the curtain and see for ourselves what made up the engine that drove the Obama machine? Was it just the power of the vision?  Unity in America?  Turning the page to a fresh, new day?  Was it the story of a man whose message perfectly married the mood of the country at the moment, as many pundits say is the driver of large election wins? Or was the win founded on extraordinary technical skills which were able to leverage the Net, reach out to where the people actually were and capture the attention of the country? What was the exact stagecraft ….or was it dreamcraft… or prowess in technology and communications that allowed Obama, a freshman senator to come came out of obscurity to capture this presidency with such commanding numbers?

Don Tapscott, best selling author of Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital offers up one answer: “Obama is the first president of the Internet age. His application of social media and his understanding of the Net generation brought him to power.”

Some part of this has apparently been dissected in a newly released book, Barack, Inc.: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign by Barry Libert, Rick Faulk

Obama’s leveraging of technology reveals lessons we on the Net, or in business of any kind, can certainly learn from. And, certainly to some extent, this has to be true.  Obama’s teams’ mastery of the tools and viral energy of the Internet is what gained Obama 13 million email addresses, an army of volunteers, and small donors whom he could tap again and again to keep his coffers overflowing.  Here are the basics which you also can download it here (PDF).

Certainly we would repurpose these last two statements for our own ends, replacing “campaign goals” with your organization or website goals, and, instead of online advocacy, integrating your own call to action into every element.  With those two small changes Obama has created a roadmap that carry all of us on the Net out of obscurity and into the limelight.  We just have to execute it as well as his campaign did.

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