Last-Minute Push for Reluctant Technologists to Embrace, Evangelize Obama

Employees of some of the biggest tech firms in the United States are financially backing Barack Obama over John McCain by a lopsided ratio of nine to one, according to ZDNet's Robin Harris. Using fundraising data from OpenSecrets that covers donors who have contributed above $200, Harris found that employees of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, and Google and six other companies overwhelmingly support the Democratic nominee over his Republican counterpart. If you're Obama or a supporter, that 90% figure might seem like cause for celebration. But you might also spot some room for improvement. Considering that Harris's list encompasses some fairly major companies that boast well-paid jobs, the raw numbers of donors aren't overly impressive; Harris cites just 170 contributors to Obama among Apple's ranks. Google finds itself home to 640 Obama contributors, Cisco, 240. Is there untapped potential for Obama in the tech world -- not only in dollars, but in enthusiasm? The issues raised by that question are what's underlying Tech for Obama. The Drupal-based site launched this week, and it aims to celebrate and disseminate what its founders see as Obama's impressive network-centric, tech-powered world view. The site is the brainchild of Peter Leyden, until recently the director of the New Politics Institute and before that the managing editor at the original Wired magazine. "There's no place on the web really that allows people involved, in the broadest sense, in technology," says Leyden, "to really make the case for Obama." That's an opening that Leyden and other familiar tech-world names -- open source leader Brian Behlendorf, longtime media technologist Deanna Zandt, Netroots Nation founder Gina Cooper -- hope Tech for Obama will fill.