Obama CIO: Location, location, location (and personalization) will be key to next campaign

President Barack Obama was inaugurated a scant few weeks ago but it’s never too early to think about the next election cycle.

Tech teams for the 2016 campaign will need to hone in on location-based applications and finely tuned personalization, said Michael Slaby, former CIO for Obama for America. According to Slaby, the team’s the initial 2008 effort was all about putting social networking on par with other messaging and communication. “We didn’t just stick it in the corner with a blog, it was a meaningful way to think about solving organizational problems,” Slaby told attendees of a Salesforce.com event in New York City. “In 2008 we were just trying to stay alive – [there was] an election every two weeks for months and months” he said. That didn’t leave a ton of time for strategizing or even staffing up. “We didn’t really hire engineers,” Slaby said during a panel discussion led by former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra, who is now Salesforce.com’s executive vice president for emerging markets.