READ the entire post by Lisa Torjman on MaRs Innovation blog.

Last Thursday, I went to the Rotman School of Business to learn about Obama’s social media campaign strategy from a member of the team that planned this grassroots, state-by-state online takeover. She’s passionate, intelligent, poised. She’s a new media strategist. She is also Canadian. Perhaps the most impressive, Rahaf Harfoush is a mere 24 years old. Her story was both inspired and inspiring.

The applications used in the campaign (such as Facebook and SMS), were not new (Greenpeace is a 2.0 vet). But the fact that they were employed by a political campaign is the innovative part, some would say, the risky part. The risk obviously paid off, since the numbers speak for themselves:

More than one billion emails were sent out and “hyper segmented” or customized according to three different factors: geography, key issue concerns and personal donating history.

READ MORE of Lisa’s post …

See Rahaf’s post covering the Rotman gig …

And here are the slides Rahaf presented …

See a CBC piece featuring Rahaf on her blog.

Well, sort of …

With this first post, let us try to make one thing clear.  While we will exercise an editorial overview to try to keep the discussion on track, we will not censor negative comments and criticism.

We are inviting the contribution of good examples from all over the world (hopefully we’ll actually get some )

At many points it may occur to you why something will not work in Canada or is not right for Liberals or whatever.  Please, bring forward these contributions with enthusiasm.  You are probably touching upon something that needs to be considered.

Please do your best to explain your critical thinking and perhaps spend at least as much time contributing possible solutions to the problems that you recognize.

But generally, recognize that we hope all will take a ready, fire, aim approach to this effort.  This is not the place to refine ideas or criticisms into a dissertation.  Everyone has a million things to do.

Do what you can, we will too.  Many hands make light work.  Invite the talent you know to add their bit.

We know something amazing is possible.