Rahaf Harfoush, a member of Obama’s Social Media Team, was the Keynote for this year’s Innotech and it was one of the best speaking engagements I’ve ever been to. Rahaf who I am assuming is in her late twenties early 30’s was articulate, charismatic, and captivating.  She had the audience mesmerized when sharing the specific details and experiences she and others had from the campaign trail. She spoke about how the social media elements, facebook, twitter, video on youtube and an array of others were incorporated and utilized in what she termed the great storm.  Meaning what Obama’s campaign was able to achieve was partly due to the numerous elements outside their control and the timing of mainstream acceptance of social media tools like Facebook, twitter, and others.

The uniqueness of this story was yes they had momentum and interest from voters but it was the way their campaign team listened and responded to their core supporters, engaged with their audience and how they evoked action from them based on the various levels of individuals, interest, support, financial abilities and influence.  The tools of social media allowed their campaign team to individually interact with a very personal approach but on a broad level which wasn’t possible in previous years.  

The internet and social media have opened up new ways of gaining support, feedback and contributions like never before. This administrations campaign strategy will be emulated and analyzed by every up and coming political candidate. But the lesson here is the strategy can work not only in politics but in any type of business. It’s having the ability and foresight to engage your audience, clients or potential customers into a open dialogue that builds trust and creates loyalty.

Rahaf recently accepted the position of Associate Director of the Global Cooperation Initiative at the World Economic Forum, to begin in March of 2009 in Geneva. In this role, she will co-lead the development of the Forum’s online community platform. Prior to this, Harfoush spent three months with the Obama New Media team in Chicago. An active member of Toronto’s technology community, she is involved with associations like The Movement, an organization of people committed to collaborating on projects for social good, and The Overlap, a community that combines cross-disciplinary expertise to tackle the challenges of sustainable innovation.

In love with the written word, Harfoush will soon publish Yes We Did, a book about the grassroots groundswell inspired by the Obama campaign which will be released in May 2009. She is the Research Coordinator to the critically acclaimed Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything and a contributor on both Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing your World and Everything I needed to Know About Business I learned from a Canadian.