In January 2009, Arif Mamdani became Executive Director of the Minneapolis-based Progressive Technology Project. Read some of Arif’s thoughts on the Obama presidency, why he’s taking on greater nonprofit leadership and why Facebook is like the mall and not like the cemetery.

Join Arif on Monday, March 9th in Brooklyn for a happy hour along with a litany of organizers, techies, i-bankers, graphic designers and city council candidates – details are here.
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1) Obama's barely 30 days into office -- what is the significance of ... his presidency, his experience as a community organizer, and ancestry?
Yes, after 200 some years of homogenous leadership, it does mean something when we elect someone who isn't a white man. We'll feel the same sense of "this matters"-ness when we elect a woman, when we elect our first openly gay president. Our country has issues dealing with folks who aren't part of the traditional status-quo power structure, and when we elevate someone from the outside to a position of power, it means something.
Let me give you a really concrete example from my life - I've got two daughters, and the older one, who's five, has been absolutely captivated by the whole Obama family - first it was Barack - she loved watching his speeches on YouTube. She wouldn’t ask for cartoons, it wasn't playing video games, it was "can we watch Obama on the computer?" From a five year old. And she'd clap and cheer during the stirring moments of his speeches.
She LOVES the Obama girls in part because they're really not a whole lot older than her. Michelle too, but it's really the girls, then Barack, and then Michelle in order of her preference. We've got a president setting the paradigm for millions of young brown kids around the country, and around the world. President Barack Obama is the first president both my kids are going to remember. My older daughter has this concrete emotional connection to him and his family, … to politicians, and government - government isn't faceless, it isn't controlled by someone else - it's someone she knows, she likes, and who looks like her. I don’t think we can even begin to imagine the depth of the impact that has on what kids can and will aspire to. So that alone makes his presidency game-changing.
President Obama's experience as a community organizer had, and will continue to have massive implications for how we view campaigns and the business of impacting politics for a long time to come. I still hear people talking about how exciting it was to be an organizer for him. I don’t know exactly how many people are walking around calling themselves community organizers now, but I know it is a whole heck of a lot more than there were at the beginning of 2008. So I think we’re going to see this impact for a long, long time. I think his campaign set the bar for how future campaigns are going to approach the intersection of field and online work.
I don’t really know what to say about his ancestry – part Muslim, part Midwest as you put it. You know, I share that with President Obama – my dad was born in Tanzania, and raised Muslim, and my mom grew up in India, from a semi-practicing Hindu family – so we’ve certainly had our version of the blending of ethnicities and traditions while I was growing up. But to tell you the truth, I’m not sure what it means, if anything.

2) What's happening in technology to advance organizing?
Everything that is happening in technology can advance organizing – we just need to figure out how to take advantage of it. The big news of the last few years is really the rise of online social networking tools and websites – twitter, facebook, myspace, etc. What they’re doing, aside from sucking up a lot of time, is creating an environment where people are increasing the low-level connections they have with each other, so if you’re following me on Facebook, you know that I’ve been looking for a great place to take my daughter for milkshakes and French fries.

So how does this advance organizing? There are really two things to focus in on – the ability to tap into people’s networks, and the ability to listen. So, when I talk about accessing people’s networks, the social media tools make it really easy for people to build fairly large lists of people that they have some sort of relationship with, and then do a wide variety of things with those lists. From an organizing perspective, that’s cool because it makes it really easy for supporters of an organization to tell their circles what they’re excited about, why they’re excited, and how to get involved. The other big story here is the ability to listen. Using these tools, organizers can listen to far more people, and in doing so, learn what people are talking, how they’re talking about particular ideas, and why they’re engaged by things. Social media can serve as a sort of focus group, writ large, and can be a very powerful tool for improving an organizations’ communications. Progressive Technology Project’s REVERB program is all about the strategic use of communications tools, technologies, and techniques, and not surprisingly, we’ll be spending a good portion of this year’s program addressing the intersection between organizing and social media tools.


3) What are you hopeful about in the stimulus plan's technology plans?
When I look around the world, it’s clear to me that we haven’t taken the idea of technology infrastructure seriously. Our rates of broadband use and penetration are abysmal compared to other “peer” countries, and I’m heartened to see that part of the stimulus plan’s technology plan includes expanded investment in broadband. More generally though, I’m really hoping to see the stimulus fund more than just equipment. At PTP, we do far more basic skills training than I think we should have to. We have to because technology training still isn’t much of a part of the core curriculum in our schools. So – while it’s not really considered “technology”, I do hope that we see a much more serious investment in building the skills to use the technology in addition to expanding the technical infrastructure our technology runs on.


4) Why did you want to become PTP's Executive Director in the midst of the gloomiest economic outlook of the last 8 decades?
The economic outlook is gloomy, there’s no doubt about that, but I can’t help but feel a tremendous sense of possibility right now. I don’t know that we’ve seen a time where so many systems are so clearly broken. People are waking up to the fact that things aren’t working, that things need changing, and the groups that PTP works with are at the leading edge of developing solutions that will bring about lasting and sustainable change that works for everyone. That’s why I wanted to be director at PTP - the next few years, probably even longer actually, are going to be very difficult, but I think progressive organizations have a tremendous opportunity to change things. It goes without saying that I think PTP has a critical role to play in making that change.

A big PTP development project this year is on the database side of things. In about a month, we’re launching our PowerBase project - to build a database that is as close to “off the shelf” for base-building community organizing as we can get it, and we think we can get it really darn close. For the first time in last ten years that I’ve been doing this work, organizations are clamoring for a solution that cuts across organizations. In response, we’re building a database that will work, off the shelf, for most mid-sized organizing groups. Once we’ve got a shared toolset, we can set aside the question of the technology and hone in on the hard part of database work – the deep integration work necessary for organizations to really leverage the power of the technology.

5) How useful is Facebook?
No comment. I’m not sure that useful is right word there. Maybe interesting? I think Facebook is very interesting – for all the reason that I stated before about social media. Useful? Well, here’s how I talk about Facebook and MySpace and things like that in PTP’s trainings – do you do outreach at the mall or at the cemetery? You go to the mall because that’s where people are – Facebook and MySpace are the same – and they’re useful because they’re these great little containers that give you tools to communicate with all the people who’re there.

6) What is your favorite gadget?
That’s a funny question – people think PTP is in love with technology, but we’re really not about technology for its own sake. So, if you really want to know what my favorite gadget is, I’d have to say it’s my Xtracycle. An Xtracycle is an add-on for a bicycle that dramatically expands the amount that you can carry with your bike – it bolts into the back of the bike, extending the length of the your bike, and it adds two large expandable pouches and a platform on which you can carry all kinds of things. I love mine because I’m an almost-year-round bike commuter (I stop riding when it drops below about 15 degrees) and with my xtracycle equipped bike, I can carry darn near anything, anytime, without problems. Pick up our CSA share – easy. Grab a load of diapers, no problem. Do both and pick up my kid from daycare – yep, I can do that too. So it’s really gone a long way toward dropping my car usage during the warmer months to just about zero.

7) Based in Minneapolis, and born in Chicago -- what do you like about the upper midwest?
Progressive Technology Project works nationally. From MSP, I can be almost anywhere in the country in about 4 hours. Having lived on the East coast, I know what it’s like to lose a whole day in travelling, and believe me, MSP is much, much better. I also like the fact that living in the middle of farm country puts me in the center of a lot of really interesting work around food, community supported agriculture, and urban farming. Plus, with two kids, I want to be somewhere family friendly and the Twin Cities is one of the most family friendly places in the country. I know it’s fly-over territory for a lot of people, but that’s fine, right now, it’s a great fit for me.

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