Ben Self, Program Director & Founding Partner, Blue State Digital (Washington)
Ben Self is a founding partner of Blue State Digital, a consulting firm that specializes in creating new media strategy and technology for political candidates, non-profits, and companies.
Senator Barack Obama retained BSD to manage the online fundraising, constituency-building, issue advocacy, and peer-to-peer online networking aspects of his 2008 Presidential primary campaign. To date, the campaign has used the BSD Online Tools to mobilize well over a million donors to contribute over $500 million online, to motivate over 2 million social networking participants, and to create and promote more than 200,000 events across the country.
Ben founded Blue State Digital in 2004 with three other individuals responsible for Howard Dean’s use of the Internet during his presidential campaign. The company now has offices in New York, London, Boston, Washington DC, and San Francisco.
During the 2008 election cycle, Ben Self also served as the Democratic National Committee’s Technology Director, where he supervised the technology projects of the national party – focusing specifically on the website, computer infrastructure, compliance software, and national voter file database. Ben led projects that entirely revamped the technology of the DNC, including a complete replacement of the website and the Democratic Party’s national voter file (VoteBuilder).
During his career, Ben has garnered extensive experience in new media technologies, statistical data analysis, data warehousing, database architecture and administration, system design, and system development. Ben has also written a thesis on object-oriented design.
Ben has both a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Ben’s appearance at Media 09 is courtesy of the Internet Industry Association of Australia