These slides were for a talk I gave in Berlin at the re:Publica conference on April 16, 2010. There are three videos included that you will have to go search for on YouTube: 1) the "Vote Different" ad mashup; 2) Kids singing and chanting and dancing on election night in front of the White House in 2008; and 3) Barack Obama speaking in Indianapolis in the spring of 2008 about the role of his grassroots organization both during the election and afterwards.

1. Obama Agonistes Micah L. Sifry @mlsif Personal Democracy Forum

3. How did this:

4. Produce this?

5. Act I

6. Welcome to the Age of Mass Participation

10. Who’s Online?

12. Swimming in a Sea of User-Generated Content

14. If not for the Internet…

15. Who was empowered?

16. Act II

17. The Myth

22. Small-donor revolution? Not in the “early money”

23. $1000+ donors dominated

24. Small donors: 2008 vs 2004

25. What happened to the movement?

26. Obama, April 30, 2008

27. “We’ve built a structure that can sustain itself after the campaign…Volunteers, they built the campaign…people made this structure.”

29. "Our e-mail list had reached 13 million people. We had essentially created our own television network, only better , because we communicated with no filter to what would amount to about 20 percent of the total number of votes we would need to win…”

41. The response of the general public?

43. Obama, January 22, 2010

44. I didn't run for President to turn away from these challenges. I didn't run for President to kick them down the road. I ran for President to confront them - once and for all. I ran for this office to rebuild our economy so it works not just for a fortunate few, but for hardworking people in this country.... I had no illusions when I took on health care.... I took this up because I want to ease the burdens on all the families and small businesses that can't afford to pay outrageous rates. I want to protect mothers, fathers, children from being targeted by the worst practices of the insurance industry.

45. What happened to us ?

48. Let’s keep the conversation going… June 3-4, NYC personaldemocracy.com Save $50 with registration code: RE:PUBLICA