McCain lost election because of programmer shortage
McCain lost election because of programmer shortage
Date: Friday, March 06, 2009 1:53 AM
<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER No. 1987 -- 3/06/2009 >>>>>
Cyrus Krohn thinks he knows why Barack Obama won the election. According to
Krohn, who was the most respected technocrat in the Republican Party, and the
RNC's eCampaign director, the Democrats "dot bombed" the RNC because they had
superior web sites. He claims that the RNC lost the battle of the nerds, and
therefore the election, because a shortage of programmers hindered them from
building good enough web sites. Apparently the lopsided election results had
nothing to do with the fact that McCain was a lousy candidate.
Change comes quickly online and the tide will turn again in favor of
the GOP, once we hone our message and harness emerging technologies.
To do that, we must match Democrats, programmer-for-programmer.
Regrettably, we re in terribly short supply of professionals focused
solely on building platforms and applications. This is where we got
dot bombed in 2006 and 2008. Maybe we should start providing
computer science scholarships in exchange for a commitment to serve
our party?
Krohn's shortage shouting is nonsensical because the Democrats were able to
hire all the programmers they needed to get the job done. Perhaps the real
reason the RNC got "dot bombed" was because the U.S. has a shortage of good
managers!
Krohn isn't even a programmer -- he earned a communications degree from
Lynchburg College. When you read the next quote, just remember he is the one
who wants more computer science scholarships!
"He wouldn't take exams, wouldn't study. He was totally uninterested
in academics," said his father, Charles, a former Army officer and
Vietnam War veteran. "But he did very well in lacrosse."
Unlike many future tech executives, Krohn wasn't a geek. He was a
goalie.
Krohn spent ten years doing something at Microsoft, but that's probably not
why the technophobes at the RNC hired him. He got a reputation in the
Republican party as an internet whiz kid while working for Mr. Potato head:
As an intern for then-Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992, Krohn was
asked to run an ISDN telephone cable under the rugs from one end of
the Old Executive Office Building to the other so computers could
talk to one another.
Three articles are included below. The first one was posted yesterday, and
probably should have been titled "cry baby Krohn resigns from his cushy RNC
job". The second one was published before the election. It's rather
interesting to note that even before the election Krohn acknowledged that the
Democrats were doing a better job with their web sites. At that time Krohn
never mentioned a thing about having problems finding programmers -- on the
contrary his eCommerce division was staffed with six people, which seems more
than adequate to build a couple of web pages -- that is of course assuming
that they weren't all communication majors from Lynchburg college.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/05/rnc_loses_online_director.html#more
RNC Loses Online Director
By Jose Antonio Vargas
The GOP's top Internet official is leaving the Republican National Committee.
Arguably the most respected technocrat in the Republican Party, Cyrus Krohn is
just the latest in a string of officials to resign from the RNC; last week,
the RNC's finance director quit. But because GOP Chairman Michael Steele made
leveraging the Internet to attract voters to the Republican Party a top
priority ina tech summit two weeks ago, Krohn's departure comes as an
especially heavy blow -- not just to the RNC, but to the conservative
blogosphere.
A veteran of Microsoft and Yahoo, Krohn joined the RNC in July 2007 and
started to reboot the party's online infrastructure. Immediately, he launched
new sites within GOP.com (such as GOPPlatform2008.com, which allowed visitors
to help shape the party's platform in advance of the Republican National
Convention), created the RNC's Facebook group (which now has roughly 7,000
more members than the Democratic National Committee) and grew the RNC's e-mail
list from 1.8 to 12 million.
Krohn announced his resignation in a blog post on E-Voter Institute, a 10-
year-old, nonpartisan think-tank where he sits on the board of advisers.
In a posting titled "RNC-YA," Krohn outlines the challenges facing the GOP on
the Web. The party doesn't lack for bloggers and Twitterers who gets the
message out, he said, but the GOP needs platforms and applications to allow
more people to self-organize and become activists.
"Change comes quickly online and the tide will turn again in favor of the GOP,
once we hone our message and harness emerging technologies. To do that, we
must match Democrats, programmer-for-programmer," Krohn wrote.
"Regrettably, we're in terribly short supply of professionals focused solely
on building platforms and applications. This is where we got dot bombed in
2006 and 2008. Maybe we should start providing computer science scholarships
in exchange for a commitment to serve our party?"
In an interview, Krohn said he's moving back to Seattle with his family. He
has no job lined up at the moment, he told The Post, but he's thinking of
running for office. And, true to form, he logged off from the RNC with his
sense of humor intact: In the blog post, Krohn hints at helping build
applications for whoever runs for president in 2012 -- only to leave readers
RickRolled.
This is one in a series of online columns on our growing "clickocracy," in
which we are one nation under Google, with e-mail and video for all. Please
send suggestions, comments and tips to vargasj@washpost.com.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072203208.html
The GOP's Cyrus Krohn Has His Sites Set On Updating the Party's Internet
Connection
"My thinking was: If I could actually help the party through my experience
with technology, then why not?" Cyrus Krohn says about becoming eCampaign
director for the RNC. (By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; Page C01
On the Twittering, Facebooking, widgety frontier of politics, one of the
webbiest sites this campaign season was born just a few days ago: a 24/7
online town hall, where voters, via text or video, can help craft their
party's platform.
Surprise! It isn't the Democrats.
GOPPlatform2008.com was built by a team headed by Cyrus Krohn, a veteran of
Microsoft and Yahoo who's proving to be one of the GOP's most important
Internet gurus. At the new site, users can send their thoughts on the party's
platform and suggestions for issues that the GOP should tackle.
Anyone can participate, Republican or not. Though a staff screens vulgar and
distasteful submissions, it's still the riskiest thing the Republican National
Committee has ever done online.
Krohn calls it "the crowning achievement" of his year-long tenure so far.
His small, cramped office is on the first floor of the RNC's headquarters on
Capitol Hill. "To Vote Democrat is 'Risky' Business," reads a sticker taped on
his door. Photos of Dan Quayle, Larry King and Pat Buchanan line the walls,
harking back to his days as a White House intern and at CNN working on "Larry
King Live" and "Crossfire." Three computer screens sit on the desk.
Krohn is the RNC's eCampaign director. Or, in the words of his boss, RNC
Chairman Mike Duncan, "He's helping bring our party to the 21st century."
Quite a task, Krohn knows. The Dems have captured most of the buzz ever since
Howard Dean's Internet-fueled campaign, rallying their troops and raising
loads of cash online. During the primaries, the GOP famously dithered about
whether to hold a YouTube debate in which voters submitted questions by video.
It surely doesn't help that John McCain confesses to being a computer
"illiterate" or that one of his aides felt compelled to state publicly last
month that "John McCain is aware of the Internet."
"People were Twittering me from California minutes after that happened,"
Krohn says. Though he doesn't work directly for McCain, Krohn feels the heat.
The Internet trials of McCain and the GOP are usually accompanied by a
question that sticks like July's sultry heat: Are Republicans behind online?
"I often get asked that," Krohn says, "and I never really know how to answer
it."
"It depends on what your definition of 'behind' is," Krohn told a group of
college students visiting Capitol Hill recently. "If you look at people who
are spending countless hours developing user-generated content, then, yeah,
we're behind. But in terms of activity in the blogosphere, I think we're at
parity, if not better."
With his unlined face and ear-to-ear smile, Krohn could easily pass as a 20-
something technocrat. But at 37 -- and a father of two with a third on the way
-- he's actually one of the elder statesmen in the small but growing class of
online political operatives in Washington.
An Army brat, Krohn was born in Fairfax and graduated from Lynchburg College,
where he majored in communications and played lacrosse. Aside from sports, it
was computers, especially the Internet, that intrigued him.
"Years ago, way before YouTube or MySpace, it was all about connecting,"
Krohn says. "You go on the Net to connect with people."
He's a self-described "black sheep" -- a Jewish Republican. National security
has always been the issue that concerned him most. But in the early days, when
people such as Krohn foresaw the Web's potential to affect politics, the focus
was less on ideology and more on simply spreading the word.
His online experience goes back more than a decade. After the liberal pundit
Michael Kinsley left "Crossfire" to start Slate at Microsoft, he hired Krohn,
then a "Crossfire" producer, as his first employee. "He was a go-getter, a
hustler," Kinsley says of Krohn. "And the thing about Cyrus is, everyone likes
him -- Republicans and Democrats."
Krohn eventually became Slate's publisher. He also dabbled in writing at the
online zine, and in ways that might not have pleased his own party.
Krohn penned a column headlined "Bush Unbuttoned!" in July 1996 after reading
a book called "Unlimited Access," touted as an FBI agent's account of a
morally bankrupt Clinton White House run by bubble gum-blowing, feet-on-their-
desks 30-somethings. What he witnessed in his few months as an intern in the
Bush I White House, it turns out, wasn't all prim and proper. "Bubble gum does
seem a bit childish; we Bush staffers preferred beer," Krohn wrote. "Four or
five times that summer, the White House kitchen staff wheeled ice-cold brew
right to our offices, and more than once staffers -- some of them underaged --
drank enough to pass out for the night."
He spent years selling politicians and their staffers on the value of
advertising online, and, to his chagrin, more Democrats than Republicans took
the plunge. While at MSN.com during the 2000 presidential race, Krohn
negotiated a deal with Bill Bradley's campaign to create one of the first
online political videos. From his desk, the former New Jersey senator looked
at a camera. "Hi, I'm Bill Bradley, and if you're watching this, that means
you're on the Internet," Krohn remembers Bradley saying. Later at Yahoo, where
he directed the online portal's 2008 election strategy from its Santa Monica,
Calif., office, he met with Clinton and Obama staffers to persuade them to use
Yahoo's services.
It was a comfy life, living 12 blocks from the beach, and (though Yahoo has
been less than stable in the past year) a comfy job, too, with stock options,
and a cubicle that overlooked the ocean. But when he heard about the opening
at the RNC last spring, he was ready to make a change.
"Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to leave Santa Monica," Krohn says. "But
ever since 9/11, I've always wanted to do something for the country, and for
my party. My thinking was: If I could actually help the party through my
experience with technology, then why not? What am I doing helping Democrats
win the White House if I could be helping my own party?"
Within a few weeks, he packed his family, moved back East and wrote an e-mail
to friends and colleagues with the subject line "Goodbye Yahoo, Hello White
House?"
His wife of 12 years, Jennifer, thought "it was nuts." "But I've learned to
believe in his career decisions," she says.
Krohn's first priority for the six staffers in the eCampaign division was
revamping the RNC's main site, GOP.com. A good site, he says, is like a
buffet. "There's gotta be something for everyone." He has two groups to
serve: an older audience that just wants to find information, and a younger
one that expects to interact with the content. After the revamped site's
launch, he turned his attention to the grass-roots-centric portal MyGOP, the
RNC's answer to the Democratic National Committee's PartyBuilder.
Then micro-sites under GOP.com that targeted Obama were created -- with mixed
success.
In early May, CanWeAsk.com allowed users to pose text and video questions for
Obama. Though Krohn says more than 70,000 submissions were sent, many couldn't
be posted on the site. "They weren't appropriate" is all he'd say.
By Tuesday, only nine videos had been posted.
Last month, MeetBarackObama.com went live. On the site, a link labeled "Dr.
NObama" leads to questions about Obama's position on offshore oil drilling.
More creatively, there are widgets that anyone can post on their own blog.
One features a clock counting the time (48 days 03 hours, also as of Tuesday
afternoon) since Obama was invited to joint town hall meetings by McCain.
Krohn says about 100,000 unique visitors went to the site on its first three
days.
Krohn is the third person to head the RNC's eCampaign division. Patrick
Ruffini, who served for about a year and a half, preceded him; he left and
advised Rudy Giuliani in his primary run. Michael Turk, who ran President
Bush's online operation in the 2004 campaign, inaugurated the job and lasted
less than a year. Turk left when he butted heads with senior officials "about
the direction and purpose" of the eCampaign division, he says. For one, he
wanted to continue producing videos that "looked raw and informal and less
like television."
Kelley McCullough, then RNC's chief of staff, said she disagreed with the
strategy. In an interview, she declined to talk about Turk but said, "We
understood the importance of developing a robust eCampaign at the RNC."
To outside observers, it seems that Krohn has been given more leeway than his
predecessors. Under Krohn, GOP.com competes directly with Democrats.org, the
DNC's online headquarters, they say.
"No doubt it, he's providing a level of expertise that we have not had in the
party," says Soren Dayton of the PR firm New Media Strategies and co-founder
of TheNextRight.com, a new conservative blog. "This is a guy who comes from
the high-tech and media world. He actually understands how people consume
media, how people interact with technology."
But Michael Bassik, head of interactive marketing at MSHC Partners, a
Democratic communications firm, says Krohn can only do so much.
"Sure, you can build the best, most sophisticated, most interactive political
site out there," Bassik says. "But at the end of the day, what counts online
are the eyeballs. And objectively speaking, it seems that the Democrats are
getting more eyeballs, at least right now."
The way Krohn sees it, GOP.com is supposed to take a back seat to
JohnMcCain.com.
But conservative online political operatives who've nervously watched
BarackObama.com-- and, more specifically, the social networking portal
MyBarackObama -- say Obama doesn't need Democrats.org. McCain, meanwhile,
needs all the help he can get from GOP.com.
Though McCain's site is cleanly and attractively designed, with a vibrant
blogging community, it lacks certain features. For instance, Obama's text
messaging program is prominently placed on his home page and he regularly
sends text messages to collect Zip codes and mobilize supporters. McCain, in
contrast, doesn't have a text program.
Krohn bristles at the criticism of McCain's eCampaign team. For instance, he
says, "both parties are still too TV-obsessed."
"The use of TV in campaigns is kind of like our dependency on foreign oil.
We know we have to get off it. We know we need to find alternative energy
sources. But we keep on going back to the pump," Krohn continues. "Fact is, we
need to develop a higher degree of comfort with allocating media dollars to
the Web."
Last summer, he got the chance to test the effectiveness of the Internet as a
stand-alone campaign tool. With the permission of the RNC's senior staff,
Krohn zeroed in on the Louisiana gubernatorial race. Then-Rep. Bobby Jindal
was an attractive candidate, Krohn says, and it was projected to be a tight
race. For 3 1/2 months, using online micro-targeting and data-matching, he
identified a set of voters and turned them out to the polls.
Statewide turnout for the Louisiana race was 46 percent. Of those voters who
interacted with Krohn's online targeting -- he won't say how much of the total
vote -- 76 percent voted, he claims. Krohn says he's not suggesting that the
RNC is responsible for Jindal's win. What it does suggest, however, is that
the model could have significant impact on voter turnout, he adds.
"Everyone is talking about Obama and his success with the youth vote. Well,
there's a significant older demographic on the Web, and what I was able to do
in Louisiana is identify and interact with an older voting bloc," Krohn says.
"With all the attention on YouTube and Facebook, I think we've become pretty
dismissive of portals like AOL or Yahoo because they're perceived as passe.
But how can you be dismissive of tens of millions of potential voters?
Especially older voters who are more likely to vote for McCain?"
Still, it's the young voters that keep him awake at night in his rowhouse in
Old Town Alexandria, a block off the Potomac, across the street from former
Democratic governor Mark Warner.
"I can't ignore the youth vote," Krohn continues. "How do we captivate the
hearts and minds of younger people on the Internet? They're not watching TV
ads, they're not listening to the radio, Rush Limbaugh isn't necessarily their
god. And they're the voters of tomorrow, of 2012, of 2016, of 2020.
How do we develop a dialogue with them?"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
http://news-buzz.com/a/internet-whiz-connects-grand-old-party-to-whats-new
Internet whiz connects Grand Old Party to what's new January 20 12:05:01 PM,
LA Times Cyrus Krohn left his high-level, high-paying job at Yahoo to return
to politics in D.C. You could say that Cyrus Krohn helped lay the groundwork
for political use of the Internet.
WASHINGTON -- You could say that Cyrus Krohn helped lay the groundwork for
political use of the Internet.
As an intern for then-Vice President Dan Quayle in 1992, Krohn was asked to
run an ISDN telephone cable under the rugs from one end of the Old Executive
Office Building to the other so computers could talk to one another.
"I was literally helping wire the vice president's office," recalled Krohn,
now 37. "It just struck my curiosity. What's ISDN? What does it do?"
From there, it was like a magic carpet ride into the high-tech industry.
Krohn combined networking ability -- the old-fashioned, face-to-face kind that
politics thrives on -- with expanding technological skills to land jobs at
CNN, online magazine Slate, Microsoft Corp. and finally Yahoo Inc.
But last year Krohn made an unusual career U-turn, returning to Washington
politics.
He left his job as Yahoo's director of election strategy to run the online
operations of the Republican National Committee. Exchanging Yahoo's posh Santa
Monica offices for the RNC's more modest facilities on Capitol Hill, Krohn is
trying to boost the GOP over the Democrats in the battle for Internet
dominance.
Online political consultants have praised Krohn for an overhaul of the RNC
website, GOP.com, adding features such as social networking and mobile alerts.
"I kind of worry about the fate of the party if we don't harness new
technology to convey our message to the voters of tomorrow," Krohn said
recently over burgers at a restaurant near RNC headquarters, his boyish looks
fitting in easily with the crowd of mostly twentysomething political aides.
People usually don't trade the perks of the high-tech industry to be a foot
soldier in the political world, particularly when things were as good as they
were for Krohn at Yahoo.
He rode his bike to work every morning, could zip home for lunch with his wife
and two young children and was able to sit down to a family dinner most
nights.
"I was making gobs of money. I was sitting on a lot of stock options. I was
living 12 blocks from the ocean," Krohn said. "I couldn't have been happier."
But something started gnawing at him. In his helping 2008 presidential
candidates get their message out on Yahoo, Krohn found himself working mostly
with Democrats such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. A lifelong
Republican, Krohn didn't want to see either of them in the White House.
"I'm spending all my time helping Democrats," he complained to his friend,
Chuck DeFeo, general manager of the conservative political website
Townhall.com. DeFeo had a suggestion: earn a lot less money and work a lot
harder for the Republicans.
"To Cyrus' credit, he didn't say no immediately," DeFeo said. "He saw the
opportunity to step up and do something for a cause greater than himself."
That attitude is a far cry from high school, when Krohn was interested in one
thing: sports.
"He wouldn't take exams, wouldn't study. He was totally uninterested in
academics," said his father, Charles, a former Army officer and Vietnam War
veteran. "But he did very well in lacrosse."
Unlike many future tech executives, Krohn wasn't a geek. He was a goalie.
His athletic skills helped him get into Lynchburg College. But while focusing
on stopping speeding lacrosse balls, Krohn also started focusing on his
future. He became sports editor of the college newspaper and graduated in 3
1/2 years. A chance meeting with a Quayle official took him to the White
House.
Throughout his career, Krohn has seized those types of opportunities. When he
accompanied Quayle to an appearance on "Larry King Live" in 1992, Krohn
schmoozed the producer and landed an internship there. He went on to work for
"Crossfire," and after co-host Michael Kinsley announced he was heading to
Microsoft to start Slate in 1995, Krohn volunteered to join him.
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