how to tell your votebuilders from your mybos

Marc Ambinder has a really interesting post on the Obama campaign's data systems called How to Tell Your VoteBuilders from your MyBOs, Your Catalysts from your VANs I spent a lot of time working with VoteBuilder and I think I knew it was integrated with MyBO, because I peeked at my own VoteBuilder file and saw records of volunteer events I had signed up for on MyBO.*

I knew a little bit of this at the time because I asked my field organizer what was this Catalyst that I kept reading about on blogs, and how did it differ from Votebuilder. She told me that Catalyst was the data and VoteBuilder was the interface, which is pretty similar to what Ambinder says. She also told me that VoteBuilder was only called VoteBuilder in some states & that during the primary in Iowa, it was called The VAN. I think that means she was working for the campaign so early that they hadn't yet given VoteBuilder its name.

We had a volunteer in the final week or so who had trained to be a "data fellow," which was apparently a volunteer data specialist. But then it turned out she couldn't travel for the campaign so she didn't get to be one. Anyway she said they had taught her what VoteBuilder is and how it all fits together, but they really hadn't shown her how to use the program at all. She was got up and running pretty fast though, no surprise considering she must have known way more about the program than we did, and we'd been using it for months. I wish I had been able to take that course. Just from a technical point of view it must have been really interesting.

*The main reason I peeked at my file -- and Georg's -- was to give us the "Do Not Call" activist code. I also told friends of mine who volunteered how to do the same. I felt like we earned it by volunteering. Besides, we were definitely going to vote so there wasn't any need for the campaign to call us.