Obama campaign opens tech field office in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO — President Obama will be tapping into the deep pockets of supporters when he raises funds for his campaign Thursday on the West Coast. But he’s also making use of what people here do best: technology.

The Hill has confirmed that the Obama campaign opened a technology field office in San Francisco on Wednesday. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that it’s the first of its kind for a presidential campaign.

{mosads}An Obama campaign aide told The Hill that the campaign wanted to open an office in San Francisco, where technology-industry workers — who didn’t necessarily want to knock on doors — could volunteer their time and be involved in the campaign.

As of now, the office will be run by one unnamed staff member who will work with tech-savvy volunteers.

Rather than basing the operation in Chicago, Team Obama decided to build the infrastructure in a high-density techie world. What better place than the City by the Bay?

“We learned from 2008 that using the talents and skills of our supporters was a key to building the most effective organization,” Katie Hogan, the Obama campaign’s deputy press secretary, told the Chronicle. “We’re taking the next step by providing tools and space for supporters in the technology community to help the campaign extend our current tools, like BarackObama.com and our mobile applications.”

Since 2008, the Obama campaign has embraced advances in technology. It used the Internet to raise money, collecting small-dollar donations from hundreds of thousands of supporters. The campaign has also communicated with backers via email and text messages.

During his time in the White House, Obama has spoken directly to supporters through social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter. In recent weeks, he held the first-ever virtual interview with the help of YouTube and Google+.

The first techie-in-chief also has an iPad and a Secret Service-approved BlackBerry, and has been known to tweet from time to time.

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