Ontario's Progressive Conservatives are holding their annual general meeting in Ottawa today and, as part of the festivities later today, the party will announce that leader Tim Hudak now has his own iPhone application, the first leader of a Canadian political party, so far as I know, to have his own app delivered through Apple's iTunes store to iPhones around the country.
Good for the Ontario PCs for being a first mover, if you will, on the iPhone, but the real innovation will come with its use. Can this app, and others that will surely follow for Android, BlackBerry and other mobile operating systems, be an effective tool to help organize, fundraise, track voters, promote and publicize, and get elected? Personally, I think the answer is yes and that mobile apps will eventually be a must-have tool for political organizations.
They'll become must-haves because:
- Mobile political apps give grassroots supporters to self-mobilize. The geolocation feature of a good mobile app is the secret sauce to harnessing this power. People can find other people who are physically near them. They don't need permission from the party brass to do so. They can talk. They can trade ideas. They can figure things out. This was the key lesson from the Howard Dean campaign and his senior Internet advisor David Weinberger.
- Mobile apps are about sharing, on all platforms, from anywhere, anytime. Did you watch the 2006 Liberal Leadership convention, the one that Dion one? I wonder if the voting right at the end might have been different had one group or another been organized and better able to share intelligence about what was happening within their own camp elsehwere.
- Mobile apps can help with organizational velocity. In other words, as a group, you can do the same stuff faster and react more quickly. There was a provincial byelection in Ottawa this week. As expected Liberal Bob Chiarelli, a former mayor and former MPP, won. He was replacing Jim Watson, who wants to run for mayor, who won in the last general election by 18 or 19 points. Chiarelli won by about 4 points. Hudak's PCs are pleased that they closed the gap but they also wonder what might have been had all their workers, organizers, and campaigners got together for one final push. Some said had the campaign been two weeks longer, Chiarelli might have been upset. Take two weeks and now think: Two days. I think mobile apps can help with the velocity.
- Developed properly, mobile apps help political organizations gather intelligence. Version 1.0 of Hudak App has a built-in survey function (a function the app's developer Purple Forge Software has built into many apps for its politcal clients in the U.S.) This goes beyond simple polling because, again, you're able to get some geolocation data with your survey results.
The Liberal Party of Canada also has an iPhone app and I'm certain that it will want to build on what is a really thin app right now. It's only at version 0.3 right now so let's assume they have some plans to build out the app as it gets up to version 1.0. Like the official app from The White House, the Liberal app is really just a newsletter. The Hudak app also provides news about Hudak and his party but it goes beyond that and has the building blocks to become a tool to gather and mobilize political intelligence. Let's see if they know what to do with it.
This is by Ottawa company Purple Forge. Neat crew making name for themselves in Conservative tech circles.
I wish I had an iPhone!
This is a great idea – kudos for Tim for his leadership to reach out using new technology!!