Our CEO Matt Meents recently told a story about a dinner he was having with his family a few months ago. His in-laws were over, the meal had been prepped, the wine had been corked, his 3yr old son was running around the house telling him that “you rock daddy” when the phone rang. Co-founder of Reside Eric Scheel called him with the news that the Presidential Transition team had chosen Reside to do some work with them. Matt’s response - “the president of what?”
Long story short, the Obama-Biden presidential transition team was launching a project called the “Citizens Briefing Book” on the Force.com platform, and because of Reside’s vast experience in this space - they chose Reside to be the implementation partner. The site was to be live for a week, open to the entire United States, allowing people to submit / vote on ideas on how to improve the country - the top ideas to be presented to the President the day after inauguration in a briefing book similiar to the ones the presidents recieves on the first day he takes office, this one called the “Citizens Briefing Book.”
News traveled fast through our organization about this very exciting project and I was ready to pitch in wherever I could. I can’t really explain how exciting it is to review creative files, and see work that the entire country will be seeing before anyone else. Not to mention, we couldn’t tell a soul - not even family that we were working on this project.
We got the work done in an incredibly short time-frame (4 weeks), and soft launched on a Monday. So here we are, an ideas submission box that could go directly to the president - I had to submit an idea.
My Submission:
“Increase MPG requirements now! After spending tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to bail out poorly run domestic auto makers, maybe we should make it a requirement that they focus any/all taxpayer money into improving their product to relieve America’s dependency on foreign oil.
If we want US automakers to be successful again, it’s time to stop making Escalades and start selling affordable products that will benefit the micro and macro Economies in the US, not to mention the Environment.” - MJohnson
After a week of the site being live, and 1.4+ million votes, this idea wound up in the top 15 most popular ideas of over 70,000. The idea was eventually published in the Citizen’s Briefing Book on page 11, and President Obama has actually increased the MPG standards as one of the first things he did in office.
Now, the joke I make around the office is that I’m a policy maker - obviously that’s not the truth. BUT, it is an exciting feeling to know that this idea was in the briefing book that was delivered to President Obama on his first day in office, and that he’s already done something with it.
As Reside continues to be a market leader in Community/Ideas implementation and strategy, this action is key to the success for any of our clients. If you choose to crowd-source and ask the opinions of your audience, you’d better be prepared to act on those ideas, and communicate with your contributors that you’ve heard them, and are doing something with their ideas.
For some more info on the Citizen’s Briefing Book, check out the following:
Wikipedia’s entry on the Citizen’s Briefing Book
Obama acts on changing MPG standards in the US
Yahoo News Article on Obama emissions law
Washington Post Article on the change of MPG standards in the US
