You're Invited! Soapbox celebrates its one year anniversary Feb. 26 with guest speaker, Ben Self

Celebrate with us on February 26, 6:00PM at Mixx Ultra Lounge (1203 Main Street in OTR) as Soapbox commemorates its one year anniversary with a special cocktail reception and discussion with Ben Self, founding partner of Blue State Digital, the consulting firm that developed and executed the ground-breaking online, grassroots organization of thousands of volunteers leveraging digital and social media for the Obama presidential campaign.  At 7:00PM, Mr. Self will lead a conversation on how the use of digital media can be used to harness change and action right here in Greater Cincinnati.

Love the photography you see each week? We do to. That's why Soapbox Art Director, Scott Beseler will be on hand at the party with a special art showing of his favorite mastheads.

To RSVP, please click here.

About Ben Self:

Ben Self is a founding partner of Blue State Digital, a consulting firm that specializes in creating new media strategy and technology for political candidates, non-profits, and companies. Blue State Digital’s software and strategy powers the online presence of the largest and most prominent Democratic candidates and progressive organizations, including the presidential campaign of Barack Obama.  Blue State Digital also serves numerous non-profits and corporations, such as AT&T, We Can Solve It (Al Gore’s Environmental Advocacy Organization), Save Darfur, New York University, the Hearst Corporation, and the Sundance Film Festival.

Ben founded Blue State Digital in 2004 with three other individuals responsible for Howard Dean’s use of the Internet during his presidential campaign. The company now has offices in New York, London, Boston, Washington DC, and San Francisco.

During the 2008 election cycle, Ben Self also served as the DNC Technology Director, where, as a key member of the DNC’s senior staff, he supervised the technology projects of the national party – focusing specifically on the website, computer infrastructure, compliance software, and national voter file database.  In this role, Ben led projects that entirely revamped the technology of the DNC, including a complete replacement of the website and the Democratic Party’s national voter file (VoteBuilder).

During his career, Ben has garnered extensive experience in new media technologies, statistical data analysis, data warehousing, database architecture and administration, system design, and system development. He built the FEC's system for gathering and reporting on campaign finance data, and architected the largest distributed Geographic Information Systems database ever deployed for the USDA. He has created data warehouses for a variety of industries, including health care, telecommunications, finance, and insurance. In these industries, he has worked at all levels of system development -- from designing and writing the software itself to managing large teams responsible for developing systems to be used by tens of thousands of users. In addition to this work, Ben has performed extensive research and written a thesis on object-oriented design.

Ben has both a bachelor's and a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Celebrate with us on February 26, 6:00PM at Mixx Ultra Lounge (1203 Main Street in OTR) as Soapbox commemorates its one year anniversary with a special cocktail reception and discussion with Ben Self, founding partner of Blue State Digital, the consulting firm that developed and executed the ground-breaking online, grassroots organization of thousands of volunteers leveraging digital and social media for the Obama presidential campaign.  At 7:00PM, Mr. Self will lead a conversation on how the use of digital media can be used to harness change and action right here in Greater Cincinnati.

To RSVP, please click here.

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