Inauguration's Top Techie
Mark Jablonowski '10 managed and designed Obama campaign's ground-breaking technology
By Gerry Boyle, Colby Magazine
In the spring of 2007, Mark Jablonowski '10 set out to get involved in a presidential campaign. He ended up spending the summer working for Barack Obama in New Hampshire, knocking on thousands of doors and making thousands of phone calls in gearing up for that state's primary.
And then the campaign got wind of Jablonowski's considerable technical and management skills.
On leave after one year at Colby, where he had planned to be a government/philosophy double major, he soon jumped from field intern to become the Obama campaign's information technology director for New Hampshire. After New Hampshire, Jablonowski was moved to campaign headquarters in Chicago, and then on to key primaries in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. At each stop, he was charged with helping to put in place all of the equipment and systems for what was by most accounts the most technologically advanced presidential campaign ever.
The Obama campaign is widely acknowledged for its pioneering use of the Internet for raising money and communicating with supporters. Making much of that possible was behind-the-scenes work done by Jablonowski and the tech team.
"Blackberries, laptops, servers, copiers, fax machines, coffee makers-anything with an electrical cord."
"When you're in the field," he said, "you have to be a jack of all trades."
It was Jablonowski, with others, who pioneered innovative ways to use products like desktop virtualization, allowing multiple keyboards to run off a single computer, giving the campaign "more seats per dollar," he said. And voice-over Internet protocol was used for inexpensive calling.
"I was managing a lot of the negotiation for large contracts that we had and coming up with new innovative uses of technology that haven't necessarily been seen on campaigns before," Jablonowski said.
After Obama won the Democratic nomination, Jablonowski was named the Obama for America IT special projects manager. In an organization known for its youth, he was one of the youngest staffers at the campaign, he said.
Now the 21-year-old Anchorage, Alaska, native is chief technology officer for the inauguration, leading the team responsible for communications infrastructure, internal networks, and security. Jablonowski also oversees the team that is managing data collection for donor information and ticket lists.
No surprise, then, that time off is rare and days on are long. "In terms of the number of days I've had off, there have been close to zero," Jablonowski said, at the inauguration offices in Washington, D.C.
Actually, he did get home to Anchorage, Alaska for four days at Christmas, where he enjoyed a long overdue visit with his parents. "We think it's amazing," said his mother, Susan Rogers. "I feel as though he's living a charmed life."
Charmed, perhaps, but not entirely surprising.
Jablonowski grew up with technology in Alaska, where his dad, Dick Jablonowski, founded a business technology company. Mark Jablonowski ran the computer help desk in middle school, and, as a tech expert, was the only student in his high school with a staff ID. Also in high school, Jablonowski worked as IT manager for the U.S. Senate campaign for former Alaska governor Tony Knowles. It was Jablonowski who devised a data entry system for field workers' Palm Pilots so they could enter data right from voters' doorsteps.
He was 17.
"He's always been a problem solver," Rogers said.
Of course, the technology associated with a presidential campaign in 2008 is of another magnitude, and the stakes-and deadline pressures-are exponentially greater. Dick Jablonowski said he appreciates the complexity of the projects his son has taken on. "A twenty-year veteran would be highly challenged to make all of this stuff happen," he said.
But happen it has, all building to January 20.
Eighteen months after he joined the campaign, continues to focus on the job at hand, postponing any decision about his longer-term future. It may include a job in the Obama administration, he allowed, or a job in the private sector. He and an Obama campaign colleague are mulling the idea of a company that would promote democracy in developing nations through software solutions, he said.
"At some point, I'd like to finish college," Jablonowski said.
But he isn't worried that he doesn't know what the future holds. The campaign, he said, has taught him that.
"I used to be a very structured person," Jablonowski said. "I knew what my plan for the day was, I knew what my plan for the week was, I knew what the rest of the year looked like. I was a little bit uncomfortable just letting things go, going with the flow. But the campaign-you're so focused on what you're doing and things are changing constantly-you can't have those plans. So my norm now is just going with what's in front of me."
And, says the young campaign veteran, he has no regrets.
"I want to get back to having a normal life, having a social life, getting an education, keeping in touch with friends and family, which the campaign doesn't really allow for that well," he said. "At every point I keep coming back to the fact that it is just such an amazing movement. I can't see myself getting out of it until it's over."
