At The San Francisco Chronicle, Joe Garofoli writes about Garrett Johnson and Aaron Ginn, who have been cultivating a community of fellow GOP-leaning Bay Area techies. He mentions a Koch-financed project:
In June, their fledgling Lincoln Labs, an incubator for political tech ideas, will host a 24-hour hackathon. The goal is to encourage programmers to dream up digital ideas that use "market-based solutions (to) address big social problems," according to an online invitation. Cash prizes will be awarded for the top ideas - as well as the opportunity to further develop them.Garofoli mentions another figure as well:
"A lot of campaigns think social media outreach is posting a funny picture on Facebook or using a hashtag" on Twitter, said Matt Shupe, who was the social media manager for Andy Vidak, a Republican who won a primary race this month for the 16th state Senate District in the Bakersfield area.
Instead, Shupe said, GOP campaigns need to do a better job of mining information about voters from what's on their Facebook pages, for example.
One reason Vidak received a large number of votes from non-Republicans in a district dominated by Democrats was that his campaign used digital outreach that "you wouldn't see in your standard Republican campaign," Shupe said. He declined to detail that outreach because the race is too close to call.
...
"A lot of technology companies have a lot of very liberal people working for them," Shupe said. There's a feeling, he added, that showing your conservative stripes at work could "affect your employment situation or how your co-workers feel about you."
