There has been much discussion about Obama’s campaign over the last 12 months. Progress should be congratulated for their speaker series which has given Labour activists who spent time in the States last year the opportunity to share their experience with CLPs across the country. I enjoyed leading a very interesting discussion with members in Loughborough. The Fabians have also done much good work to capture the experience of Labour activists who volunteered with the Obama campaign, helping to make sure we analysed the campaign and were able to set those big lessons into an electoral and political context for our side of the Atlantic.

Just over a year ago I was in the swing state of Colorado. The experience and lessons I brought back were no different to those of the hundreds of my fellow Labour activists who went to the States to get a Democrat back in the White House. And those lessons are crucial for us now. There is pretty much universal agreement that Obama’s web and online operation was impressive and broke new ground in e-organising.

However, the biggest lesson from the Obama campaign was the importance of people. Any online campaign is only as good as the people it galvanises and motivates to get out onto the streets or onto the phones talking to people. That’s why Obama won and that’s why his campaign was so impressive: because it reached out to new people and brought them into organised politics. But it could only do this because the campaign culture was set up to accommodate thousands of new activists, many who had never volunteered before. This experience has rightly forced our party to look at how we reach out to potential volunteers, and to ask if we have the right formula to turn Labour voters and supporters into activists and members.

This honest conversation has been an undoubtedly good thing for the party. The recent launch of Labour’s Volunteer Taskforce is a welcome development. As is the improvement and continued development of MembersNet, our internal online campaign and event organising tool which links to members’ blogs and discussion forums. I recognise there is always more to do and after the General Election we will again look at our structures and ways of organising the party. However, priority number one at the moment and above all else is getting our members and supporters out working for victory.

In the next week or so there will be endless discussion once again about Obama’s campaign and its success. So there should, it was an historic campaign and one the history books will rightly force us to look back on time after time. But, just months before our own election, and the historic opportunity to elect a fourth term Labour government, there is just one big lesson from Obama’s campaign: it was people on the ground that won it. So, without question the best way for any Labour member or supporter to celebrate Obama’s first year in office and the most fitting way to reflect on the success of his campaign one year on, is to get out knocking on doors, delivering leaflets or phoning voters this coming weekend.