(In fact, he may be more relevant and connected than I originally believed. I learned just this past weekend that he was connected to the 1982 Tom Bradley California gubernatorial campaign that brought us The Bradley Effect – which, depending on whom you talk to, may come back to haunt us this election cycle.)

Five years ago, Baseline magazine put together a package on Howard Dean called “The Marketing of the President 2004″ (written primarily by Edward Cone), in which Trippi (among others) tried to marshal the strengths of the Internet and of the 2003-era burgeoning social media structure to help (briefly) put Dean in the lead for the Democratic presidential nomination.

[You can find the story here: http://snurl.com/baseline1103a (and, in the interests of full disclosure, my contribution to the package, a look at the blogging technology Movable Type, by a company called Six Apart, can be found here: http://snurl.com/baseline1103b ).]

As quoted above, Trippi now seems to be of the opinion that “somebody’s going to make the Obama campaign look like a joke — just like the Obama campaign made the Howard Dean campaign look like a joke.”

As the architect of that Dean campaign, I’m sure he means that as the sincerest form of flattery — and he’s both deadly serious and absolutely right. Five years ago, Trippi didn’t have half the tools to put at Dean’s disposal as Obama’s handlers have today — and we can say with strong certainty that none of us can fathom what will be in the arsenal eight years from now. Technology just moves too fast, and too unpredictably.

The point I’d like to draw attention to is that, even back then, Trippi and his acolytes (a few of whom were classmates of mine) knew that the power wasn’t in the infrastructure, or in the technology, but in the network of people who used them.

That’s the lesson companies are still trying to learn today, as they struggle to connect with customers while pretending to (or fooling themselves that they) hold the reins.

The technology and tools will inevitably change — the nimbleness to adapt to the new environment is what will mark the successes.

The degree to which Obama, for example, was active on channels like Twitter and Facebook, even incorporating mobile (e.g., announcing his VP nominee via text message), was one factor that observers say helped him get ahead of Hillary. Hillary tried to compete on this level, holding live online chats and such, but was not involved enough with where many people (particularly the influencers) today are — on the Internet.

CRM is about connecting with your consumers, adapting to their needs and preferences, to serve them something they want. If you don’t know where they are, it makes the job a lot more difficult. Today, customer’s don’t want to hear messages and social media is empowering them. It continues to force companies to engage in a two-way conversation.