Behind the Scenes of the Obama Presidency Oral History Project - Incite at Columbia University

On February 17, 2026, after over a decade of work, the Obama Presidency Oral History Archive opened to the public. 

Between 2019 and 2023, our team conducted 450+ interviews with officials, activists, artists, organizers, and extraordinary people from all walks of life. These in-depth interviews, often conducted over multiple sessions, represent roughly 1,100 hours of audio and video that together form a comprehensive record of the Obama years.

In this event, members of the team that created this project will share the backstory to this project, the lessons they learned, and the innovations they created, from project design and building a team to pivoting to Zoom during the pandemic, managing security in an unstable political environment, and using AI tools to build a dynamic user-friendly website for both professional and public audiences.