Among those who asked questions of Obama was Robert Hawley of Charlotte, N.C., who told president that he has had a 22-year career in IT management, "but I find myself displaced."

Hawley, citing an unemployment rate of 16.7% for African Americans, asked the President about high unemployment "not just for African Americans, but also for other groups that are also suffering. What would be your statement of encouragement for those who are looking for work today?"

Obama told Hawley that "given your track record, given your history, seeing you stand here before this group - you're going to be successful. You got a leg up on a lot of folks, you got skills, you got experience ... Right now, your challenge is - not you - it's the economy as a whole."

Obama talked about the things government can do, such as job training and unemployment aid. "My job is to work with everybody I can," he said, "to see if we can speed up the process of healing and the process of recovery."

Patrick Thibodeau covers cloud computing and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld. Follow Patrick on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .