Monday, August 17, 2015

Obama in Fast Company

The July / August issue of Fast Company has a couple of particular interesting articles.  One is the cover story, "Obama and His Geeks," by Jon Gertner, on the Silicon Valley techies that the president has lured to Washington to work on the digital aspect of the government.  Here's one quote, on one those techies, Michael Weaver:

Even among D.C.'s new technorati, people view Weaver as someone separate from the fray.  Maybe it's because he once lived in a camper in the Google parking lot without going home for a year.  Maybe it's because he was the one guy who, if he didn't answer an emergency call, the whole search engine might go down.  Or maybe it's because in a group of brilliant engineers, Weaver, as one of his new colleagues puts it, stands out as "someone who is, like, superhero-[expletive]-brilliant."
There is also a local note in the article:

A few weeks after the analytics website went live, Philadelphia used the program for its own analytics website, which the 18F team considered a measure of success.

No other details are provided so I'm not sure exactly what was done.

The issue also has an interview with the president himself, by Robert Safian.

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