Politics for Programmers: VIP at DC Week

Last week, members of the Voting Information Project team were on the ground at DC Week and the CampaignTech Conference in…you guessed it…Washington, D.C. At DC Week, I had the honor of speaking alongside VIP colleagues Jared Marcotte and Tiana Epps-Johnson to a group of programmers in a session aptly named, “Politics for Programmers.”

Jared led off the session with a truly inspiring personal story about how he came out of corporate America working for IBM to eventually develop technology for politics, as the lead programmer for the Voting Information Project. Jared’s story and credibility no doubt inspired this crowd of fellow-developers, not all of whom are working in the political space (yet).

Tiana and I had the privilege of presenting what we are doing at the Voting Information Project and what our vision is for 2012. We were even able to show-off the brand new Voting Information Project video on an amazing domed IMAX screen. If you haven’t seen the video yet, here you go:

Our “ask” to this audience was simple: we want you - the incredibly talented development community - to build amazing applications on top of the VIP data set to get more voters to the polls on Election Day. The excitement of what can be built on top of the VIP data set was palpable. And that’s saying something for a crowd that showed up at 9:00 a.m. on the last day of the conference which also happened to be a holiday.

We were so encouraged by the reaction from the programming community at DC Week and we can’t wait to work with our new friends to build on top of the VIP data set for 2012.

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