
When the Nerds Go Marching In - boh
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/?single_page=true
======
kleiba
I'm sure it's just me.

But the more news articles read that write about "nerds" the more I can't help
but feel increasingly offended. There's often times an undertone of ridicule
in the writing that I cannot overhear any more. Please tell me I'm
overreacting and should just relax a little more, because I sometimes feel
that mainstream newspaper articles are borderline bullying. To a point where
I've actually started thinking about forming a lobbying group to fight for
more respect in the portrayal of technically inclined people like us.

Just a thought experiment: next time you come across an article that talks
about "nerds" try replacing every instance of that word with "gays". Not that
the result would make much sense but I think the gay community, despite their
ongoing struggle, has at least managed to make it almost impossible to receive
a similar kind of media report that consists of nothing but stereotypes.

If you do the above experiment, I'm sure you'll the offensive subtext in some
articles, the self-content righteousness in making fun of those people who
created everything modern society cannot be without: facebook, twitter, the
internet, apps, you name it.

Maybe it's because technical people seem harmless that they think they can get
away with their bullying. But I think it's about time to stand up against it
and make our voices heard.

P.S.: I'm not saying that this particular article is worse than the rest. As a
matter of fact, it's quite okay, compared to some others I've read. So maybe
this comment is misplaced in this thread in which case I apologize.

~~~
hooande
I think this article is using the term "nerd" in high regard. "smart" as
opposed to "glasses and giant backpack". The article paints these people as
colorful characters and rock stars. If anything, I thought it was a little too
fawning.

The Social Network. Nate Silver. TED. Nerds are actually doing pretty well in
the popular culture right now. I don't mind seeing the word "nerd" in the
title of an article. It's usually not a bad thing, and at least I know they're
talking about me.

~~~
chime
If replacing the word 'nerd' with women, black, or gay in each sentence isn't
acceptable, then 'nerd' isn't acceptable.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I think this depends on the question whether nerds actively choose to be
nerds, or whether they are born into their fate. Generalisations about people
who willingly do/become something are different IMHO.

~~~
kleiba
You're right that the classes of people named by your parent are all
categories one gets born into. But is this really the defining difference?

I believe it may seem that "nerds" differ because after all, you're not born
with technical knowledge, you get into it by interest and learn it through
studying and practicing.

But it is not the technical know-how that nerds get ridiculed for. That's
actually about the only part that gets us at least some respect, unless it's
downplayed as "just technology".

No, it is the inability to comply to some social norms. For instance, most of
us don't care about the latest fashion trends (because we think that fashion
is ridiculous). Or, we don't easily pick up on certain subtext signals. It is
this non-acceptance that perhaps drives us toward technology in the first
place. Because computers don't judge us. Because we understand them, and they
understand us.

We are not nerds because we like technology. We like technology because we are
nerds.

~~~
gurkendoktor
I agree with all of that, but sadly the word 'nerd' is not clearly defined. To
many it _is_ a lifestyle choice, including some people who label themselves as
nerds. If you compare, "When the Goths go marching in" (another lifestyle
choice) would seem much more acceptable than "When the Aspergers go marching
in" (which is closer to what you described as nerd).

------
vampirechicken
So am I the only person seeing a Democrats (Big Goverment services) way of
doing things vs a Republicans (multiple layers of crony capitalists
contractors) in the comparison of the efficacy of Narwhal Vs Orca?

I can't be the only one?

~~~
roc
Didn't the latest Ars article suggest Orca wasn't a contractor concoction
after all? [1]

I think all we really see, is that the Obama campaign had experience and no
primary campaign distractions.

The Obama campaign had a v1 in 2008 and were merely updating it for 2012. Yes,
they had to figure in mobile and the enhanced scale of the problem, but they
were starting from a significantly better place than the GOP, who were caught
completely flat-footed on technology in 2008.

The Obama campaign also had a (comparatively) leisurely opportunity to
implement and refine their system while the Republican primary battles raged
on and any one potential GOP candidate was denied the money/focus to start the
development of a national campaign tool.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/11/which-...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2012/11/which-consultants-built-romneys-project-orca-none-of-them/)

~~~
MichaelSalib
_they were starting from a significantly better place than the GOP, who were
caught completely flat-footed on technology in 2008_

Shouldn't the GOP have been funding an Orca-like system starting in 2008? I
mean, how many elections does the other guy have to deploy superior technology
to great effect before you start making your own better tech?

 _The Obama campaign also had a (comparatively) leisurely opportunity to
implement and refine their system while the Republican primary battles raged
on and any one potential GOP candidate was denied the money/focus to start the
development of a national campaign tool._

But the national party could have started working on this 08 and just
sold/licensed the tech to the campaign after the nominee was selected....

~~~
roc
I think that just hits on a larger organizational problem that seems to be
common to both national parties: A staggering amount of the services and
resources that I would think the state/national party would build up and have
on-hand, they simply don't appear to have. (To say nothing of the coordination
they don't seem to have)

e.g. Obama wasn't building/running a DNC-wide system and sharing it with all
the candidates. His campaign built it on their own, for their one race and
now-built, all indications are that it's going to be wound-down or morphed
into a citizen mobilization sort of effort to drive "call your
congressman"-type efforts.

Maybe political campaigning laws prohibit massive transfers of 'property' like
that. I don't know. But it doesn't even sound like the DNC is looking to build
their own system to share with future candidates.

And perhaps political campaign laws prohibit the national party from
transferring down that much assistance to local races. That, I also don't
know. I don't even know if, say, the GOP could legally lock up a sweet bulk
price for buying signage/buttons/tshirts/etc and act as cheaper-middleman for
their candidates.

There seems to be a hard line between each campaign and the rest of the
organization and that leaves each campaign is largely 'on their own' for
anything other than maybe lining up endorsements or speaking dates to get
friendly faces to show up for local campaign events.

~~~
gyardley
As I understand it, a lot of the infrastructure is contained in private
companies (some non-profit, some not) closely associated with one of the two
parties and available to all the campaigns associated with that party.

For instance, the Democratic Party's contact databases are in NGP VAN's
VoteBuilder or in Catalist, and campaigns in 2014 will both be using the
information entered there in 2012 and updating the contact information for the
next race. Much of the Democratic Party's institutional knowledge about voter
contact and outreach lives at the non-profit Analyst Institute. The insights
gained in the 2012 campaign will stay there instead of evaporating.

The Republican Party has a little of this - there's the GOP Data Center,
formerly Voter Vault - but they haven't been building infrastructure as
aggressively as the Democratic Party, and it's costing them. In 2004 the GOP
had a superior technical organization, but they seemed to rest on their
laurels, and in 2008 they were slightly weaker. In 2012 they were totally
lapped.

They will do better by 2016 - thanks in part to the utter failure of ORCA -
but the Democrats have built up a pretty healthy infrastructure lead that'll
be hard to top.

------
activepeanut

      The team had elite and, for tech, senior talent from
      Twitter, Google, Facebook, Craigslist, Quora, and some
      of Chicago's own software companies such as Orbitz and
      Threadless
    

21st century SWAT team.

~~~
olgeni
"Also, a lawyer from Apple quietly checked that all the rectangles in the room
were just as rectangular as they could be allowed, but not more."

------
confluence
_> Jim Messina signed off on hiring Reed, he told him, "Welcome to the team.
Don't fuck it up."_

Jim Messina is a complete boss and I highly recommend that fellow hners read
into him to get a good understanding about how things operate in DC. My
favourite Jim line is the one he uses when he meets new political people. As
he shakes their hands, the first thing out of his mouth is:

 _> How are you fucking me? _

Silicon valley entrepreneurs should take note.

------
mattdeboard
Look at those beards! Obama was destined to win, flown to victory on the
billowing gray beards of ... something. Justice? The internet?

~~~
sliverstorm
Beards got Obama re-elected, that's all I need to know.

~~~
jeffbarr
Indeed:

[http://media.amazonwebservices.com/blog/bearded_geeks_for_ob...](http://media.amazonwebservices.com/blog/bearded_geeks_for_obama_1.png)

------
dbecker
Did anyone else get bored of the author picking out details to show that these
guys met the nerd stereotype?

~~~
tokipin
i think the point was to emphasize the contrast these people made against the
typical political campaign culture

------
fmitchell0
Two key quotes:

 _It was like someone had written a Murphy's Law algorithm and deployed it at
scale._

and

 _...with technical people, it's one thing to look at their resumes and
another to see how they are viewed among their peers_

Test.Test.Test.Test.

Don't be a dick, no matter how smart you are or how much you know. Playing
nice is more important.

~~~
charleshaanel
Brilliant - A.B.T. (always be testing)

------
0003

      And losing, they felt more and more deeply as the campaign
      went on, would mean horrible things for the country. They 
      started to worry about the next Supreme Court Justices
      while they coded.
    

Is it too naive to think that Reed and his team are able to influence the
Administration's policies? Their ability to raise _Billions_ of dollars and
increase voter participation must trump 'regular' moneyed interests.

~~~
herge
Because they would gladly go work for republicans if Obama did not listen to
their opinions?

~~~
unavoidable
But this glosses over the undertones of the article - that is, the Obama
campaign was able to attract these people precisely because the Democrats were
more forward-thinking, more progressive, younger, and more open-minded. Are
the Republicans capable of building this thing? Sure - but probably not with a
lot of the same talent that has traditionally shared the same progressive
views that the Democrats support.

~~~
gyardley
There is plenty of top-grade politically-conservative technical talent in
America.

Yes, Silicon Valley leans left in some ways, and politically conservative
developers are outnumbered. The Democrats could probably pull together enough
people for fifty top-quality campaign teams, while the Republicans could
probably only manage five.

That said, the Democrats put together one top-quality campaign team while the
Republicans put together zero - and those are the numbers that matter.

~~~
EricDeb
There's a large percentage of Silicon Valley that is at least fiscally
conservative - if the Republicans would just soften up on social issues I
imagine many of them would jump ship.

------
bo1024
Hopefully this team can use their brownie points with the Obama administration
to encourage some more tech-friendly policies (immigration, patents, etc).

Also, we should be clear, that Orca was not going to change the outcome or
make even a dent.

------
espeed
Was monitoring election fraud part of this project?

In 2004, Bush had ties to Diebold's CEO Walden W. O'Dell, and there was
evidence of voting fraud in Ohio -- the exit polls weren't matching the
results
([http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/2004votefraud_ohio...](http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/2004votefraud_ohio.html)).
Later it was confirmed that Diebold voting machines could be hacked remotely
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3045086>). A programmer even admitted to
being directed to create a software "prototype" that could rig the machines
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEzY2tnwExs>).

This time around one of Romney's companies had ties to the company that owns
the Hart Intercivic voting machines used in Ohio and Colorado, and there were
reports of potential fraud from installing uncertified software patches on the
machines ([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-levine/mia-in-voting-
machi...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-levine/mia-in-voting-machine-
war_b_2054411.html)).

Eric Schmidt is on the Obama technology team, and Google Ideas creates
software for monitoring election fraud
([http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/03/the-20-most-innovative-
peop...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/03/the-20-most-innovative-people-in-
democracy-2012/)). I'd be curious to know how the campaign monitored election
fraud and what type of countermeasures were put in place.

Karl Rove's election-night meltdown shows he was clearly shocked Romney didn't
win Ohio (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSiVhJq4tos>).

------
aantix
What was the app written in?

~~~
harper
we used python, ruby and php. a bit of java and what not sprinkled around for
fun.

~~~
dylanz
first off... a big hats off to you, fine sir. thank you very much.

i'd love to know more about the stack, it sounds interesting. if you ever get
a chance to talk about the project in technical detail, that would be awesome.
i'm sure there was a lot to it and a lot of fun stories. let me know if you
ever get around to it!

------
scott_meade
"He'd told me earlier in the day that he'd never experienced stress until the
Obama campaign, and I believe him."

So many people get stressed out about the dumbest things that don't matter.
Especially in IT, people like to tell war stories about their stressful job
and all the hours they put in and how they don't sleep because there is too
many fires to put out. Yuk. Harper Reed has it right. Do what you enjoy, have
fun. Go nerds!

------
zby
Is there anything beside the 'nerds are cool now' message? Which I really
appreciate - but you know - it's kind of long.

~~~
unavoidable
That is not the point of the article. The article is an in-depth exposition of
the Obama campaign's tech team, along with how they faced difficulties, how
they transformed their own culture to mesh with the traditional political
world (and vice versa), as well as the products they ended up building.

~~~
zby
OK - let me reformulate my question: why should I read it? Is there any new
insight, any ideas that transcend the then and there? I understand that an in-
depth exposition would be interested to the guys that are interested
specifically in the Obama campaign, or perhaps people that are friends with
the guys described there - but what is there for the bigger geek audience?

------
lifeguard
Now THAT sounds like a successfully managed web project!

------
niels_olson
Blue State Digital

BSD

I got it...

