OK, I Admit It. I Have a Mancrush on the New Federal CTO, Todd Park

I couldn't be more delighted by the announcement today that Todd Park has been named the new Chief Technology Officer for the United States, replacing Aneesh Chopra.

I first met Todd in 2008 at the urging of Mitch Kapor, who thought that Todd was the best exemplar in the healthcare world of my ideas about the power of data to transform business and society, and that I would find him to be a kindred spirit. And so it was. My lunch with Todd turned into a multi-hour brainstorm as we walked around the cliffs of Lands End in San Francisco. Todd was on fire with ideas about how to change healthcare, and the opportunity of the new job he'd just accepted, to become the CTO at HHS.

Subsequently, I helped Todd to organize a series of workshops and conferences at HHS to plan and execute their open data strategy...

Todd immediately grasped the blueprint, and executed with astonishing speed. Before long, he held a workshop for an invited group of developers, entrepreneurs and health data wonks to map out useful data that could be liberated, and useful applications that could be built with it. Six months later, he held a public conference to showcase the 40-odd applications that had been developed. Now in its third year, the event has grown into what Todd calls the Health Datapalooza. As noted on GigaOm, the event has already led to several venture backed startup. (Applications are open for startups to be showcased at this year's event, June 5-6 in Washington D.C.)