President Obama’s Tech Gurus Are Coming To TechCrunch Disrupt

We’re thrilled to announce that two of President Obama’s technology gurus, Todd Park, the US Chief Technology Officer, and Steven VanRoekel, its Chief Information Officer, will be joining us on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC on Wednesday, May 23. Big Data has been all the rage this year, and the government is a massive stockpiler of lucrative datasets in energy, health, and range of other fields. As former Silicon Valley brethren, Park and VanRoekel want to open up the floodgates on the government’s data warehouse in a way that’s useful to savvy entrepreneurs and the nascent “civic startup” industry (think Code for America).

After a joint-announcement of their upcoming agenda, Park and VanRoekel will be joined by myself and Matt Lira, the Digital Communications Director for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Lira has been an open government tour de force in Congress, helping to open up the beleaguered branch to legislative transparency and direct democracy...