Obama’s Re-Election May Be Written in Code

Here’s another way to make software engineering sexy — point out how important it is to issues that the students value, and how the results can be a carefully-guarded secret.

The 23-year-old’s job is a mystery even to some senior staff in Chicago, yet they say they hope the skills he brings are a secret weapon: he’s a software engineer.

St. Clair is among more than a dozen developers hired by the campaign to leverage technology to wring out more votes in what Obama’s advisers say may be an election as close as the contested 2000 race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. From Seattle startups to International Business Machines Corp., they’ve left lucrative jobs to mine for swing voters. They’ve added a new term to the strategic lexicon: microlistening.

via Obama’s Re-Election Path May Be Written in Will St. Clair’s Code – Bloomberg.