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Since we don't (I think) have anyone else working on the tech/digital side of politics, I can also answer your nerd questions about being a nerd in politics. I do software engineering/big data work for a large committee in DC. Also willing to just rant about how political journalists cover technology in politics (spoiler: very poorly). This field will always suck you back in, no matter how hard you try to escape. be awarrrrreeeee Monkey Fury fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Aug 9, 2015 |
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Aug 9, 2015 23:01
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:I'm going to be the media guy for a candidate, it'll be my first campaign. Ted Cruz rolls with Wordpress! Don't be like Ted Cruz! (actually it's fine if you know what you're doing)
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Oct 21, 2015 04:17
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gohuskies posted:NGP VAN has challenges if you want to do really high-tech things with it - if you've got PhDs in data science on your campaign staff like the presidentials do or you're a developer for campaign software that interfaces with the voter file, you're going to have very valid complaints about the platform. But for your ordinary campaign, it's fine. If your campaign can afford PhDs to work on your data, you shouldn't even have to bother with dumb ol' NGP-VAN for doing your modeling work. IIRC the national party can/will do data agreements with state parties/individual campaigns that give direct access to where the voter file + matched consumer data is stored. G-Hawk posted:For the record there is a reason every serous campaign uses van even though everyone bitches about it. The alternatives are way, way, worse. Nationbuilder is genuinely awful, I haven't used PDI but I've heard it is too. I wish ngpvan had competition, it needs competition, but it doesn't exist right now. This is the ultimate and unfortunate truth. "Everything loving sucks" is pretty much the story of political tech vendors. Nationbuilder is hot garbage and if you are running a Democratic campaign and aren't using the voter file maintained by the DNC, you are being negligent (I have very strong feelings here). Jackson Taus posted:I'm not gonna pretend NGP VAN is top-tier or anything, but as a programmer, I've got to say that this strikes me as a pretty understandable mistake. As I understand it, they went to push an update, there was a bug that wasn't detected, and then they fixed it less than an hour later. Let's just say, that modern programming/devops practices -- cloud-based infrastructure, continuous integration, production/staging environments -- aren't always in play here. There is some truly  worthy poo poo happening, and it is endemic across the whole of political tech consulting/vendors. We are great about those things where I am, and it leads to some unpleasant phone calls with the folks who aren't.
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Dec 30, 2015 04:31
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