Lots of people have ideas, but translating them into reality takes a mix of luck, work and fertile ground. And MyRepresentatives.com would never exist if it hadn’t have been for few things:
- Launch Memphis: They provided the forum and infrastructure for people from different backgrounds and talents to meet, share ideas and work together on innovative projects.
- Brad Montgomery: Brad is both the technology and design guru who really did the overwhelming majority of the work translating the concept into reality. Brad worked many long hours after work and after his family went to bed on this labor of love. So a big shout out to Brad.
- Cardell Orrin: Cardell provided the insight required to understand the Rube Goldbrick workings of the political districts and the local electoral process.
- Andre McGruder: Andre developed the logo and did some of the initial design work.
- Our families: Who tolerated and even sometimes encouraged us as we worked on this when we should have been spending time with them.
Above all, the real hero is Brad, who really devoted a lot of time to making this happen. And unfortunately the Brad’s of this world are in short supply – not because there aren’t lots of people willing to work hard on community initiatives – but because there isn’t enough engineering talent. Lots of people have ideas, and it usually takes software developers to bring them to life – and we as a society aren’t creating enough of them.
In the past, computers were off somewhere in the data center – now we hold them every day in the palm of our hand. And yet while the need for software developers and engineers has grown, the number of people with software development talent hasn’t kept pace.
Software development needs to be part of the high-school curriculum as most software engineering doesn’t require advanced math skills, just patience, logic, creativity and experience. It would be a great way to introduce more people into the field, help bring the value of math to life and provide people with skills they could use throughout their life – almost regardless of their field.
We should think of programming languages and software development the way we think of foreign languages and begin offering them in school at an early age. Previously foreign languages were just that – foreign. You didn’t need them unless you were going to work oversees in some exotic faraway location. Now, we realize they are useful on a daily basis as we work and live in a more global world.
So if Memphis and the US is going to compete, we need an education system that will create many more Brad’s with both the skills and desires to bring new concepts to life!
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