White House STEM Efforts are Full Steam Ahead

The White House continues its STEM initiatives by hosting Champions of Change for Tech Inclusion. According to the website:

All across the country, ordinary Americans are doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. Every week, we will invite these Champions of Change to the White House to share their ideas to win the future.

This panel discussion, hosted by Baratunde Thurston, featured a number of influential folks promoting STEM in their communities, including Kimberly Bryant from Black Girls Code.

The government also streamed  the discussion live and took questions using the Twitter hashtag #WHChamps.  I ... may have sent my clone to answer a question.

In addition, the White House hosted another addition of its We The Geeks discussion, entitled "Intelligence is Our Real Superpower". The video featured scientists talking about inventions being worked on to "enable real-life “superpowers” such as invisibility and super strength." I've had my issues with the lack of youth involvement in We The Geeks, but the videos are still fascinating and a great watch. Check it out below.
 

Tech and the Government: The Future Is Now

I'm a strong proponent of the government using science and technology to reach out to us in innovative ways. I was happy to read that several representatives of Congress have adopted Twitter as a platform of communication. I'm glad to see that the leaders of our government are engaging us in spaces that we already occupy.

Vice President Joe Biden is holding a video chat via Google+ hangout on Thursday, Jan 24th at 1:45pm EST.  While I understand that the conversation will be heavily filtered and scripted, I hope that people begin to feel more connected with their leaders.

This follows the excellent video chat that President Obama held last year, which I've embedded below. 

If you can't see the video below, click here.

Internet video sure as come a long way since I was buffering terrible video on Real Player over my 56k connection ...