EchoDitto

A few weeks ago, I read an EchoDitto Labs blog post about Dorkbot DC, which prompted me to search for a NYC equivalent. Bingo! Dorkbot NYC meets the first Wednesday of every month only a few blocks from our office. Perfect, for someone like me who is essentially lazy.

What is Dorkbot?
dorkbot-nyc is a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/whatever), designers, engineers, students, scientists, and other interested parties from the new york area who are involved in the creative use of electricity. dorkbot meetings are free and open to the public. Since we started dorkbot-nyc in 2000 many other dorkbots have sprung up around the world. See them all at: http://dorkbot.org

If you're interested in picking up some selections from a Grammy-winning recording artist after last night's awards ceremony, you're in luck. Not only is there a substantial library of these recordings available online, but there's new material being released just about every week. Best of all, you can get them all completely free of charge — and no, that doesn't mean you have to fire up some Napster clone or troll MySpace.com profiles looking for free MP3 files.

The recording artist I'm talking about is Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), winner of this year's Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album. Obama won recognition for his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," beating out nominees Garrison Keillor, Al Franken, Sean Penn and George Carlin.

Jim Brayton has been EchoDitto's Chief Technical Officer and the guiding force behind our technology strategy since our humble beginnings last March. This week, Jim's leaving EchoDitto to work as Internet Director for Barack Obama's senate office. It's a dream job-- we wish him the best of luck and are looking forward to seeing what he does with it.

In the meantime, though, we have a job opening. EchoDitto is officially seeking a CTO. If you live near DC (or would consider relocating), have strong technology management experience, and would enjoy using your expertise to fight for child hunger, workers' rights, and other exciting projects, we want to hear from you. Write futures-at-echoditto-dot-com.

Reporting directly to the Chief Operating Officer, and with minimal supervision, the CTO is responsible for all facets of EchoDitto’s technology operations, both internally and on external, client projects. S/he also leads the EchoDitto technical staff and ensures timely and on-budget completion of client deliverables. S/he leads EchoDitto and its client organizations on technology decisions, including: software platforms; third-party vendors; web-based technology and tools; and strategic direction.

The full job description is here (PDF).

EchoDitto launched Senator Barack Obama's official website today. We're proud to have been working with the Senator and his staff since the middle of their campaign last spring. This new site is hopefully only the beginning of his official presence online, but everyone was anxious to get something up, as he's been a US Senator for two whole weeks now. As proud progressives/democrats/blue staters/what have yous, we wish him luck and will be following his (hopefully many) accomplishments in the Senate with great interest.