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Since I joined the Globe a year and half ago, I’ve been getting props (and funny looks) for my fancy title: Creative Technologist. In my book, it was the coolest job in the building. 

Was.

Meet Dan Schultz, our newly-hired 2011/2012 Knight-Mozilla Fellow. He’s now got the coolest job at the Globe. Here are four reasons why I think that: 

Independence. Dan says he feels “loosely coupled” with the newspaper he works for. That means he can have conversations that need to be had, but that might not fit into anyone else’s official job descriptions. For example, he just got off the phone with the CIO and CTO of our parent, the New York Times Company. He was asking them how code is shared between the Globe and the Times, and how technologists collaborate with the newsroom.

Deep embedding. Dan’s got his feet in many different parts of our organization. In his time here he’ll pull rotations on our CMS team, our R&D team and our interactive newsgraphics team. He’ll walk out the door next summer knowing more about how this place runs than people who’ve been here a decade.

Awesome field trips. Dan just got back from 3 weeks in Europe on the Foundation’s dime. He spent 2 days in Florence hacking TOR, a week in London hacking on a team in the Guardian’s Discovery Week, and a week in between kicking around Europe’s news innovation scene with the rest of the fellows. “Travel was awesome,” he tells me, “but the community that was both built from and connected to that travel was amazing.” He likes “the fact that you have fellows, you hang out and you will immediately make X new friends, and it’s not just random people, it’s people in the space you’re passionate about.”

Freedom to hack. Dan’s going to spend part of his on-the-clock time working on his own mad scientist projects. Currently on deck are two hackathon-bred projects, NewsQuest (AKA “News your own adventure”) and TOR Wolf , which he describes as “a game designed to teach journalists the value of using TOR when working with a contact in oppressive regimes.”

Jealous? Don’t be. Here’s the kicker: you can have his job. He’s rotating out of here next summer, to make way for our 2012/13 Knight-Mozilla Fellow. That could be you!  The deadline for applicants is August 11. You could end up at the Globe, BBC, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, Zeit Online, lanacion.com, The Guardian or Pro Publica!

For more information, check out Dan Sinker’s post on the subject.

- Chris Marstall, Creative Technologist, Boston Globe/boston.com 

 

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