Like Clay said, I'm the new guy. Well, not entirely new -- I've been at Sunlight since late 2008. But I'm the one who's going to be trying to fill the enormous gap he's leaving. I thought I'd start to explain how I want to do that by talking about how I arrived at Sunlight.

I first became aware of the Sunlight Foundation while working as a programmer at a consultancy here in DC, building sites for large nonprofits and dabbling with using and writing about various technologies on the side. When I heard about Sunlight Labs, I thought it was pretty much the coolest thing in the world. Technologists using their skills to directly improve society. For people like me (and probably you) -- people who have acquired a technical skillset that's powerful, in a sense, but not always obviously useful -- it's an incredibly compelling prospect.