United by The Mission, With Troy Schneider

The U.S. Government is leveraging technology to improve and accelerate the citizen experience. Listen as Carolyn and Mark learn more about the ecosystem of the mission from Troy Schneider, Editor-in-Chief of FCW and General manager of GCN.Episode Table of Contents[01:35] The Oldest and Most Influential Publications United by the Mission[11:07] The Physicians and the Patients Are United by the Mission[18:43] The Industry and the Government Are United by the Mission[26:17] Not as Sexy as Machine LearningEpisode Links and ResourcesSoulfireIEEEWiredThe Oldest and Most Influential Publications United by the MissionCarolyn: Today's guest is Troy Schneider, Editor-in-Chief at Federal Computer Week, FCW, and Government Computer News, GCN. Troy began his career in print journalism, and has written for a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Slate, and Political.Troy, I would love to hear about your professional career. How did you become the Editor-in-Chief at FCW and GCN, two of the oldest and most influential publications in the public sector IT? You've had this long career. I'm really interested to know how you got into the government side of things, especially.Troy: I started in what most people think of as more of the traditional Washington journalism, more of the politics, and the campaign, the lobbying side of things. I worked for National Journal almost straight out of college, and was there when it was a weekly print magazine, not much else, and just starting to tiptoe into the digital space. I’ve spent about a decade, a little more than that, with different parts of National Journal, which grew into Atlantic Media Company over the years.I was lucky enough to be there at the creation of the digital business, moving to publishing and even online publishing before websites were the settled-on channel. Covered Congress, covered campaigns, all of that sort of work, and then made a pivot to a think tank. I’ve worked for A New America Foundation, which is now called New America, and went there to help them with their publishing efforts.The Policy SideTroy: I really liked the ideas and the policy side of things. It’s a very media-centric organization, where they knew they couldn't just be contributing op-ads to places, but really needed to have their own publishing channels. I did that for seven years or so, and got a call about a job with FCW, to come on as the number two editor. If everyone liked each other, to move into the senior role. It’s a little bit of a daunting transition to focus on the true government side.My focus for the first part of my career had been about all the stuff that happens to figure out what goes into the budget. To figure out what goes into the laws, to figure out who's going to be elected to those positions. In that politic-centric view, "What happened after the bill was signed?" The agencies got it. That’s just implementation details. Then you dive in, you realize just how big that set of details is, and just how important the operations are. FCW at the time, they wanted to be less about computers, because IT is so much more than that now.More about the policy, the business, and the leadership side. I’ve done a lot of work with emerging technology during my time at New America. We’ve crept a lot closer than we would have been when I was at National Journal. We would've seen each other in two completely different spaces, but there was enough overlap that it was interesting to both parties. I came in, in 2012, as the Executive Editor of STW. Stepped...