Facebook: The Rising Star edition

: This week’s issue celebrates youth. It seems almost odd that we need to specifically call attention to youth, given that our culture already seems to do a remarkably good job of that. But, unfortunately, our culture seems to do a very good job celebrating the more superficial parts of youth — looks, for example. That is not the point of Federal Computer Week’s Rising Star Awards. To the contrary, we think this program demonstrates that being young, in fact, has little to do with age. It has much more to do with how one views the world. The cliché is that young people often seem to think outside the box. We hope this awards program will inspire young leaders who not only think outside the box but also perhaps ignore boxes altogether. Increasingly, they are the generation of people who were born digital. They don’t remember when phones had cords. They think of e-mail as so 1990s. But they are also the generation that lives through networks — social and otherwise. They are the generation that embraces Facebook, MySpace, wikis and blogs. A government that is stuck in stovepipes is meeting the generation that doesn’t know or comprehend stovepipes. This is the sophomore class of Rising Star winners. We are immensely proud of this program and the winners, whom we profile in the following pages, and the nominees, because they demonstrate the work that young people can do in government and industry. We particularly want to thank the Young AFCEANs of AFCEA International’s Bethesda, Md., chapter, who originally came to us with the idea for this awards program. We also want to thank those who served as judges for their work reviewing the nominations.