Submission + - Following Obama's Coding Lesson, Microsoft and Google Met With NSF, White House
theodp writes: While scant on detail, White House Visitor Records released Friday show Microsoft and Google execs were slated to attend intimate meetings at the White House with the National Science Foundation and Obama administration officials in the hours after the tech industry-bankrolled Code.org 'taught the President to code' last December, perhaps the crowning event in the nonprofit's two-year effort to make the lack of CS education 'an issue like climate change'. According to White House records, NSF Chief France Córdova was scheduled to meet on Dec. 8th with Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi, Microsoft Chief Lobbyist Frederick Humphries, and Google Director of Education Maggie Johnson. And on Dec. 9th, Humphries was due back at the White House with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith. Smith, who sits on Code.org's Board (as does Google's Maggie Johnson), is coincidentally the next door neighbor of Code.org CEO Partovi, who in turn is an ex-Microsoft employee and occasional jogging partner of Code.org backer Steve Ballmer. While in DC, Nadella reportedly pitched the need for high-tech immigration reform, an issue that's also near-and-dear to Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC, which counts many of the same wealthy backers as Code.org. Microsoft's National Talent Strategy, introduced by Smith not long before Code.org and FWD.us emerged on the scene, calls for "an increase in developing the American STEM pipeline in exchange for these new [H-1B] visas and green cards." The plan apparently struck a chord with the President, who, following his own coding lesson, expressed concern that his daughters hadn't taken to coding the way he’d like. "I think they got started a little bit late," the President said. "Part of what you want to do is introduce this with the ABCs and the colors."
