"I want a New York that is as welcoming as it was to my parents 30 years ago."
Taylor Swift and New York Assembly candidate Huge Ma think 2022 is going to be their year.
Huge Ma, the coder behind COVID vaccine appointment-finding website TurboVax, is taking his brand of civic tech activism to the campaign trail.
"I am going to bring a different perspective and help our government build technology that really works for the people"
Huge “Vax Daddy” Ma gained a catchy nickname months ago for creating a website that helped New Yorkers navigate the confusing world of vaccine appointments. His next challenge is getting elected to the state Legislature.
新冠疫情期間創辦新冠疫苗免費查詢網頁TurboVax、造福數以萬計紐約市民的民主黨籍華裔軟件工程師馬曉宇(Huge Ma)，12日表示將參選皇后區第37選區州眾議員，幫助在地居民改善生活品質。
Huge Ma, the coder behind COVID vaccine appointment-finding website TurboVax, is taking his brand of civic tech activism to the campaign trail.
The chaos led to Huge Ma, a 31-year-old software engineer for Airbnb, creating a much-heralded website called TurboVax that compiled all the available appointments and then published the information on Twitter..."In an ideal world, we don't rely on volunteers to do that," Ma said.
"We need a mayor who has the vision to transform our relationship with our streets, because it is so much a part of our day-to-day lives and underrated. Having an ecofriendly relationship with how we use our street space and get around is not only good for quality of life; it’s good for climate change as well.”
With more than 174,000 followers, the most popular vaccine bot on Twitter is TurboVax, created in January by New York City software engineer Huge Ma.
The idea that he’d be giving an interview about “meaty issues like racism” was something he could never have imagined: “It’s way above my pay grade,” he says. “But I spoke up when I had the opportunity. I think you never really know what the impact is unless you try.”
"I wanted to illustrate [...] that if we as a country don't listen to the concerns of Asian Americans, then we risk losing the contributions of Asian Americans as well"
Huge Ma construyó TurboVax con 50 dólares después de darse cuenta de las dificultades que tenían personas como su madre para pedir una cita para vacunarse buscando en varias webs a la vez. Ahora también utiliza su fama para denunciar el racismo contra la comunidad asiático-americana
他用時不到兩周，花費不到50元，建立了TurboVax，該網站按紐約州疫苗站開放預約的先後排序，民眾無需輸入任何信息，即可了解。
“Asian Americans have always had to prove themselves as American enough and it is a burden that we carry everywhere … the attacks that have really spiked over the past few months, especially targeting the elderly and Asian businesses is extremely discouraging,” said Ma.
"Everyone knows how broken the existing system was. How it was so difficult for the technologically challenged to find appointments, [...] I think this lowers the barrier to entry," Ma said.
In less than two weeks, he launched TurboVax, a free website that compiles availability from the three main city and state New York vaccine systems and sends the information in real time to Twitter.