For the past seven years, the place to be in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve has been Jeff Jonas' mansion. This year's wild party was the biggest yet: 1,500 people and all-night entertainment ranging from go-go dancers to fire-éeaters. Jonas planted a huge stage in his poolside garden, added infernotastic choreography, and ended up with a cross between Burning Man and a Prodigy concert. And this year the bash had a new group of partygoers - senior government officials and IBM executives - checking out the spectacle along with the midget, the devil on stilts, and the tattooed Harley guys.
Here's one of the nation's top geeks, Linton Wells II, principal deputy to the chief information officer in the Department of Defense. And there's Mike Nelson, formerly Al Gore's technology adviser and now an IBM exec. And over there, a couple of government spooks who appear to be enjoying the belly dancers in the hookah lounge.
What brought these worlds together? September 11. Jonas is a leading surveillance expert, a database whiz who made his name catching casino cheats. His claim to fame is something called "nonobvious relationship awareness," which is a way of letting computers connect the dots between different data sets - like the big roulette winner who turns out to have the same home phone number as the croupier.
But once the Twin Towers fell, surveillance became a national priority. Homeland Security officials realized that Las Vegas was essentially a state-of-the-art test bed. And Jonas became the go-to guy for sorting through mountains of data, looking not for scam artists but terrorists. Last year IBM bought his company, SRD. Now he's one of about 300 "distinguished engineers" - even though he doesn't hold a college degree.
Jonas, 41, is a buzz machine of ego and energy, a taut triathlete with a string of ex-wives who has been described as "Bill Gates channeling Jim Carrey." In his day job he's working on ways to help the government find terrorists without infringing on privacy. His work on turning sensitive data sets, such as watch lists, into anonymized hash files is a core piece of IBM's growing "identity analytics" strategy.
But on this New Year's, Jonas is a Vegas show producer. A freak windstorm destroyed the huge tent that covered the main stage, so he's worrying about the laser show. He's got 150 employees here, including a security detail and a paramedic squad, but there's an awful lot of alcohol sloshing around, and the pool is on fire. No worries - the show will go on. Jonas is especially determined to have everything run smoothly because this blowout will be his last. "I just can't outdo myself anymore," he says. And then he dives back into the crowd of circus freaks and intelligence analysts, connecting the dots.
- Chris Anderson
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