# Willys DeVoll > Writer, creator, citizen Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About Willys URL: https://willysdevoll.com/about/ Last updated: 2025-10-05T13:51:27.000Z Willys DeVoll is a writer, creator, and published book author with over ten years of professional writing experience. During that time, he's worked extensively at the intersection of language and technology, including in-house stints with Google, Airbnb, and Gusto in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2017, he's run Will Digital, a micro-agency that offers user experience design, content design, and consulting to make software actually work for human beings. His book credits include [*Leadership Is a Relationship: How to Put People First in the Digital World*](https://www.leadershipisarelationship.com/?ref=willysdevoll.com) with Mike Erwin, and [*From Busan to San Francisco*](https://graphicnovelproject.stanford.edu/books/busan-san-francisco-2012?ref=willysdevoll.com). Willys graduated from Stanford University with an MA and BA with honors and distinction. He majored in English, concentrated in creative writing, wrote an honors thesis on the political implications of allegorical form in Herman Melville's *Moby-Dick,* minored in analytic philosophy with a focus in political theory, and took a term at Oxford University studying contemporary political philosophy. A proud yankee, Willys grew up in the Northeast, to which he's returned. He lives in Maine with his partner, dog, and children. ### Now URL: https://willysdevoll.com/now/ Last updated: 2026-10-16T12:25:03.000Z ## Top priorities - Maturing as a person in all of my roles, principally partner and parent - Supporting democratic safeguards and lefty campaigns, mostly at the local level - Writing more frequently ## Not-top - Reading cool comics. There's so much incredible stuff. I'm enjoying *Absolute Batman* and Alan Moore's run on *Saga of the Swamp Thing,* among others. - Training as a scuba diver. I recently earned my Open Water Diver certification and want to improve while navigating the reality of a life in Northern New England. - Learning about beautiful, extremely affordable sports cards, particularly early 2000s basketball and mid-century baseball. I particularly like Latrell Sprewell and Elston Howard. Last updated: 15 October 2026 ### Leadership Is a Relationship URL: https://willysdevoll.com/leadership-is-a-relationship/ Last updated: 2026-03-14T00:20:18.000Z With co-author Michael S. Erwin, I wrote and published *Leadership Is a Relationship: How to Put People First in the Digital World.* We wanted to address how you can treat people well in a world that increasingly incentivizes transactional interactions and split-second engagements over long-term relationships. The book interviews people from a range of backgrounds who have all succeeded by prioritizing the success and wellbeing of other people. I'd be honored if you took a look at our book. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/16/1416c663-f5c7-4c17-80a5-9e636b983f4c/content/images/2026/03/Leadership-Is-a-Relationship.jpg) #### Leadership Is a Relationship: How to Put People First in the Digital World [Purchase on Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/p/books/leadership-is-a-relationship-how-to-put-people-first-in-the-digital-world-michael-s-erwin/3a6499d8acfa9658?ean=9781119806134&next=t&next=t&affiliate=55917&ref=willysdevoll.com) ### Running URL: https://willysdevoll.com/running/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T15:17:31.000Z I've run races at all standard distances between 5K and the marathon. I don't have plans to extend out to ultra distances, but I'd like to get faster in the mid-range distances, particularly 10K. I'd also love to run a big 8K. If you're very curious, most of my results are collected on [my Athlinks profile](https://www.athlinks.com/athletes/228149650?ref=willysdevoll.com). Personal bests are listed below. ## PRs | **Distance** | **Time** | **Course** | **Year** | | ------------- | -------- | --------------------------------------- | -------- | | 5K | 23:29 | Old Port (Portland, Maine) | 2022 | | 5 Miles | 39:43 | Clam Festival Classic (Yarmouth, Maine) | 2022 | | 10K | 52:23 | Beach to Beacon | 2026 | | Half Marathon | 1:54:45 | Flight Deck (Brunswick, Maine) | 2022 | | Marathon | 4:07:47 | Philadelphia | 2022 | ### image assets URL: https://willysdevoll.com/image-assets/ Last updated: 2025-10-06T00:55:23.000Z ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/16/1416c663-f5c7-4c17-80a5-9e636b983f4c/content/images/2025/10/Yellow-End-Mark--2-.webp) ### Service URL: https://willysdevoll.com/service/ Last updated: 2025-11-11T19:48:19.000Z My current focus for service falls into two areas. Click either for more information. - Public Arts Committee for the City of South Portland - Patient Family Advisory Councils at Maine Medical Center ### From Busan to San Francisco URL: https://willysdevoll.com/from-busan-to-san-francisco/ Last updated: 2026-03-14T00:49:01.000Z As a writer on the Stanford Graphic Novel Project, I co-authored *From Busan to San Francisco* in 2012. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/16/1416c663-f5c7-4c17-80a5-9e636b983f4c/content/images/2026/03/from-busan-to-san-francisco-cover.jpg) #### From Busan to San Francisco [Go to project site](https://graphicnovelproject.stanford.edu/books/busan-san-francisco-2012?ref=willysdevoll.com) ## Posts ### My op-ed on Flock and mass surveillance URL: https://willysdevoll.com/writing/op-ed-on-flock/ Last updated: 2026-06-18T13:41:28.000Z After No Flock for SoPo notched a [major victory at South Portland City Council](https://www.pressherald.com/2026/06/11/south-portland-will-stop-using-flock-cameras/?ref=willysdevoll.com), I was fortunate to have my op-ed published in the Portland *Press Herald.* You can read it in full without a subscription by clicking the link below. [With Flock, South Portland built a surveillance goldmine. That can’t happen again. | OpinionAlthough last week’s City Council decision comes as a relief, the fight against these cameras has just begun.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/16/1416c663-f5c7-4c17-80a5-9e636b983f4c/content/images/icon/pph-icon-circle-black-8be07792-4b58-4183-8832-5298299bfef4.png)The Portland Press HeraldWillys DeVoll![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/16/1416c663-f5c7-4c17-80a5-9e636b983f4c/content/images/thumbnail/43587822_20260508_Camera6855-e3e9d0db-c62a-4bea-9125-dd0c9828de7b.jpg)](https://www.pressherald.com/?p=7667667&uuid=da37c685-c7b7-4559-87d6-b66b32a7729d&lid=236533&ref=willysdevoll.com) There's a lot of work left to do, starting with compelling the City to provide full accountability for how Flock surveillance was used and shared. And the cameras are still in use in numerous locations across America. In the wake of ICE's surge here over the winter and our police department's [secret texts with ICE agents](https://www.pressherald.com/?p=7606569&uuid=dc864c60-0b99-42fd-a838-027067aad8b9&lid=236626&ref=willysdevoll.com), my op-ed focuses on how reckless implementation of Flock cameras gave federal agents an easy in to South Portland data. As enraging and important as I think that angle is, it's just one reason to oppose the new generation of ALPRs. ### prayer (in unmarked movements) URL: https://willysdevoll.com/writing/prayer-in-unmarked-movements/ Last updated: 2025-10-06T13:26:04.000Z Grandpa— It’s so strange that you’re gone. I guess it’s part natural denial and part being out here and thinking how I called you and Grandma every other weekend, sometimes less, and two weeks ago exactly was your last full day. I’m sitting on the bus home from work and the sun has come out over the rolling hills to the west of the highway. We’re just a little south of Candlestick. It was raining pretty hard right before quitting time at the office… as we get closer to San Francisco the sky’s cleared the way it only does after rain, and boy is the green on the hills beautiful. Today I felt anxious and a little down and claustrophobic—I’m scared in a strange way, that I won’t figure out how to be happy, that I’m not going after my dreams, that this commute is ridiculous and if I were braver I’d do something else, whatever that means. You give me such strength in those moments, Grandpa. I think about how proud you are of me and the jobs you worked as a young man and how when you were my age, you were in Korea fighting. Leading other men, some older than you, who were surely scared and would have killed to live in this fantastical life I have now. I think about the advice you gave me before I went to college, to California in the first place. It helps me keep my head down and work hard, and let the anxious whispers find somewhere else to go. I guess I think, when I’m feeling very grand about the whole thing, about this going down the line, with time—about how I might have a grandkid someday in a situation close to mine now, and if that happens then I’ll have done my job, and done a good job of it. Thanks for being in my life, Grandpa. I mean, not just for showing up—thank you for that too—but for being a role model, an unequivocal role model. I don’t know how many people in the world have that, and goodness knows for that and so many other things I’m so lucky. I was talking to KD and Julie the other day about the things that are deep, deep in a person, the kind of basic building blocks of how you see yourself and everything around you, and for me that’s a deep well of love and family, family in a supportive, non-ideological way, and I can’t ever sufficiently thank you for every tiny decision and sacrifice you made throughout your life to help that happen. I still only believe with my rational head that you’re gone. The rest—you don’t feel like a member of the ranks of the dead. I suspect that’ll change, but I’m grateful for it now. Then again, Nana and Pete don’t either. Still don’t. I’m lucky for that, too. The Yanks are falling back to .500 (although they beat Kansas City yesterday, and on Memorial Day with 11 runs in an inning and change!) and the Knicks managed to only get the 4th pick in the draft, so no new Ewing this year. Cross our fingers. Eli might do better in his second year with the new offense, and Odell Beckham’s a stud. I’m sure Harbaugh will do a good job with Michigan. I was listening to a radio show I like the other day and a wise old man said that death would be an amazing discovery, the kind of which we’ve never had before, or at least not since being born. I hope it has been for you. I hope, even if it’s only in a loose, abstract way, you get to watch ballgames with Nana. I had one of the most beautiful dreams of my life last night. I don’t even know if I believe in heaven—definitely nothing like St. Peter’s Gate… if anything I suspect it’s some unknowable monistic thing—but I woke up this morning to the sun coming through the blinds and the room lit in dull gold and thought that the world created in my dream was welcomingly foreign and mine and new, and I didn’t want to leave. I don’t want to analyze it or think too much about it. It was precisely what I’ve wanted and want, and could never have spelled out ahead of time. But there it was, and I felt perfect peace. I hope you’re doin well, Grandpa. I’m prouder of you than I’ve ever been, and I love you. Willy ### Sketch on Pitch Perfect 2 URL: https://willysdevoll.com/writing/sketch-on-pitch-perfect-2/ Last updated: 2025-10-06T13:30:59.000Z P*itch Perfect 2* isn’t a musical—its characters’ songs are almost always covers of Billboard hits (as the hardass-with-a-heart boss figure explicitly points out to Anna Kendrick’s Beca \[*sic.*\]) and the one original song in the movie doesn’t advance plot so much as it functions as the creative product around which plot can form, mostly in Act 3\. The movie as a whole is a comedy *that involves a lot of music,* structurally and aesthetically. *itch Perfect 2* isn’t a musical—its characters’ songs are almost always covers of Billboard hits (as the hardass-with-a-heart boss figure explicitly points out to Anna Kendrick’s Beca \[*sic.*\]) and the one original song in the movie doesn’t advance plot so much as it functions as the creative product around which plot can form, mostly in Act 3\. The movie as a whole is a comedy *that involves a lot of music*, structurally and aesthetically. This movie is funny, funny as it perfects and makes vague gestures toward “subverting” a brand of easy, commonplace humor: Fat Amy is fat and does clumsy things, the three minority women in the Bellas never speak a line that doesn’t parlay their respective Stock Character statuses for an in-type laugh, and there’s the requisite closeted gay man providing a play-by-play for the group’s a capella performances. This movie is a college movie that never gets *that* college-y—the Bellas live in an absurdly nice home on the campus of Barden University, the comfort and cleanliness of which I can’t imagine exists on any real campus in America, and papers and problem sets are nowhere to be seen—just as it’s a music movie that never gets *that* music-y—the hard process of creation exists in the gaps between scenes, a couple of shots behind a Central Casting recording studio mix board, and a montage of Beca’s frustration while wearing Beats (since that’s what sound engineers wear). Thematically stronger than all of that in this movie is the dream of spontaneous unity. I have no idea how many times characters break into song without any reference pitch in this movie, and how many times that’s followed by all surrounding humans joining the song a bar later in impeccable, in-tune harmony. It’s intensely unrealistic, and it doesn’t seem as if the filmmakers have any intention of playing the phenomenon off as mimetic. Watching the movie, I didn’t find myself thinking of these moments as either annoyingly impractical or fantastical—they’re just performances (literally) of elements of a world that fundamentally plays by our rules, but has this strange—lovely—quirk. The allegorical/metaphorical/generally socially figurative possibilities of spontaneous unity manifested in the world (here the diegetic one, but why not ours, too?) are too promising and too easy to work out here—broken Congress, culture wars, the coming necessity of cooperation when our ecological catastrophe and/or ISIS really comes, blahblahblah—so suffice to say that watching a movie interested, yes, in a group coalescing, but more importantly in that fraternity expanding out toward an all-enveloping public communion by song is a much more life-affirming proposition than anything you’ll find on HBO. ### Number 2 in Your Programs URL: https://willysdevoll.com/writing/number-2-in-your-programs/ Last updated: 2025-10-06T00:58:19.000Z My first national byline, if you can call it that, came courtesy of Derek Jeter. I was an avid reader of *Sports Illustrated for Kids* growing up, and decided after reading an issue featuring a jump‑throwing Derek Jeter on the cover that my opinion on the sporting world needed to be heard. I also decided that *SI for Kids* would be honored to print my letter to the editor in its next issue. A few weeks after sending in my letter, I received an envelope from the magazine’s editorial team. I was thanked for my readership, and informed that my note would, in fact, appear in the forthcoming issue. I brought the latest *SI for Kids* in to school for show and tell, I kept my copy in pristine condition in my bedroom, and I generally felt as if things were on the up and up for me. In many ways, they were: I was a shy, precocious kid in grade school, life at home was suboptimal, and although I had friends and hobbies and was a decent little athlete, people whose childhood interests include starting kid‑businesses out of the basement and interminable overthinking tend not to peak during or around puberty. I didn’t know that words I scribbled down on a page, fussed over, and audaciously sent off for other people’s approval would get me into college, get me through grad school, and become my job. But kids rarely do. ![A photo of the baseball player Derek Jeter running to first base](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/16/1416c663-f5c7-4c17-80a5-9e636b983f4c/content/images/2025/10/3604732109_2ca3a3f0db_k--1--1.webp) "[Derek Jeter, Yankee Captain](https://www.flickr.com/photos/77516834@N00/3604732109?ref=willysdevoll.com)" by [eviltomthai](https://www.flickr.com/photos/77516834@N00?ref=willysdevoll.com) is licensed under [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse). Although it was mostly a coincidence that Jeter was on the cover of that magazine, his facsimilous existence at what now feels like a minor landmark in my life exemplifies the too‑good‑to‑be‑true essence of Jeterhood. The way I now feel about Jeter is common among Yankee fans: Derek’s an undeniably great ballplayer, but he’s primarily the living encapsulation of why we love the Bombers. Loving the Yankees is probably more about everything around the game than the tangible balls, strikes, hits, and steals; being a Yankee fan entails a willingly naïve investment in Yankee lore, in the largely irrational belief that your wearing the interlocking NY cap implicates you in the legacy of Gehrig, and the tragic virtuosity of Mantle, and the incorporeal appeal of that long‑standing oasis in the Bronx. I know you’re gagging by now if you aren’t a Yankee fan. I would be, too. But I do think that for a lot of us that really love the Yanks, that grew up loving the Yanks, that have vivid memories of late‑night drives listening to WFAN commentary and our first live games in the old Stadium, the Yankees assume a mythical role in our lives that dwarfs the club’s status as a group of professional baseball players. You can call bullshit on religion, and not trust the government, and still *believe—*really *believe—*in the Yanks. Jeter was all of that in one player, and he was all of that in an era when many of baseball’s old myths became either scandals or raw data. For kids my age, who were in preschool when Jeter first put on pinstripes and were easily out of college when he left Fenway to a standing ovation a few weeks ago, Jeter was also the figure whose career perfectly shadowed our growing relationship with the game. If you’ve paid any attention to sports news over the last year, or any attention to news of any kind over the last couple of months, you’ve heard ad nauseam about his shining moments: The Flip Play, Mr. November, the head‑first dive into the stands against the Sox, the walk‑off RBI to end his career in New York. Heroes always have their carefully selected, monumental moments; for kids my age, Jeter’s mark time from our first ride on a school bus to, well, wherever we are now. Those moments combined with the massively corporate character of modern professional sports made the last few months of Yankee baseball a grotesquely concentrated elegy to Derek Jeter, albeit in a tone incommensurate with the man’s most admirable qualities. Game after game in ballpark after ballpark, every beat writer, advertising firm, and cable sports channel had to create a special ***JETER MOMENT***. There were ceremonies and gifts from every opposing club, and the blowhardy, faux‑reverent “tributes to excellence” that ESPN has never outgrown. Between working west‑coast hours and hating to see the quiet poise of The Captain overwritten by hack sentimentalism, I stopped watching his last games. Well before his last game against the Sox, and for reasons mostly beyond his control, the player who could both be a superstar and refer to his manager as “Mr. Torre,” who could both date swimsuit model after swimsuit model and avoid any substantial tabloid scandal for over 20 years as a mega‑celebrity in America’s densest city, had gone. Jeter was a baseball player, and his lasting legacy for me will therefore always be his existence, almost every night, for almost every spring, summer, and fall of my sentient life. When said life at home was suboptimal, I clung to things that felt fixed. The Yankees were one of those things, and Jeter was one of those things. Always holding out the right hand to call time before the start of an at‑bat, always turning on his pitch with that unforgettable inside‑out swing, always weathering the three‑season‑long baseball year with a face that alternated between cool blankness and coy grin. Moments of sureness… baseball games were among them. Jeter’s at‑bats, and his increasingly poor defensive plays, were among them. I feel grateful to Derek for everything he’s done for the city I was born in and the region I grew up in, even if it’s only for the ineffable and maybe not entirely real way that great athletes change their cities. I’m grateful, as so many others are, for a player whose prime in New York happened precisely when it did. I’m grateful for 2009\. I’m grateful for the team he captained on the nights when I went downstairs, slouched down in the couch, and watched a few innings of ball. I have two Jeter Moments that I’ll never forget. I’ll never forget the first time I went to Yankee Stadium as a kid and heard Bob Sheppard call Derek to the plate. Sheppard still announced every Yankee at‑bat (my childhood caught the tail end of his career as the Stadium’s public address announcer), but Jeter was different. He was one of the few Yankees that had a single‑digit number, he had already been a very young star on a title‑winning team, and the seven syllables that together summoned him to the box—the crisp *number two, Derek Jeter—*these are the sorts of things that can really impress a little boy, and they really impressed me. The second came a few years ago, when Derek was inching up on 3,000 hits. I was driving my grandpa’s old Buick around the town where I grew up; I was home from college for the summer and working in New York. I had the WCBS broadcast of Rays‑Yanks on in the car, and as I pulled into the driveway at home, Jeter came up to bat. He had 2,999 hits. I drove to the end of the driveway, put it in park, and sat in the car with the radio on. The rest of the story is already lore, even though it’s only three years old. It’s perfect Jeterness: the reliable opposite‑field singles hitter gets up when everyone’s watching and does something spectacular. It could have happened a few minutes before, when I was out running errands, or he could have gone hitless against an excellent starting pitcher that afternoon. But in the charmed history so many of us have with Jeter, it happened just when it did. You kick yourself for not expecting the exceptional. The chorus of contrarians can justifiably raise objections to the Myth of Jeter, because yes: he got hurt, he was not a great defensive shortstop, and his last years were less than productive. He was a ballplayer. Not the greatest ballplayer ever, not the *anything*‑est ever, but a character who still seemed fundamentally different from the men around him. After all, with it now completely through, Derek’s career happened too conveniently, sometimes even too beautifully, to believe without awe. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/14/16/1416c663-f5c7-4c17-80a5-9e636b983f4c/content/images/2025/10/Yellow-End-Mark--2--1-1-2.webp)