Archive: Year: 2009

After a refreshing summer break, we're pleased to be starting our biweekly series of PdF Network conference calls up next week with a good friend of PdF, Cheryl Contee, Partner at Fission Strategy & blogger at JackandJillPolitics.com. Her timely topic: "How to Harness the Changing Nature of African American Participation Online." "Is it premature to toll the bells for the death of the digital divide?" asks Contee. In July, a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Center found that African-Americans are not only the most active users of mobile Internet, they are also the fastest growing group to adopt the technology. This comes on top of earlier Pew research showing that one of beneficial effects of Barack Obama's campaign for...

There’s a very interesting confluence of conversations taking place at the moment on the topic of how technology is changing politics. One is on the idea of government 2.0, or government-as-a-platform. The second is on whether the net is better for campaigning than governing. And the third is on what happens when you open up the process with real-time transparency. Let me see if I can combine the threads. 1. Can we "co-create" government? First, the notion of “Government 2.0” is on the rise. In particular, thanks to the energetic efforts of Tim O’Reilly, the idea that we can perhaps improve on the current dynamics surrounding government-as-vending-machine (we put in money as taxpayers, we get out services, and when we’re unhappy with...

This morning, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an official statement of apology to Alan Turing, a mathematician who led the WWII code-breaking effort that broke Germany's Enigma codes and did pioneering work in the development of computers. Turing, who was gay, was convicted of "gross indecency" in 1952 and sentenced to chemical castration. He committed suicide two years later. Notably, Brown's statement came in response to a petition posted on the Prime Minister's 10 Downing Street website, which had received thousands of signatures in recent months, as a number of prominent scientists led by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming and public figures like writer Ian McEwan stepped up to ask for the action. Thus, Brown's Turing statement should be seen as...

I'm attending the Gov 2.0 Summit today and tomorrow, and the program is thick with great speakers and topics. Posting may be in snippets. Here's my favorite from the first hour. Tom Steinberg, the intrepid guiding force behind Britain's invaluable MySociety group, which makes brilliant, easy-to-use and highly effective sites aimed at improving how government works like FixMyStreet and TheyWorkForYou*, gave us a powerful new way to argue for turning government websites into platforms for civic engagement. I'm paraphrasing slightly: "If the government said that people can't drive on the roads to go to a rally to protest something, because it would lead to bad press, everyone would protest. Yet when government says that it can't let people using government websites connect...

The final set of presentations at the Gov 2.0 Expo focused on "Government as a partner." This, hopefully, is where we'll hear about some cutting-edge examples of government opening up to involve citizens as co-creators of better government. (If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know that I complained earlier in the day that many of the great examples being showcased here today were either of government using social media internally to share information--like the intelligence community's A-Space, the TSA's Idea Factory, or NASA's Spacebook; or government using social media to better inform the public--like EPA's MyEnvironment, or CrimeReports.com; but we hadn't yet heard much about government working as a platform to connect citizens to each other to better solve...

Gov 2.0 must mean more than government agencies using social media, said Tim O'Reilly, at this morning's opening of the day-long Gov 2.0 Expo at the DC Convention Center. Some 250-300 people have gathered early this rainy day to try to figure out what that might involve. While Tim says he's here to learn (and god knows, being a conference organizer means you get to talk to all kinds of interesting people and hear about fascinating and creative projects early on), his opening keynote this morning offered some very useful gleanings, and also some hints of what the ideology of Gov 2.0 might be. As readers of this blog know, I believe people empowered by new communications technologies can make...

If you’re reading this blog post, you just might be the person we’re looking for. Personal Democracy Forum is expanding! We are looking to hire two new colleagues. We are seeking people who are creative, self-starting, hardworking, politically aware and web-savvy. One position will focus on business development and marketing our conference(s) and our new PdF Network. The second position will involve writing and producing editorial content. Titles and salary are negotiable, dependent on experience. We could post specific job descriptions, but frankly rather than draw up a checklist, we want to hear what job would utilize your skills and talents to the fullest capacity. We are interested in hearing from uniquely talented, motivated people. Want a career working at the epicenter of...

It appears everybody is putting the wrong headline on the new report on "The Internet and Civic Engagement" from the experts at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "Online politics reserved for rich," says BBC News. "Study finds web no equalizer for civic engagement," says the Associated Press. "Internet still not for everyone," says the Columbus Dispatch. Well, duh! Participation in civic life has long been stratified by income and education in America; in 1948, people in the bottom one-sixth of all earners voted at less than half the rate of people in the top one-third bracket (33% to 74%). In 2004, that gap was just slightly smaller, though overall participation rates had improved (respectively, to 56% and 90%)....

The political world is buzzing today with condolences and reminiscences of Senator Edward Kennedy, and we here at PdF add our respects. It's going to be an interesting day to watch how the live web reacts to the news and shapes its importance. So far, judging from Trendistic, my new favorite site for sniffing the zeitgeist, there's been a huge surge in tweets about Kennedy, which is no surprise. But, at least so far, little indication that many people are interested in how his passing will affect the passage of health care reform, which in many ways was Teddy's signature issue: It's also amazing to look at what search words are trending high over on Google Trends. At least half of the...

For some time now, we've been hearing that conservatives dominate the usage of Twitter when it comes to online politics, and the appearance of TweetProgress, a new aggregator for progressive twitterers, only appears to be reinforcing that notion. For example, today The Hill's story on this topic notes that "many more conservatives use #TCOT than liberals use #p2," citing the leading hashtags employed by conservative and liberals, respectively, on the messaging platform. David All, a leading conservative consultant who has written a popular guide for rightwingers using the site (and a techPresident contributing blogger) was on Twitter today pointing out that there were 3,911 uses of the #TCOT hashtag today alone, compared to just 2,396 of #p2, and "almost all"...