Archive: Year: 2010

We're pleased to repost this first-hand report on the Manor GovFresh conference that just concluded in Texas, from PdF friend Jon Lebkowsky. Manor, a small town in Texas a few miles from Austin, has become an unlikely star player in the new world of “Government 2.0.” This week Manor and GovFresh, an organization that provides news and information about technology innovation in government, joined forces to host a conference on “big ideas for local America.” The conference highlighted the work Manor, nearby DeLeon, and other small governments in the U.S. are doing to incorporate social media and open data approaches to provide better information and services to citizens, and to engage them more effectively. This is part of an...

David Paul Kuhn has a somewhat hyperbolic post up on Real Clear Politics today that is well worth reading. Titled "R.I.P. Political Establishment," the post argues that the rise of the Tea Party movement--epitomized by the defeat of eight Senate primary candidates backed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee--is part of a larger "bottom up" revolution that encompasses the netroots, Howard Dean and Barack Obama as well. Kuhn writes: Politics has moved from top-down to bottom-up. The liberal netroots of 2006 was a harbinger of the far larger and far more influential tea party movement. Both capture our new politics: where power is more fleeting, where politics is increasingly de-centralized and influence more democratized. The tail easily wags the dog in...

The program for PdF Europe 2010 is rapidly coming together, and we will have a full schedule posted within a week. But here’s a more detailed look at the agenda-in-formation. Keep in mind that this is still subject to change. On Monday, October 4th, the first day of the conference, the morning plenary will begin with a view from the highest level, as Alec Ross, the US State Department’s senior advisor for innovation, and the person most responsible for the Obama Administration’s new “21st century statecraft,” will offer opening remarks on how he views the Internet as a force for positive change. “Reimagining International Relations in a Networked Age” is the theme of his speech. Then we’ll hear from several leading practitioners...

With the second annual Personal Democracy Forum Europe conference just over a month away, we're pleased to announce that with the help of our longtime sponsor Google, we are making ten fellowships available to talented and deserving political technology innovators. The fellowships cover the conference registration fee and two nights lodging at the conference hotel. We're looking for people with demonstrated experience turning their ideas into action and into new applications of technology in the political or civic arena. Applications are due by Sept. 10 and winners will be notified Sept. 13. To apply, fill out this simple form....

Jonathan Strong, the author (bio) of the Daily Caller's on-going series of articles based on excerpts from emails selected out of the private Journolist discussion list, has been making a name for himself and his upstart online news organization in recent weeks with provocative attacks on the integrity of many well-known writers and bloggers, and his fierce defense of a bright line between political journalism and political activism. Journolist was, of course, a private email-based discussion list for writers, academics, and others that was started by liberal writer Ezra Klein in the winter of 2007 and shuttered in June, after e-mails taken from the list led to the forced resignation from the Washington Post by writer Dave Weigel. In a...

Three years ago, we had a modest idea here at Personal Democracy Forum: that the internet could be a vehicle for transforming the presidential debates then underway. Instead of relying solely on journalists to determine the questions being asked of candidates; why not involve the public? Instead of giving the candidates 60 seconds to recite a canned answer, why not offer them unlimited time to prepare a serious response? And instead of letting candidates dodge questions during live debates, why not create a real feedback loop and let the public vote on whether they were satisfied with candidates' answers? Instead of debates tailored for (and constrained by) the demands of broadcast television, why not use the interactive and abundant nature...

I recently asked Aaron Smith, research specialist at the Pew Internet & American Life Project, if they had any data looking at how internet use might vary by degree of religious affiliation. Turns out that Pew hasn't really dug deep into that question, so I can't tell you whether Mormons tweet more than Baptists, or if Episcopalians update their Facebook profiles more often than Lutherans. Smith was kind enough to dig into some more generic cross-tabs that Pew does have pertaining to technology usage and whether someone identifies with a religion ("affiliated") vs the unaffiliated, agnostics, and atheists among us. The big headline is that, Smith says, "Overall, the 'unaffiliated' are more likely to go online than the 'affiliated' by...

Several months ago, Julian Assange cannily described the paradox on releasing raw data online. "It's counterintuitive," he said to ComputerWorld. "You'd think the bigger and more important the document is, the more likely it will be reported on but that's absolutely not true. It's about supply and demand. Zero supply equals high demand, it has value. As soon as we release the material, the supply goes to infinity, so the perceived value goes to zero." This problem also troubled Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, back in June when I spoke with him and Assange at Personal Democracy Forum. While Ellsberg has said that today he would have just scanned the papers and posted them online, he admitted that giving...

Is there some line in the Democratic online operative handbook that says that the very best time to send an email blast asking for money is 11:30am?...

After several weeks of speculation, the supranational transparency site Wikileaks has released 92,000 leaked documents pertaining to the US war in Afghanistan, triggering huge stories in the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, who were each given advance access to the material. If you didn't think technology was changing politics, perhaps now you'll reconsider? People the world over will be sifting through the released documents for some time, but this is clearly a huge coup for Wikileaks and its co-founder Julian Assange, who has been talking for some time of having obtained significant new material. Let's hope that in the coming days the ensuing conversation is more about what the documents do or don't show, and not about whether they...