Archive: Category: TechPresident

We're pleased to announce this year's Personal Democracy Forum Google Fellows. Nine talented and experienced folks made the cut, out of what is always a very competitive pool of applicants. They are: Adam Black, founder of KeyWifi.com, a bootstrapped web company that enables the massive over supply of internet bandwidth to be redistributed, so enabling the costs of access to be reduced, allowing millions globally to cross the digital divide with significant democratic ramifications at home and for the developing world. Yahel Carmon, a web analytics architect for Blue State Digital, and builder of tools like Crowsdlistr, and an open source SMS app using Twilio and Google Election Center API to allow voters to text in their address and get back their...

Yes, it's true. Despite our best efforts to convince Nancy Scola, techPresident's associate editor for the last three years, that there was nothing better than lifetime employment with Personal Democracy Forum, she will be soon leaving us, as she explains here. Our loss is the world's gain. I'm going to save the encomium for her official last day, June 10th. But as Nancy knows full well, we are already anticipating missing her presence even as we know that she'll still be out there continuing to contribute to the roiling conversation about technology, politics, government and civic life in changing times that is the beating heart of PdF. And so today's news sparks an opportunity for those of you out there...

A view of the CN Tower and the Toronto skyline, as you fly into the city. Photo by Micah L. Sifry I've just come back from two days in Toronto attending and speaking at MESH, which bills itself as "Canada's web conference," a tagline that, judging from the big and enthusiastic crowd at the Allstream Centre, seems altogether merited. This was my second time at MESH, and it has doubled in size since 2009, when I was last there. The conference is the brain-child of five friends--Matthew Ingram, Stuart MacDonald, Rob Hyndman, Mark Evans and Mike McDerment--each of whom have day jobs in media, marketing, and law-related fields and who deftly manage to the weave the various threads of their personal...

With Personal Democracy Forum 2011 less than two weeks away, we're excited to announce a few more amazing keynote speakers and panelists, and one great new breakout session that we're adding to the already packed breakout program. (A full list of speakers and bios are up here.) First, we're happy to welcome back keynoters Beth Noveck and Clay Shirky to the PdF main stage. Noveck just finished a two-year stint at the White House as deputy CTO for open government, and she will be talking about the ongoing transparency movement. Shirky will be playing host to a series of hand-picked demos by students in New York University's Interactive Technology Program, which is partnering with PdF to host the conference. Building on our...

With the full schedule for Personal Democracy Forum 2011's breakout sessions and plenary talks now posted, a little house-keeping is in order. We've added several new main hall keynoters for the plenaries, and lots of folks for the breakouts. Along the way we've also had a few previously-announced speakers who needed to drop out, either for personal reasons or unexpected scheduling conflicts. So, in a moment, the details on all that. But here's the big picture. As of now, we have 82 fantastic speakers coming, from as far away as Johannesburg and Cairo, from the Tea Party to MoveOn, from Microsoft to Mozilla. Of people who hang a party label next to their name for professional reasons, we've got seven Republicans...

The view from NYU's Kimmel Center, where #PdF11's breakout sessions will occur, only with more leaves on the trees. Photo by Micah L. Sifry We're pleased to announce the details of this year's breakout sessions at Personal Democracy Forum (you can still register for the June 6-7 conference at NYU, here). They're organized around five primary tracks: Global Digital Activism, Online Politics and Organizing, Media Revolutions, Evolving We-Government, and Deep Dive conversations. In the Global Digital Activism track, we're going to have a mix of traditional panels and something new, sessions with some of our expert keynote speakers who will be expanding on themes they are covering in their shorter plenary talks. And in keeping with our expanded focus on the...

The PdF Network is PdF's premium membership service, designed to give those working in government, politics, advocacy, and many more sectors, unparalleled access to industry experts and resources. As we work to upgrade the network, launching at the end of summer, we're offering the PdF Network's bi-monthly call series to the public at no cost. Katie Harbath. Our conversation with Katie Harbath about the current and future uses of mobile in campaigns was chock-a-block with useful insights. As the chief digital strategist for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2010, Harbath conducted a variety of fascinating experiments with mobile, and she shared lots of valuable takeaways with us. The big ones are, first, that rising numbers of Americans are going online...

A quick note on why I am so excited that Sami Ben Gharbia of Tunisia's Nawaat.org human rights group blog and Global Voices will be speaking at PdF 2011 next month as part of our slate of keynoters exploring the rapid pace of change in the Middle East and North Africa. A few days ago, Nawaat.org turned down a major award, the 2011 Arab e-Content Award, because the prize is sponsored by the government of Bahrain. In a statement, the group referred to its policy of avoiding government support, and condemned the Bahrain government for the arrest of scores of bloggers and human rights activists & the arbitrary blocking of websites and blogs critical of the government and its ruling...

It's fascinating to look at how quickly the depiction of Barack Obama in the online collective subconscious known as PicFog has changed in the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden. PicFog aggregates the photos that people are sharing in real time, using the twitter API, and combining pictures from Twitpic, Yfrog, Plixi, and Twitgoo. It wasn't that long ago that the photos that people were sharing each other tended to be variations on this: Now he's the height of cool: You can troll the site for more Obama images here. Warning, some are definitely not safe for work....

We are pleased to announce the preliminary schedule for all the plenary sessions for this year's Personal Democracy Forum. You can see the schedule at a glance here (Day One June 6, Day Two June 7); here's a more detailed overview of what we'll be focusing on: The theme of this year's event is "Agents of Change." We're aiming to move the focus away from technology itself to what people do with these new tools; how key actors like organizers, political leaders, volunteers, and followers interact; and how these players are learning from and adapting to the new environment they are themselves helping create and shape. On Monday June 6, we'll start by hearing from three leading voices who are changing the...