Archive: Category: TechPresident

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"...

Are conservatives out-organizing progressives on Twitter, as a recent story on CNN reported? And does their seeming dominance matter? For online activists in America, these are hard questions to answer, not least because a) "organizing on Twitter" is still (and may always be) a very loose process; b) usage of popular hashtags like #tcot ("top conservatives on Twitter," launched November 28, 2008) or #p2 ("progressives 2.0, launched in response February 13, 2009") is an imperfect measure of strength; c) judging by top follower numbers, Twitter's audience appears to lean liberal (more on that in a separate post); and d) we're still figuring out what Twitter is, and isn't, good for in terms of political battles (i.e. it's clearly good for...

The news that American southerners are the most likely to question whether President Obama is actually a native-born citizen got a lot of attention last Friday, when a Research2000 survey on that question was released by DailyKos. Eleven percent of all Americans apparently do not believe Obama was born in the United States, but 23% of southerners (compared to roughly 5% of people from the other regions of the country) share that belief. I thought it would be interesting to see what various trend-culling tools might add to this picture. A look at Google Trends is certainly illuminating. The top ten states where people are searching on the phrase "Obama birth certificate" are: 1. Louisiana 2. Mississippi 3. Colorado 4. Oklahoma 5. Alabama 6. Tennessee 7. Arkansas 8. Missouri 9....

Over the next two months, the Federal Communications Commission will be holding a series of open public workshops on various aspects of the emerging "National Broadband Plan," which it is mandated to deliver by the end of the year. The workshops cover everything from deployment of broadband services to how these new services may help improve health care, education, job training and the environment, and they are bound to be an important locus of ongoing debate as the powerful FCC gets reshaped under the Obama administration. Indeed, our very own Andrew Rasiej has been invited to participate in the first one, this coming August 6th on e-government and civic engagement. We think these workshops could be very enlightening, and appreciate that...

In case you haven't noticed, a few days ago we launched a new "vertical" here at Personal Democracy Forum: PdF Europe. The idea is to gather a community of voices reporting, analyzing and participating in the ways the internet is changing politics in across the Continent, and to build a gathering place online for all the people who are interested in this November's first-ever PdF Europe conference (Barcelona, Nov. 20-21). You can find posts by using the url...