Archive: Category: TechPresident

[This letter is reposted from DIYcity.org, with the permission of its author, John Geraci. We fully endorse its contents and call on others to help spread the word. The Editors. The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg Mayor of New York City City Hall New York, NY 10007 Dear Mayor Bloomberg: Under your leadership, the City's 311 System has grown into an invaluable civic service that has accumulated vast amounts of actionable data about all kinds of topics residents of New York City care deeply about. Now is the time to transform 311 into a tool of even greater value, for use by elected officials, policy makers, local leaders, and everyday New Yorkers by allowing any and all software developers to freely access, work with and...

Here's an updated guide to the breakout sessions in the works for Personal Democracy Forum 2009. This year's theme is "We.gov"--in other words, all the ways that people are using the internet and interactive communications technologies to transform politics, campaigns, media, governance and civic action. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we're envisioning four main thematic tracks to the breakout sessions, which will run in the afternoon of both days of the conference: 1) State-of-the-art online politics; 2) Exploring government 2.0; 3) New organizing opportunities, tools and challenges; and 4) The future of political journalism, blogging and networked media. There's also a couple of sessions that bridge several of these categories that we think will be pretty interesting as...

Calling all developers: The Sunlight Foundation, Google, O'Reilly Media and Techweb are launching a new contest, Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge, to celebrate the launch of Data.gov today. They're looking for applications using one or more of the data sources on this new open repository of government information, and will judge submissions based on the following criteria: 1. Transparency: Does the application help citizens see things they couldn’t see before it existed? 2. Permanence: Will the application be usable over a long period of time? 3. Design & Visualization: Does the application visualize data in a new and interesting way? The $25,000 in prizes will be divided among 14 winners, with the top three receiving airfare and hotel for a trip to...

I'm going to start posting, as much as possible, about the variety of fantastic speakers and panels we're having at Personal Democracy Forum this year, and I'm starting with one of the most unusual, our session with authors Doug Rushkoff and Tara Hunt on "Building the Social Economy: CraigBucks, NewMarks and Making Whuffie." Doug Rushkoff has been writing about all things cyber for longer than almost anyone, and the perspective he brings to the discussion this year may be the most radical that you've heard yet. He calls his new book, Life, Inc., his "life's work" and even from this short video he's made about it, you can see how the book ties together all of the major themes that he's...

We're hard at work on this year's sixth annual Personal Democracy Forum, taking place June 29-30 in New York City, and I thought this would be a good time to share more details on all the incredible breakout sessions in the works. (We'll also have an announcement soon with more of our confirmed speakers; the current list is here.) As you know, this year's theme is "We.gov"--in other words, all the ways that people are using the internet and interactive communications technologies to transform politics, campaigns, media, governance and civic action. And that includes more transparency on how the sausage is made. Hence this post. Right now, we're envisioning four main thematic tracks to the breakout sessions, which will run in...

When it comes to government agencies adapting to the Networked Age, the State Department is no slouch. It's had an Office of eDiplomacy since 2003; its staffers make heavy use of an internal unclassified online encyclopedia called Diplopedia; it's been blogging since September 2007 at Dipnote; and now State even has a Twitter feed. ExchangesConnect, a cultural exchange social networking site (built on Ning.com) that focuses on foreign exchange students, recently topped its 10,000th member. Under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the State Department has also been in the forefront of Obama administration moves to experiment with and adopt new ways to interact with the public, including using YouTube and text-messaging as ways to pose questions directly. The overall push...

"I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship… The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth." --Historian Deborah Lipstadt, February 20, 2006, in reaction to the Austrian conviction of David Irving for denying the Holocaust. I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. My mother, Anna, spent most of World War II in hiding, along with the rest of her family, in different parts of Belgium, where she is from. They were fortunate to be sheltered by people involved in the Belgian resistance. Many other Belgian Jews were not so lucky. This past winter, I visited the Dachau concentration camp on the outskirts of Munich, along with my younger brother David....

I'm spending the day at a conference on "Money in Politics 2009: New Horizons for Reform" at the National Press Club, convened by the Brennan Center for Justice. Mid-day, I'll be moderating a conversation about the role of the internet in changing the political landscape with Lawrence Lessig and Adam Bonin. I'm also tweeting occasional observations from the event using the hashtag #bccfr, in case you're really hungry for this stuff. Michael Malbin just kicked off the first session with a very interesting talk based on his work and research at the Campaign Finance Institute on whether the so-called "small donor revolution" of the Obama campaign is a reality. Here are my notes on his talk, which I found quite refreshing...

Run, don't walk, to go watch Max Harper's detailed presentation on the "Hope Factory," the Obama campaign's system for connecting media, membership, fundraising and activism over the course of 2008 race. I've seen and participated in dozens of talks on "how they did it" but never heard anyone put it all together in one place in quite the way Harper does. Harper joined the Obama video team in July 2008, where he piloted the concept for the "Blueprint for Change" videos. Harper's talk is anchored around how the campaign understand the various uses of video, but as you'll see, he offers an overarching analysis of how all the parts fit together that strategists of all stripes will want to study. Here's...

If most media outlets covering the presidential campaigns had anything to say about it, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and other social media phenomena would get all the credit for making 2008 the most digital election ever. But that’s only part of the web story. Surely no campaign staffer worth his salt would deny the potential impact of a Barack Obama supporter posting a link on her Facebook page to the candidate’s site. However, the fact is many of the campaigns used a far more measurable online campaign tactic: paid online advertising. As early as January 2007, candidates still in the exploratory stages had begun buying ad space on the Web. Granted, they spent little compared to what they allocated to television...