Category Archives: event

Civic coders for America gather in DC for a Presidents’ Day datacamp

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This past weekend, civic developers gathered at a Seattle data camp to code for America. This Presidents’ Day, the day before George Washington’s Birthday, dozens of government technologists, data nerds, civic hackers and citizens from around the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland will join Code for America fellows for a datacamp at Big Window Labs.

The attendees of the Washington datacamp can look to the Seattle Data Camp for inspiration. The civic hacktivism on display there led to engaged discussions about Seattle’s South Park neighborhood, mobile damage assessment apps, transit apps, mobile / geolocation apps, data mining, information visualization.

Perhaps even more impressive, one of those discussions lead to the creation of a new smartphone application. Hear Near pushes alerts about Seattle events nearby to iPhone or Android device users using text messages. Hear Near is now available from iTunes and Android.

Joe McCarthy published a terrific post about Data Camp Seattle that offers a great deal of insight into why the event worked well. McCarthy helped the HearNear team by identifying and defining mappings between the GeoLoqi API and the iCal feed.

McCarthy describes how a creative discussion amongst talented, civic-minded people enabled them to donate their skills to putting the open data from Seattle’s data repository to work for its citizens. He also explored what inspires him about Code for America:

I wasn’t sure what to expect going into the event, but was greatly impressed with the interactions, overall experience and outcomes at Data Camp Seattle. I’ve admired the Code for America project since first learning about it, and have been a proponent of open data and platform thinking (and doing) on my blog. It was inspiring and empowering to have an opportunity to do more than simply blog about these topics … though I recognize the potential irony of writing that statement in a new blog post about these topics.

I suspect that one of the most durable outcomes of the Code for America project will be this kind of projection or radiation of civic empowerment through – and beyond – the efforts of the CfA fellows and their collaboration partners. In The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler writes about how “[t]he practice of producing culture makes us all more sophisticated readers, viewers, and listeners, as well as more engaged makers”. In Program or Be Programmed, Doug Rushkoff warns against “relinquishing our nascent collective agency” to computers and the people who program them by engaging in “a renaissance of human capacity” by becoming programmers ourselves.

While many – or even most – of the specific applications we designed and developed during the Data Camp Seattle civic hackathon may not gain widespread traction and use, if the experience helps more of us shift our thinking – and doing – toward becoming co-creators of civic applications – and civic engagement – then the Code for America project will have succeeded in achieving some grand goals indeed.

This example of directed action at an unconference has fast become the next step in the evolution of camps, where a diverse set of volunteers come together to donate more than money or blood: they exchange information and then apply their skills to creating solutions to the needs defined by a given set of societal challenges.

This model of directed civic involvement has became a global phenomenon in wake of the crisiscamps that sprung up after the earthquake in Haiti last year. The cultural DNA of these camps has evolved into CrisisCommons, which has acted as platform for volunteers to donate their skills to help in natural disasters and other crises.

As the role of the Internet as a platform for collective action grows, those volunteers are gaining more ability to make a difference using powerful lightweight collaboration tecnology and open source data tools.

From the towns of the United States to cities in Denmark, Brazil, Kenya, Illinois and India, people interested in local Gov 2.0 have been gathering to to create applications that use open public data. In December, Around the world, the International Open Data Hackathon convened participants in over 56 cities in 26 countries on 5 continents.

As Seattle CIO Bill Schrier put it this past weekend, they’re turning data into information. Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra has praised these kinds of efforts “hacking for humanity.” An event like Random Hacks of Kindness “brings together the sustainable development, disaster risk management, and software developer communities to solve real-world problems with technology.”

On President’s Day, another datacamp will try to put that vision into action.

http://widgets.twimg.com/j/2/widget.js //

Civic developers gather to code for America at data camps

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Today in Seattle, over 50 civic developers have gathered at Socrata to work on coding applications from the city’s open data repository at data.seattle.gov. Today’s Seattle datacamp, organized by Code for America, is just one of several data camps that the new civic service is convening in host cities around the United States. Chacha Sikes, a 2011 Code for America fellow, explains what’s behind these data camps:

City governments have a lot of information which is useful to all of us. This ranges from maps of local parks to building footprints to real-time 911 calls. We all have an interest in our budget information, legislative documents and other resources that we use in collective decision-making and deliberation. Not all of this information is currently available for all cities, even though much of it is public record. The “Open Data” movement is a way to work on getting information into machine-readable formats, allowing for easy publishing, sharing, and reuse.

We’re hosting DataCamps in CfA’s cities this year to build communities around making city data more open and accessible to allow citizens to help cities work better.

DataCamp is a event focusing on skill-building and collaborative work on city data. It is an opportunity for interested parties in a city to work together, and build a network of people with shared interested in improving civic communications and information management.

Sanjay B. Hyatt, a writer at the Seattle Times, is at the data camp in the Pacific Northeast. He reported back that CTO Bill Schrier said that Seattle has 100 data sets. “Turn that data into information.”

DataCamp Seattle is using a Drupal site and a DataCamp Seattle Google group to coordinate and share notes. In the tradition of unconferences and barcamps, they’re also using a more analog method to sort out ideas and projects: sticky notes. Virtual observers can see the various projects going up, including calendars, an impact survey, an apps workshop and a “pimp my blog” to help stimulate the creation of hyperlocal blogs.

More data camps are coming soon to Seattle and Washington, D.C.

UPDATE: A day after the datacamp, a new app is available to Seattle residents. Hear Near pushes alerts about Seattle events nearby to mobile phone users using text messages.

Hear Near is available from iTunes and Android.

Hear Near was created by a team that included Amber Case (whose geolocation startup, Geoloqi, powers it), Aaron Parecki, Joe McCarthy, Jesse Kocher, Gene Homicki, Naoya Makino, Steve Ripley, Rebecca Gutterman and Jenny Frank.

Frank, a self-identified “non-techie” who attended the camp, came away with the feeling that “nothing is impossible.”

Panoramic image credits to Chris Metcalf.

President Obama toasts technology with Silicon Valley tech leaders

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President Barack Obama joins a toast with Technology Business Leaders at a dinner in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama joins a toast with Technology Business Leaders at a dinner in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

White House press secretary Jay Carney issued the following statement after President Obama met with Silicon Valley leaders, including Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and others in Woodside, California:

“This evening, the President joined twelve leaders from technology companies to discuss ways to work together to invest in American innovation and promote private sector job growth. In the President’s State of the Union Address, he called on us to win the future by out-innovating and out-educating the rest of the world and increasing American competitiveness. The President believes that American companies like these have been leading by investing in the creativity and ingenuity of the American people, creating cutting-edge new technologies and promoting new ways to communicate. The President specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire, along with his goal of doubling exports over five years to support millions of American jobs. The group also discussed the importance of new investments in education and the new White House initiative Startup America, a partnership with the private sector aimed at supporting new startups and small businesses. The President expressed his desire to continue a dialogue with the group to share new ideas so we can work as partners to promote growth and create good jobs in the United States.”

What else did President Obama ask tech leaders? There’s not a lot out there on the Web, given that the dinner was closed to press and none of the tech leaders has blogged or spoken about it to date. The Silicon Jose Mercury News has one of the best accounts of Obama’s meeting with Silicon Valley tech elite but, given the paucity of details about the conversation, the paper had little choice but to go a series of analysts and consultants to comment upon the event. SFGate.com went a step further on the transparency angle and used MapLight.org to analyze the lobbying and campaign donations of the tech stars of Silicon Valley.

Until more details emerge from the meeting, here’s some idle fun from the online audience about what might have come up over dinner. Engadget posted its own caption contest earlier today. If you have a quip about the president’s social network, tweet away using the hashtag #ObamaTechDin.

http://storify.com/digiphile/twitter-caption-contest-for-obama-tech-dinner.js

President of Free World meets President of Facebook World

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President Barack Obama talks with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg before a dinner with Technology Business Leaders in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011. Also pictured, left to right, are Carol Bartz, Yahoo! President and CEO; Art Levinson, Genentech Chairman and former CEO; Steve Westly, Founder and Managing Partner, The Westly Group; and Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman and CEO of Google. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama talks with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg before a dinner with Technology Business Leaders in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011. Also pictured, left to right, are Carol Bartz, Yahoo! President and CEO; Art Levinson, Genentech Chairman and former CEO; Steve Westly, Founder and Managing Partner, The Westly Group; and Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman and CEO of Google. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Amazingly, the White House Flickr feed hasn’t turned into a caption contest for this picture. In the absence of press coverage, Marshall Kirkpatrick had some fun speculating about the topic of conversation at Obama’s meeting with other Silicon Valley leaders over at ReadWriteWeb.

No word on whether the president talked with Zuckerberg about what it was like to act as POTUS on Facebook using the upgraded Pages feature. (As of this morning, President Barack Obama’s Facebook page has 18,368,666 likes. The WhiteHouse has 903,252. )

HHS launches Health.Data.gov

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Last October, Todd Park, the chief technology officer at the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) announced HealthData.gov at the HealthCamp in San Francisco. Today, Health.Data.gov went live. When the domain name propagates properly through the Internet, HealthData.gov will send online users directly to the new community at Data.gov.

Park blogged about HealthData.gov and the open health data initiative on Data.gov this morning.

“HealthData.gov is a one-stop resource for the growing ecosystem of innovators who are turning data into new applications, services, and insights that can help improve health,” he wrote.

The new open health data site includes community features and links to more than a thousand indicators at HealthIndicators.gov and a health apps showcase.

New apps like iTriage have the potential to turn open health data to better decisions and build new businesses. Speaking at the State Department’s open source conference last week, Park said that tens of thousands of citizens have now used the health data in iTriage to find community health centers.

Park has been working to make community health information as useful as weather data through the release of open health data from HSS. Today, the nation now can see more about what the tech community has come up since this spring, when the question of whether “there’s a healthcare app for that” was answered the first time. “Social value and economic value can go hand in hand,” he told a health IT summit in San Francisco.

Below, Park speaks more about what open health data could mean at last weekend’s health 2.0 code-a-thon in Washington, DC.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

Here come the healthcare apps.

Clinton: There is no silver bullet in the struggle against Internet repression. There’s no “app” for that

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Today in Washington, Secretary of State Clinton reiterated the State Department’s commitment to an Internet freedom policy in a speech at George Washington University. Rebecca MacKinnon, journalist, free speech activist, and expert on Chinese Internet censorship, provided some on the spot analysis immediately following Clinton’s words. MacKinnon made an interesting, and timely, point: there are limits to directly funding certain groups. “I think one of the reasons that the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions were successful was that they were really home grown, grass roots. At the end of the day, the people in the countries concerned need to really want change and drive that change.”

MacKinnon parsed the considerable complexity of advocating for Internet freedom in the context of Wikileaks and electronic surveillance in other areas of the federal government. For those interested, she elaborated on the issues inherent in this nexus of government and technology in her Senate testimony last year. At some point this winter, there will be a hearing on “CALEA 2″ in the United States Congress that’s going to be worth paying close attention to for anyone tracking Internet freedom closer to home, so to speak.

Should the U.S. support Internet freedom through technology, whether it’s an “app” or other means? To date, so far the State Department has allocated only $20 million of the total funding it has received from Congress, according to a report on Internet censorship from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee obtained by the AFP. (Hat tip to Nick Kristof on that one).

Clinton defended the slow rollout of funding today in her speech (emphasis is added):

“The United States continues to help people in oppressive Internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers, and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online. While the rights we seek to protect are clear, the various ways that these rights are violated are increasingly complex. Some have criticized us for not pouring funding into a single technology—but there is no silver bullet in the struggle against Internet repression. There’s no “app” for that. And accordingly, we are taking a comprehensive and innovative approach—one that matches our diplomacy with technology, secure distribution networks for tools, and direct support for those on the front lines.”

The caution in spending may well also be driven by the issues that the State Department encountered with Haystack, a much celebrated technology for Internet freedom tool that turned out to be closer to a fraud than a phenomenon.

There may be no silver bullet to deliver Internet freedom to the disconnected or filtered masses, per se, but there are more options beyond the Tor Project that people in repressive regimes can leverage. Today, MIT’s Technology Review reported on an app for dissidents that encrypts phone and text communications:

Two new applications for Android devices, called RedPhone and TextSecure, were released last week by Whisper Systems, a startup created by security researchers Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson. The apps are offered free of charge to users in Egypt, where protesters opposing ex-president Hosni Mubarak have clashed with police for weeks. The apps use end-to-end encryption and a private proxy server to obfuscate who is communicating with whom, and to secure the contents of messages or phone conversations. “We literally have been working night and day for the last two weeks to get an international server infrastructure set up,” says Anderson.

No word on whether they’ve received funding from State yet. For more on today’s speech, read the full report on the State department’s Internet freedom policy at the Huffington Post, Ethan Zuckerman or the ever sharp Nancy Scola on #NetFreedom, which does, in fact, now look like a “big deal.”

Secretary of State Clinton speaks about Internet freedom and technology

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Today in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is speaking about Internet freedom and technology.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

The PBS Newshour is also streaming the speech:

http://www.ustream.tv/pbsnewshour

3 words from the Tech@State unconference

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On Friday, the fifth Tech@State conference at the United States Department at State focused on the role of open source in government, industry and society. Today, there is a Tech@State unconference on open source at the National Democratic Institute. In keeping with the tradition of an unconference – sometimes called a barcamp – the day kicked off with a introduction where every attendee shared his or her name, affiliation and three words that describe who they are, what they care about, what they’ve come to learn or what they do. Or all three. Below is a wordle that shows the frequency of words used.

The schedule for the Tech@State unconference is evolving at Open4m.org/NDI. It bids to be an interesting day.

2011 Gov 2.0 and Open Government Events Calendar

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Tomorrow, another great Tech@State event kicks off at the State Department in Washington, D.C. In New York City, the city’s first chief digital officer, will put on the capstone on Social Media Week at an open government forum. Out in Los Angeles, people will gather at KPCC for a digital diplomacy forum. It will be a busy Friday but these three events are only a few coming up that sit in the intersection of technology, citizens and government coming up this year.

As J.D. Lasica reported in his comprehensive Socialbrite list of 2011 social media, tech marketing conferences, there won’t be a Gov 2.0 Expo. (For an explanation of why O’Reilly won’t be doing the Expo this year, visit Quora.) There will, however be many other places for people to gather, talk and learn about Gov 2.0 in 2011 — just take a look through the many Govloop event listings. For a broader selection, Socialbrite has a terrific calendar of calendar of 2011 nonprofit conferences.

There will be any number of citizen-generated unconferences around the world in 2011, where the attendees generate the program. They’ll include CityCamps, BarCamps, PodCamps or MobileCamps. Check out the CityCamp calendar to find one near you and keep an eye out for CityCamp meetups in February.

The following listings are by no means comprehensive but should serve as a starting point if you’re wondering what’s happening, when and where. If you know about more Gov 2.0 events that should be listed here, please let me know at alex@oreilly.com or @digiphile.

Gov 2.0 LA

This Los Angeles conference brings a “West Coast” sensibility to the Gov 2.0 conversation, with a particular emphasis on social media and speakers from the diplomatic, marketing and consulting worlds. For a sense of what the 2010 event held, read On Language: Government 2.0 jargon and technology or a history lesson in disruptive innovation applied to modern government at Gov 2.0 LA.

Website: gov20la.org

DataCamp

February 13, Boston, MA
February 19, Seattle, WA
Philadelphia and DC TBD.

Code for America is hosting a set of “data camps” in its host cities this winter. Here’s why: “City governments have a lot of information which is useful to all of us. This ranges from maps of local parks to building footprints to real-time 911 calls. We all have an interest in our budget information, legistlative documents and other resources that we use in collective decision-making and deliberation. Not all of this information is currently available for all cities, even though much of it is public record. The “Open Data” movement is a way to work on getting information into machine-readable formats, allowing for easy publishing, sharing, and reuse. We’re hosting DataCamps in CfA’s cities this year to build communities around making city data more open and accessible to allow citizens to help cities work better. DataCamp is a event focusing on skill-building and collaborative work on city data. It is an opportunity for interested parties in a city to work together, and build a network of people with shared interested in improving civic communications and information management.”

Website: Code for America datacamps

2011 Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference

Feb. 24 to 27, 2011 — Raleigh, N.C.
Data journalism is a key component of the Gov 2.0 world. If government releases data, data journalism must evolve to validate, analyze and tell stories with it.

Website: www.ire.org/training/conference/

Social Media for Government Conference

February 14-17, 2011
Social media is but one component of Gov 2.0, alongside open data, collective intelligence or a rethinking of how services are provided, but it’s clear that it’s important.

Website: www.aliconferences.com/conf/social_media_govt0211/index.htm

Intelligent Cities Meetup

February 23rd, Washington, DC
“Intelligent Cities, a National Building Museum initiative, supported by its partners TIME and IBM and funded by The Rockefeller Foundation, explores the intersection of IT and urban design to understand where we are, where we want to be, and how to get there.” Meetups are planned for San Francisco, NYC and Chicago.

Website: Meetup.com/Intelligent-cities

Transportation Camp

March 5-6, NYC, New York
March 19-20, San Francisco, CA
TransportationCamp is a new unconference about transportation and technology.

Website: transportationcamp.org

South by Southwest Interactive Festival

March 10-15, Austin, Texas
This year’s SXSWi will include many sessions that fall under the umbrella of Gov 2.0, including government officials talking about open government, citizens talking about new apps or platforms, and new services or applications that will be relevant to both. Here’s just a sampling.

Website: sxsw.com/interactive

2011 Web and New Media Conference

March 17–18, 2011, Washington, DC
This conference is for government new media managers and webmasters, many of whom are wearing both hats in 2011. It’s proven to be an excellent networking and educational forum.

Website: http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/wmu/conference/2011/index.shtml

Web 2.0 Expo

March 28-31, San Francisco, CA
October 10-13, NYC, NY
There are many lessons for Gov 2.0 from Web 2.0, including the power of platforms to catalyze innovation, investment and more agile government.

Website: web2expo.com

NASA Open Source Summit

March 29-30, Mountain View California

From the organizers: “On March 29 & 30, NASA will host its first Open Source Summit at Ames Research Center in Mountain View California. This event will bring together engineers and policy makers across NASA and respected members of the open source community to discuss the challenges with the existing open source policy framework, and propose modifications that would make it easier for NASA to develop, release, and use open source software.”

Website: NASA Open Source Summit

Media Access to Government Information Conference (MAGIC)

April 12, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

From the organizers: “MAGIC is a collaborative, one-day conference sponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy that will:

  • Explore obstacles and opportunities for access to government information by journalists and others writing about public affairs in the digital age;
  • Include government officials, reporters, scholars, and Non Government Organization (NGO) leaders who can contribute insights into how journalists can better discover, access, and use digital government information; and
  • Inform government professionals about the use of technology to provide better access to government information

The conference is free and open to the public, though registration is required. Breakfast, lunch, and refreshments are included. The conference sessions will be videotaped and made available for viewing at a later date. For more information, please contact MAGIC@nara.gov.”

Website: MAGIC

Mobile Citizen Summit

April 16, Washington, D.C.

From the organizers: “You have heard the word, mobile is the new hot thing. You have convinced your management to start using mobile, but how do you actually use mobile to engage citizens and create impact? The Mobile Citizen Summit is a one-day learning laboratory for those interested in applying mobile technologies to empower, fuel and drive citizen engagement in the public good. Our focus is on providing you with informative and practical discussions.”

Website: Mobile Citizen Summit

Transparency Camp

April 30-May 1, Washington, DC
The 2010 Transparency Camp delved into open data, coffee, open government, culture and yes, transparency. Look for more of the same.

Website: transparencycamp.org

Open Government and Innovations Conference

Likely in May 2011, Washington, DC
Applied uses of platforms, social media, culture change and more, all relevant transparency and open government

Website: http://events.1105govinfo.com/events/ogi-open-government-2010/home.aspx

Gov 2.0a

May 6-7, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

From the organizers: “The second annual Gov 2.0a conference is focused on applications of technology to government problems. The conference will be a forum to learn about successful Gov 2.0 applications through case studies, to learn about best practices for Gov 2.0 applications, and to network with other professionals from city and state organizations, community groups, non-profits and the private sector who share interest in the application of technology to improve the functioning of our government.”

Website: Gov20a.com

Fedtalks Open Government Summit

May 11, Washington, D.C.

From the organizers: “FedScoop’s Open Government & Citizen Engagement Summit, part of the FedTalks event series, will bring together leading federal government and industry experts to discuss the state of open government and tech solutions to better engage citizens.”

Website: Fedscoop.com/fedtalks/opengov2011

OpenGov West

May 13-14, Portland, OR
Open government and Gov 2.0 community leaders, public officials, citizens and technologists from all over the West Coast.

Website: opengovwest.org

Local Open Government Summits

May 13-22, 2011, 35+ cities
In 2011, there will be a host of other camps too, as readers will find below, and a new initiative: local open government innovation summits. According to the organizers, “The summits’ overarching objective is to gather citizens and local government staff together in dialogue for knowledge-sharing and relationship-building. It is not necessary to include action planning, identification of next steps, or decision-making into your local summit. A successful outcome is raising awareness of local gov officials that they are not alone as they implement open government programs and that they can access the expertise of the broader open government community. The target is 50+ local summits across the US and internationally.”

Website: opengovplaybook.org

OpenGov Camp

June 4-5, NYC

From the organizers: “OpenGov Camp is a one day conversation on how participation builds transparency to deliver efficiency. We are a community of doers and decision-makers talking about what works—and what doesn’t. Whether you are a developer, journalist, activist, organizer or government employee, you should attend. For one day, we ask you three questions:

  • Where is “local” Open Government going?
  • How can we deepen the knowledge of what Open Government can be?
  • What are the social and technical tools affecting Open Government’s development?”

Website OpenGovNYC

Personal Democracy Forum

June 6-7, New York City, NY
This world-class conference exploring and analyzing technology’s impact on politics and government is back for the 8th year in New York City.

Website: personaldemocracy.com

OSCON 2011

July 25-29, 2011, Portland, OR
The O’Reilly Open Source Convention is the crossroads of all things open source. Open source plays an increasingly important role in government. The processes involved in open source itself have served as a model for open government.

Website: oscon.com/oscon2011

Supernova Hub

Likely in July 2011 in Philadelphia, PA (Unconfirmed)
Technologists, entrepreneurs, business executives, investors, and policy-makers have come to Supernova for strategic insights on our increasingly interconnected world

Website: supernovahub.com

Strata NYC

September 19-21, NYC, NY
To say that big data is a big deal for government is an obvious understatement. Government, after all, has extraordinary amount of data, with much more becoming available as open data initiatives move forward. The first Strata Conference in February 2011 was a sold-out hit. Strata NYC will pull together global leaders in big data in the Big Apple.

Website: strataconf.com

Fedtalks 2011

October 12th, Washington, DC

Open government went to the theater at the first Fedtalks. In 2011, look for more federal government and industry experts to discuss the state of innovation in government.

Website: Fedscoop.com/fedtalks/fedtalks2011

GOSCON

October 2011, Portland, OR
If 2010 was a year where open government moved “beyond plans to practice,” by late 2011 there should be many more case studies of implementation. GOSCON – the government open source conference – will feature discussions and presentations about how government leaders, innovators and smart operations are using open source.

Website: goscon.org

Digital Capital Week

November 4 – November 11, Washington, DC

Last year, the inaugural Digital Capital Week showcased tech innovation in Washington. The 2011 version of Digital Capital Week bids to be even bigger.
Website: digitalcapitalweek.org

Web 2.0 Summit

November 15-17, San Francisco
This event brings together business leaders, big thinkers, and innovative technologists who are shaping the future of the Web. In 2011, it’s clear that the shape of that future matters for government and citizens alike.

Website: web2summit.com

Live townhall from Twitter HQ with US UN @AmbassadorRice [#AskAmbRice]

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Today at 1 PM EST, Susan Rice, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, participated in a live town hall on foreign policy. Archived video from the livestream is embedded below:

Here’s how Ambassador Rice described the digital town hall at the White House blog:

When I left the West Coast after college in 1986, only one in 500 Americans owned a cell phone – and these were essentially bricks about 10 inches long. IBM had just announced its first laptop, which weighed 12 pounds. The founders of Facebook, I can only imagine, were then figuring out how to master nap time and tee ball.

As I go back again this week to take part in a Twitter Town Hall in San Francisco, an event that will be carried live on Twitter and Ustream at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, the Bay Area looks quite a bit different. Education and innovation – “the currency of the 21st century,” in the words of President Obama – have changed the face of Silicon Valley and much of the world. But our interconnected age has also brought us new challenges. Today, transnational threats can sweep across borders as freely as a mass migration, an environmental calamity, or a deadly disease.

The Obama Administration is working every day to meet these challenges through our work at the United Nations, which plays an essential role as a keeper of peace, a provider of emergency aid, and a mediator between nations. You may agree – or disagree – with an approach to foreign policy that makes the best use of this complicated but indispensable institution. Whatever your views, I encourage you to send me your questions tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific Time on Twitter, using the hashtag, #AskAmbRice.

A snapshot of the conversation is featured using the Twitter search widget below.

new TWTR.Widget({
version: 2,
type: ‘search’,
search: ‘#AskAmbRice’,
interval: 6000,
title: ‘Ask’,
subject: ‘Ambassador Rice’,
width: ‘auto’,
height: 300,
theme: {
shell: {
background: ‘#0a1585’,
color: ‘#ffffff’
},
tweets: {
background: ‘#ffffff’,
color: ‘#444444’,
links: ‘#1985b5’
}
},
features: {
scrollbar: false,
loop: true,
live: true,
hashtags: true,
timestamp: true,
avatars: true,
toptweets: true,
behavior: ‘default’
}
}).render().start();

Here’s the uStream social stream: