Category Archives: Twitter

White House turns to Twitter to discuss President Obama’s Middle East speech

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The role of mobile phones, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in the revolutions that have swept the Middle East in 2011’s historic “Arab Spring” has been the subject of much debate for months. While connection technologies helped to accelerate and amplify the news coming out of Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and the rest of the region, it’s the incredible bravery of the young people who have stood up for their freedom in the streets that made change happen.

Tomorrow, President Obama will deliver a speech that many experts expect to reshape the Middle East policy debate. The speech will be live-streamed from the State Department and available to anyone online  at WhiteHouse.gov/live. In conjunction with the speech, the foremost curator of online media about the Arab Spring, Andy Carvin (@acarvin), will join with Foreign Policy’s Mark Lynch (@abuaardvark) in hosting a Twitter chat on the Middle East that will include an interview White House deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes after the president concludes his remarks.

Earlier today, White House new media director Macon Phillips (@macon44) explained how the White House will continue the conversation on Twitter over at WhiteHouse.gov:

Immediately afterwards, the live-stream will switch to a follow-up Twitter chat with Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, where anyone will be able to pose questions and reactions via Twitter.

NPR’s Andy Carvin (@acarvin) and Foreign Policy’s Marc Lynch (@abuaardvark), two experts who bring both a deep understanding of foreign policy and extensive online networks, will facilitate a world-wide conversation that will include participants from the Middle East and North Africa.  As Andy explains:

Rather than come up with all the questions ourselves, we’d like to invite you to help us craft the questions. If you’re on Twitter and want to submit a question, please post a tweet with your question and include the hashtag #MEspeech in the tweet. You can pose your question before or during the speech. We won’t be able to get to every question, of course, so we encourage everyone to follow the #MEspeech hashtag and join the broader conversation about the speech on Twitter.

Folks at the White House (@whitehouse) will be keeping an eye on the #MESpeech hashtag as well, so be sure to use that to share thoughts before, during and after the speech.

Keep an eye on that hashtag tomorrow: this will get interesting.

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UPDATE: I’ve embedded the archive from today’s Twitter chat at the end of the post along with video from the White House. Quick thoughts on the outcome of today’s “Twitter chat.”

1) I thought Carvin and Lynch did a phenomenal job, and that this was well worth their considerable effort. Carvin described the experience of a Twitter interview as akin to “juggling and riding a unicycle simultaneously, all the while trying to interview a senior administration official.” The two men asked tough questions from a global audience, starting with fundamental issues of trust and policy towards Bahrain, shared the questions and answers as they went on Twitter, often including the @ handle of the person who asked them. The result was a fascinating window into one future of new media, geopolitics and journalism. The considerable trust that they were given to find and ask the best questions was, in my eyes, paid back with interest. Well done.

2) It was also hard not to see a marked contrast between the recent “Facebook townhall” where founder Mark Zuckerberg asked President Obama all of the questions and Andy Carvin bringing questions culled from a real time global conversation to Ben Rhodes.

3) On a week when the executive editor of the New York Times offered considerable skepticism about Twitter’s value, this event serves as a quiet, powerful reminder of the platform’s global reach in the hands of those willing to fully engage the public there.

4) Poynter has an excellent background post regarding why NPR’s Andy Carvin is moderating the White House Middle East speech Twitter chat. NPR’s managing editor for digital news explained:

“Andy has cultivated a unique audience and following around the world and is the right person to carry on a conversation and channel a wide range of questions from around the world. He’s been doing it for months.”

If the interview were being conducted another way, Stencel said, perhaps a program host or a beat reporter would’ve done it.

Carvin “has the talent in this format that our hosts have in commanding the air. Andy is in essence the Neal Conan [host of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation”] of social media. He understands the format and he can conduct the interview in a way that takes a combination of smarts and skills that’s rare in media.”

That’s about right. In May 2011, there is no one using Twitter in this way more effectively than Andy Carvin. He has been more actively and deeply engaged in finding, validating and distributing the digital documentary evidence emerging from the Middle East on social networks and video sharing sites over the past six months than anyone else on the planet. He’s been storytelling using what Zenyep Tufecki aptly called “Twitter’s oral history” in a way that brings the voices and vision of millions of people crying out for freedom to the rest of the world. Today, he brought their questions into the State Department and White House. Pairing him with a foreign policy expert in Lynch brought significant weight and contextual experience to interviewing Rhodes. Well done.

For more, Nancy Scola wrote up Carvin and Lynch’s ‘Twitter interview’ with Rhodes over at techPresident. As always, she’s worth reading on it.

With a new road map, New York City aims to be the nation’s premier digital city

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Today, New York City released its strategy to use technology to improve productivity, save money, attract startups and upgrade the services it provides to citizens. That’s a tall order, but then New Yorkers have rarely been know to think small or dream moderately.

“We want New York City to be the nation’s premier digital city – in how local government interacts with New Yorkers, in how New Yorkers have access to and capitalize on new technologies, and in how our tech and digital media sectors evolve, grow businesses and create jobs,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement. His office released an official statement digital roadmap at MikeBloomberg.com. “NYC’s #digitalroadmap has 4 goals: access, open government, citizen engagement & expanding NYC’s digital job growth,” tweeted Bloomberg after the announcement.

Nick Judd secured an advance copy of NYC’s road map to the digital city over at techPresident, which I’ve embedded below, and has this analysis of some of the important bytes.

There are no explicit plans in the report for increasing the number of available datasets — such as more detailed city budget data — but do include an “apps wishlist” to streamline the process of requesting more data.

Implementing the recommendations in the report will in large part be the responsibility of city Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Carole Post, who is already in the process of pushing internally for updated city IT.

Archived video of today’s announcement by Mayor Bloomberg and NYC chief digital officer Rachel Sterne (which was, appropriately, livestreamed online) is embedded below.

Watch live streaming video from nycgov at livestream.com

While some media outlets will focus on NYC embracing Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare as digital partners, a notable aspect of today’s news that may fly under the radar may be that NYC.gov will be adding APIs for Open311, its open data mine and other Web efforts. Those are the open government pillars that will support New York City’s effort to architect a city as a platform. For more on how New York City is citizensourcing smarter government, head on over to Radar.

Social media will play a role in the months ahead. When Adam Sharp, Twitter’s government guy, tweeted out the Wall Street Journal above, he highlighted a feature that melds social media with old school mobile technology: the use of “Fast Follow,” a function that goes back to Twitter’s earliest days.

“New Yorkers who want to follow @nycgov by SMS can text “follow nycgov” to 40404. No @Twitter acct or computer needed,” tweeted Sharp.

That means that every resident with a phone call can receive updates from the city’s official account. It will be interesting to see if city government advertises that to its residents over the coming months, particularly in areas where Internet penetration rates are lower.

Anil Dash, native New Yorker, blogger and entrepreneur, highlighted something important in the plan that transcended any particular initiative, technology or policy: it captures New York City government thinking about the Web as a public space.

It’s an extraordinary document, and as someone who loves the web, civic engagement, public infrastructure and New York City, it feels like a momentous accomplishment, even though it marks the beginning of a years-long process, not just the end of a months-long one.

But the single biggest lesson I got from the 65-page, 11.8mb PDF is a simple one: The greatest city in the world can take shared public spaces online as seriously as it takes its public spaces in the physical world.

As you’d expect, there’s a press release about the Digital Road Map, but more reassuringly, the document demonstrates the idea of the web as public space throughout, making the idea explicit on page 43:

Maintaining digital ‘public spaces’ such as nyc.gov or 311 Online is equally important as maintaining physical public spaces like Prospect Park or the New York Public Library. Both digital and physical should be welcoming, accessible, cared for, and easy to navigate. Both must provide value to New Yorkers. And for both, regular stewardship and improvements are a necessity.

New York City’s road map for a digital city plan is embedded below. You also can download the digital city roadmap as a PDF.

NYC ODC 90day Report 5-15C(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();

UPDATE: There are some concerns about what happens next out there in the community. New York City resident and director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) Steven Romalewski also listened in on the announcement and blogged his concerns about ‘open data fatigue“:

I always worry when I see the city touting its technology efforts without also including local Community Boards, neighborhood groups, business advocates, urban planners, other elected officials, etc. who rely on access to public data so they can hold government accountable and do their jobs better. In my view, these groups need the data moreso than app developers. That is why open data efforts and policies are so important.

But the city seems more focused on apps than on community. I understand the economic development appeal of fostering startups. But the open data movement long predated apps.  I highlighted this in my post last year (see the “Misplaced Priorities” section).

Apps are great (I use them constantly, and I’ve even developed one myself). And kudos to the city and its agencies for responding to app developers and making data more open so the developers can do great things with the data (things even the city might not do).

I just hope the latest announcements by the city will result in more real and lasting efforts to make data easier to access than the latest check-in craze. The Mayor already expressed some hesitation to making data accessible when a reporter asked him about CrashStat. CrashStat is a great example of my point — it wasn’t created to be an “app” per se; it’s an effort by a local nonprofit group to use public data to educate the public and hold government agencies more accountable about traffic injuries and fatalities. But the Mayor said he didn’t even know what CrashStat was, while making excuses about not making data available if it’s not in electronic format, or needs to be vetted, or is “sensitive”.  Blah blah blah – we’ve heard all that before and it undermines my confidence in the city’s pronouncements that more data will really be made open.

The consequences of connectivity in an information age

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win 7 devicesLast night, author Sean Power (@seanpower) was able to recover his lost laptop and belongings using the tracking software (@preyproject), Twitter and some brave, helpful human beings. It’s a fascinating outcome. As Power tweeted afterwards, this is “a great story, and brings up many implications re: vigilantism, crime in the era of realtime, and findability.”

In many ways, this story of loss and recovery serves as a fascinating insight into the century ahead in an increasingly networked society. There’s Orwell’s Big Brother, created by a growing number of cameras, satellite photos, wiretaps and intercepts, and there’s Little Brother, made up of citizens toting mobile phones. When the TSA patted down a baby this week at an airport, a pastor (@JacobJester) in line saw it, snapped a picture and tweeted it.

This is, to be fair, a leading edge case. Power is more connected online than many of his fellow citizens, technically proficient enough to install open source tracking software and sufficiently deft to leverage his distributed network of friends in real-time.

That said, it’s a reasonable expectation that we’ll be seeing variants of these kinds of stories in the years ahead. They’ll often end with the same moral: <a href="don’t steal computers from people who know how to use computers. Freelance journalist Branden Ballenger (@btballenger) used Storify to document Power’s story, which I’ve embedded below.

http://storify.com/btballenger/man-tracks-stolen-laptop-thousands-of-miles-away.js[View the story “Man tracks stolen laptop hundreds of miles away, calls thief” on Storify]

Architecting a city as a platform [VIDEO]

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The 21st century metropolis can be a platform for citizens, government and business to build upon. The vision of New York City as a data platform has been getting some traction of late as the Big Apple’s first chief digital officer, Rachel Sterne, makes the rounds on the conference circuit. In the video below, Sterne gives a talk the recent PSFK Conference where she highlights various digital initiatives that NYC has rolled out.

PSFK CONFERENCE NYC 2011: Rachel Sterne from Piers Fawkes on Vimeo.

During her talk, Sterne talks about “The Daily Pothole,” how NYC is tumbling, QR code technology on building permits, a NYC 311 app and using Twitter, amongst other themes.

For more on how New York City is citizensourcing smarter government, head on over to Radar.

[Hat tip: PSFK]

Gov 2.0 gets applied in Oklahoma [#Gov20a]

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In the Gov 2.0a conference going on today and tomorrow in Oklahoma, the “a” stands for “applied,” as in implementing technology, processes and people strategy to make government work better. There should be some video going up later, along with pictures from Adriel Hampton and a blog post or three from from the attendees. Until that goes online, the tweetstream has told the best tale of what’s been happening at the conference. I used Storify to chronicle the story online.

http://storify.com/digiphile/gov20a-gov-20-goes-to-oklahoma.js[View the story “Gov20a: Gov 2.0 Goes to Oklahoma” on Storify]

Open Government Camp: Sunlight’s tools for transparency

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So this one time, at Transparency Camp…

I’m still thinking through all of the things I learned at the Sunlight Foundation’s annual unconference last weekend. My top level takeaway was the large number of international campers solidified that transparency has gone global. At an operational level, I thought that the Sunlight Foundation used the combination of Internet and mobile technology to organize better than any of the previous unconferences I’ve attended. They raised the bar for interactivity with a new mobile app, integrated displays and livestreaming.

Putting the tools together to bring off a big camp is a lot harder than listing them, but by sharing the tools for transparency that the organizers used, Scott Stadum did the open government community a mitzvah. While that mobile app required development time and expertise, the vast majority of these tools are free on the Web.

Here’s a quick rundown of the tools that were used during Transparency Camp 2011:

Great stuff.

Stadum did forget one tool, even as he used it: the Sunlight Foundation’s blog.

From where I sit, a well designed and maintained blog continues to be extremely useful as the hub for organizing, particularly in a Web application ecosystem that supports the kind of diversity in platforms listed above. Sunlight does a great job with that, and in using it as a platform to track news that matter, like open government data.

Thanks again to the organizers, sponsors, hosts and, most of all, the attendees of Transparency Camp, who taught me a lot about open government over the course of two days.

Taking stock of global freedom of expression on World Press Freedom Day

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In 2010, only 1 in 6 people lives in countries with a free press, according to a new report on press freedom from Freedom House. There is a long road ahead to establishing and protecting freedom of expression for humanity.

Freedom House Survey of Global Media Independence

This week, defenders of free expression are celebrating the progress of press freedom and recognizing the challenges that persist globally on World Press Freedom Day 2011. This is the 20th anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration that helped to establish UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day. The United States is hosting this year’s World Press Freedom Day in Washington, D.C. at the Newseum. You can watch the livestream below and follow the conversation on Twitter on the #wpfd hashtag, both of which are embedded below.

wpfd2011 on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

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To learn more about global freedom of expression and and the organizations that protect journalists and support the collection and dissemination of news about our world, visit:

Can open government be embedded?

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This morning, the White House posted President Obama’s long form birth certificate to the public. Now that the White House has released the president’s long form birth certificate to the media (and directly over Twitter to everyone) I hope that the country can move on to the much greater issues that confront the country and humanity as a whole.

Honestly, it was much cooler to watch Mr. Obama speak live using the White House iPhone application than to see the President of the United States take time to debunk the issue that has been settled for years. His remarks are embedded below:

It’s also worth noting the evolution of the White House’s new media strategy, where a government document was not only released directly to the American people as a PDF over social networks but was uploaded to Slideshare where it can be embedded on other webpages to be spread even further, as I have done below.

The White House is not alone in using SlideShare to create embeddable documents. The Congressional Budget Office, Department of Energy, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. National Library of Medicine are sharing information there as well. The military has created channels there too, including the Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy.

To be clear, releasing documents online in of itself is not nor will ever be a full measure of government transparency. Open government is a mindset, not just a matter of adopting new tools. For open government to endure in an era of budget austerity, it will need to be baked in to how government operates, with a clear connection to how it helps deliver on the mission of agencies and officials.

That said, creating online channels with embeddable content is taking more than a few steps forward from paper memos dropped into file cabinets or proclamation read over the radio.

Here’s to moving forward to work on the stuff that matters.

President Obama's Long Form Birth Certificate

View more documents from White House

Mapping corruption tweets in real-time in India [MASHUP]

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Transparency has gone global. Today, there’s a mashup of corruption-related tweets in India and Google Maps to explore.

Add an expanding number of data points in how Gov 2.0 and open government are taking root in India.

Hat tip to Andrew McLaughlin.

The State Department is tumbling

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Have no fear – or hope, depending upon your perspective: the United States Department of State is not undergoing a revolution. They have, however, added one more tool to the digital diplomacy toolkit: they’ve started a new blog on Tumblr, a rapidly growing blogging platform.

The State Department started tumbling at StateDept.tumblr.com on Monday, a few weeks after Tumblr was added to Apps.gov. The General Services Administration started the first federal agency Tumblr last month for the new USA.gov blog.

So far, the folks over at Foggy Bottom have tumbled about relief efforts in Japan, aid for Africa, a partnership in Ukraine, shared video of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talking with Israeli President Shimon Peres and posted a dispatch from EWC in the Pacific.

In the process, they’ve integrated pictures from Flickr, text from state.gov and video from YouTube – a reminder of how much of a pastiche creating and publishing media in a Gov 2.0 world has become.

Tumblr looks like a good platform for the diversity of content and context that State has to share. Sharp-eyed observers will have to wait to see if they are willing to fully engage with the Tumblr community reblogging other posts as well. For instance, if any digital diplomats come across the map of a tweet that I found through Stowe Boyd, they should feel more than welcome to reblog it. (I hear the State Department finds Twitter pretty interesting these days.)