A. Fine Blog
Had a fantastic time at David Isenberg’s Freedom to Connect Conference this week -- and not just because the attendees were kind enough to buy many copies of Momentum!
A few reflections:
I was blown away by my panelists presentations. I am very familiar with the work of the Sunlight Foundation, nonetheless, when Micah presented the wide array of existing efforts like Congresspedia and PunchClock as well as works in progress like My Political Notebook, an application to allow voters to track the progress of their elected officials. The breadth and speed that Sunlight covers is awesome -- and tiring to look at!
Our other panelists were Steve Urquhart a sitting state representative in Utah, and all around good fellow, presented the great wikis that he is managing on a variety of issues including school vouchers, and reproductive choice. Steve was very refreshing as a Republican who is honestly interested in conversations about issues not idealogical dicta. I may not agree with him on all of the issues, but I really respect his interest in developing access points to robust conversations about policies.
The final panelist, Fred Hassani, works in the office of the Director of the National Intelligence. Fred manages a series of wikis that connects the 19 Intelligence agencies discuss specific cross-cutting issues. Fred was incredibly candid about working on wikis, even private ones, within a community that isn’t accustomed to sharing information.
Overall, I was so taken with how amazing it is that social media tools are shaping the way that government agencies are working and the input that citizens can have on policy discussions. It feels like the final frontier, I can’t wait to see what’s next!!
PS: My favorite moment of the conference: A young whippersnapper was giving his power point presentation. He made a snarky comment about the origins of the Internet. From the audience, someone shouted, “That’s not how it started, and we should know, we built it!” It was indeed an august group of attendees.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Freedom to Connect Reflections
