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Government 2.0 Expo Debrief

I started to write this post in a cab as I was heading back from the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington D.C. last week. I remember my head was engulfed in new insights and ideas. I’ve been playing catch-up ever since but it was well worth the 3-day excursion.

As mentioned in my previous post, my goal for this event was to absorb and connect. This was the first social media/web 2.0 related event I attended in a while where I wasn’t speaking myself. This allowed me to open up some additional data absorption chambers in my head and relax instead of obsessively fine-tuning my own content right up until the last minute as is the usual case.

First of all, let me just say that the conference was very well organized by the O’Reilly folks as usual. It seems that whenever I wanted to know where something was, they had people placed to direct me exactly where to go or answer my questions just as they were formulating in my head. Same applies to the Washington Convention Centre staff, who were A+ all the way. I was also delighted to see more fellow Canadians this year in attendance, although still nowhere near the numbers that we should be at.

I’m sure there will be plenty of great Gov 2.0 Expo summary posts and conversations all over the net (just follow the #g2e hashtag or take a look at the news coverage), however I want to take a slightly different approach by posting up some key takeaways from sessions that stood out for me. Please note that I didn’t attend all sessions since there were multiple streams. I’m also not including all the great discussions I had and people I met during the social elements of this event as that would take up the bulk of this post.

DAY 1

Session Notes:

My Favourite Plenaries – 5 minutes each, links go straight to the videos:

Additional links I jotted down that day:

Day 2

Session Notes:

My Favourite Plenaries – 5 minutes each, links go straight to the videos:

Additional links I jotted down that day:

  • Oilreporter.com – Open data based app created to track BP Oil Spill effects
  • Excelgov.com – A conference dedicated to creating a high performance government
  • Openstreetmap Haiti – A collaborative wiki effort to map streets in Haiti after the earthquake
  • Grassrootsmapping.org – Oil spill satellite imagery can apparently be created with a kite and $200
  • Crime Reports 2.0 – The popular crime data mapping tool has been updated (even more updates coming soon)

Day 3

Session Notes:

  • Beyond Apps Contests: The Present and Future Possibilities of Civic Innovation Peter Corbett (iStrategyLabs)
    • My key take-away from this session was a slide that illustrated the progressive steps of open-data civic engagement. Can you guess what step most Canadian government organizations are at?  Hint: it rhymes with “bun” :
      1. Local government info
      2. Open data catalog
      3. Apps contests
      4. Civic hacker networks
      5. Civic innovator networks
      6. Civic innovation
      7. Civic marketplace
    • I was also amazed at just how far the original Apps for Democracy contest had spread worldwide and within the U.S.A
    • The World Bank will soon be launching Apps for Development

My Favourite Plenaries – 5 minutes each, links go straight to the videos:

Additional links I jotted down that day:

  • Intelink – A group of secure intranets used by the United States Intelligence Community (my link only points to Wikipedia article)
  • Arcgis.com – Online maps and apps for public use
  • Esri.com – Same as above
  • The Times UK Article – Every UK citizen is to have a personal government web page
  • Zipcar.com – Car sharing
  • HHS.gov/open – Yet another example of open government data
  • Expertlabs.org -  A non-profit trying to answer the question: “What are the big scientific and technological challenges that America should tackle?”
  • NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan – It cost NATO $50 to create this website (it’s merely a content mashup)

Favourite quote from the expo: “Public servants are content experts and citizens are context experts”

I thought I’d end off this ridiculously long blog post with Doctor Jay Parkinson’s speech on the future of health care. Yes, I did also include it in my links above but chances are you missed it.

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5 Comments

  1. It seems like there is finally some good news with the spill. The Houston Chronicle reports, U.S. ships were being outfitted earlier this month with four pairs of skimming booms airlifted from the Netherlands and should be deployed within days.” Finally a good sign. For all those feeling pretty gloomy about this situation, I recommend a good laugh… Here’s a funny joke, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3j7uSbccSc

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