Yearly Archives: 2011

Gov 2.0 Roundup: Week of February 18, 2011

A California Representative introduces legislation to protect consumer privacy online, state and local government employ crowdsourcing tools to gather citizen feedback, CIA gets social, President Obama has dinner plans with some of the best known representatives of the high tech industry, and Gov20LA founder Alan Silberberg shares takeaways from the most recent conference, all inRead… Read more »

Couch Potato Democracy?*

I was thinking about the remarkable power of citizens and their determination to peacefully overthrow the governments in Egypt and Tunisia. Their hope now is to replace decades old regimes with a democratic form of government whose leaders are selected and elected by the people. The model nation they are using? The United States ofRead… Read more »

New Article: Lessons from The West Wing

Check out my article, Lessons from The West Wing, in the Austin-based literary journal, Black Heart Magazine. It’s about a trip I took to the set of The West Wing during its final season of filming. I got to go for winning the Film DC Screenwriting Competition for my feature-length script, Mount Pleasant. While behindRead… Read more »

Less is More

Optimism is rising among small business owners, but, according to a recent Citibank survey, the rosier outlook may not lead to more hiring, Dow Jones Newswire reports today. While more than 80% of small company CEOs think that 2011 will be better than 2010, only 14% say they will hire additional employees. Unfortunately, this isRead… Read more »

Sharing Critical Information with Public: Lessons for Governments

Increasingly governments are looking for new and more impactful ways to communicate with citizens. There is a slow but growing awareness that traditional sources of outreach, such as TV stories and newspaper advertisements are either not reaching a significant portion of the population and/or have little impact on raising awareness of a given issue. TheRead… Read more »

Weekly Round-up: February 18, 2011

Gadi Ben-Yehuda New for Govvies (especially Muni-Govvies): Krisy Fifelsky, the Web Services Manager for the City of Reno, Nevada, has overhauled her blog and added a video feature. GovGirl.com. Check it out! NASA and State Department in the Social Media Spotlight. Articles on Ragan and HuffPo hlighlight the work of these two federal agencies inRead… Read more »

The Modern Policy Wonk Workstation

The web is integral to my work. Here’s a mockup of my workstation on a typical workday (Note that dual monitors are integral to this set up)(click to enlarge): Tweetdeck (for Twitter) Tweetdeck is open almost all day, and I am constantly paying partial attention to it. I have a it broken down into multipleRead… Read more »

SLVHD & UPHA Join Forces “On The Hill”

Today Salt Lake Valley Health Department and the Utah Public Health Association spent the day “On The Hill”, speaking to Utah House Representatives about public health bills in the 2011 General Session. With my microphone in hand, I was lucky enough to speak to both supporters and sceptics of bills such as HB 102 ElectronicRead… Read more »

Contracting Skills Championship

I just read an article that featured memory competitions. For example, at the USA Memory Championship, participants compete in 10 events. One event involves memorizing random digits in a short time and repeating as many as possible. Another is memorizing the order of a card deck and repeating it as fast as possible. I thinkRead… Read more »