Yearly Archives: 2013

Learning by Immersion on Guns?

When we think of learning by cultural immersion, many of our minds jump to study abroad programs and foreign language courses. But we were struck by Steve Seeche’s recent blog post on his new opportunity to learn about one side of the gun control debate through a different kind of immersion – taking a gunRead… Read more »

Fire the C Team

The last month I’ve given a talk entitled “Do More with Less”in a number of cities across the country. In the talk, I offer 13 ways agencies can “Do More with Less.” What’s interesting is the #1 most popular idea I present is always “Fire the C Team” My simple thinking is this: We canRead… Read more »

National Day of Civic Hacking: Live Beyond the Day

On June 1, citizens in nearly 100 cities will be hosting events to celebrate the National Day of Civic Hacking. Organized through a cross-sector coalition, this day is a galvanizing moment for our ongoing movement to call citizens into action to help their cities work better through technology. As we’ve seen in the past fewRead… Read more »

Open Source + Community

I’ve been thinking a bit too much lately about GitHub and Drupal.org. More broadly, I’ve had my mind on open source + community. Sometimes this is called social coding. Social coding can take on a variety of shapes and sizes but is short-hand for what I can describe as loosely coupled, sometimes geographically distributed collaborationRead… Read more »

Australia is joining the Open Government Partnership

As reported in Peter Timmins’ Open and Shut blog this morning, the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, has announced that Australia will be joining the Open Government Partnership (OGP) – the leading global organisation for states working towards more open government. Australia is the 59th country to join the OGP, following Ireland (who sent a letter ofRead… Read more »

Hacking the Change You Want to See

On June 1, the City of Oakland will co-host ReWrite Oakland as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking. ReWrite Oakland will be an all day writeathon that will culminate with the launch of a new website called “Oakland Answers,” based on last year’s Code for America project “Honolulu Answers.” Oakland Answers will beRead… Read more »

Impeachment: Myths, Facts, and History

More Empty Impeachment Threats from the GOP Right-wingers trembled with glee when Sen. James Inhofe said that President Obama might be impeached for events in Benghazi. Few rank-and-file Americans understand impeachment or the odds of it happening. It does not mean that the president is fired. Right-wingers trembled with glee when Sen. James Inhofe saidRead… Read more »

Innovation: Inside the Brain

Breakthrough, disruptive innovations do not happen every day and in general are not the daily focus of innovation at organizations. In his book “The Innovator’s Dilemma,”Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen coined the phrase disruptive technology to describe an innovation that displaces an established technology. He acknowledges that most innovation in organizations is “sustaining”Read… Read more »

Launching the Dialogue Storytelling Tool

I’m excited to launch a new tool on the NCDD website to help you share your success stories more broadly The draft tool can be found at www.ncdd.org/storytelling-tool and I encourage everybody to take a look and give the tool a test drive by entering one of your dialogue and deliberation projects! For a longRead… Read more »

Mission Impossible? Reflective Leaders as Change Agents

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”1 So here we are at blog post numero dos, and the big reveal. (If this is blog post number one for you, feel free to read the set-up here. Not necessary though, just put your hands in your lapRead… Read more »