Tech

Military and Government Facebook Pages: Being there is not enough

Today a growing number of military units and government organizations have an official presence in social media and especially on Facebook. Unfortunately, it seems that most organizations just seem to think that being there is good enough. Their fan pages are nothing more than a place to push the same old news releases and selfRead… Read more »

Building a Wiki Community

A couple days ago, I was speaking to the infamous founder of govloop, Steve Ressler. We were discussing ways businesses and government agencies use govloop. During this brainstorm, it occurred to Steve that a blog about Whorunsgov’s attempts to build a community for its moderated wiki could benefit many govloop members. While I had heardRead… Read more »

Gov 2.0: Stay Wired to Share

from adrielhampton.com – Last evening I was reminded about a point Canadian govie Nick Charney made in a recent chat – tools like Twitter are fantastic for connecting those in government (or anywhere, really) who are “wired to share.” That resonates with my strong opinion that “Government 2.0″ is about a culture, not any particularRead… Read more »

Video on Harrisonburg Summits – Open Space Meetings Hosted by Mayor

I’m excited about this 3-minute video that captures the energy at a Harrisonburg Summit. You’ll see footage from my Mayor’s Sustainability Summit, which is archived online. I was honored to have Harrison Owen, the founder of Open Space Technology, come visit me to give guidance on how to design the first summit. Over 150 peopleRead… Read more »

Meet the Beefalo: A Hybrid Approach to Outsourced Municipal IT Services

By Sophicity. The 17th century saw the widespread introduction of domesticated cows to North American shores by English settlers. However, over the next century it became clear that while the cows were docile and produced good milk and meat, they were not particularly well suited to the harsh winters of the New World and consumedRead… Read more »

Is Chirp a safe “Twitter” for the Dept. of Defense/Intelligence Community?

Twitter has had a big impact in the way we communicate, but security concerns have put a damper on its use within the DoD/IC, until now… Welcome Chirp! Chirp is an Open Source Twitter clone available on Intelink. It is on NIPR, SIPR, and JWICS, has an official Authority to Operate (ATO) and on productionRead… Read more »

Usability and Usability.gov

I’m a big fan of the “Redesigning the Government” project over at Sunlight Labs, especially their latest mock-ups for the FCC. One particular part of their post rang true to me, as I’m frequently tasked with developing information architecture for government websites: “In many discussions that we’ve had with people who develop these sites, they’veRead… Read more »