GovLoop: The Premier Government Online Community

By Bob Gourley

In this series of posts we are providing views on three key community-focused, virtuous collaborative venue that help the DC tech community exchange lessons learned and accomplish big goals. With this series we hope to provide insights you can use to make the most out of MeriTalk, GovLoop, and WashingtonExec. We selected these three because we have first hand experience with them all and have seen not only proof that they do good work, but proof that they really care about the community. These three groups add value to the people leading the technological components of our large ecosystem.

In this post we review GovLoop

GovLoop is big. The founder of GovLoop, Steve Ressler, has never aimed low and the ability of GovLoop to contribute to dialog on issues that matter is proof that his approach pays off. The GovLoop site now has over 60,000 members, all either in or around government (State, Local, Federal).

GovLoop’s approach to technology is to leverage the best for what they need and that comes through in all they do. The result is an easy to use experience that gets info to you in the format you need. You can also create content at GovLoop, including hosting your own blog. There is an active community that comments, reads and forwards content so this is a great place to express yourself.

One feature I strongly encourage you to leverage is the Dorobek Insider. Chris Dorobek is one of the DC areas most recognizable and professional journalists and his insightful reports are available by podcast. Sign up by clicking the image on the left of the main GovLoop site.

GovLoop has a broad appeal and a wide focus, so as a technologist you may want to zero in on your interest by visiting the technology topic section at: https://www.govloop.com/technology From there you can dive into sub topics like BYOD, Digital Government, Cyber Security, Analytics and GIS.

GovLoop also produces guides on topics like BYOD and GIS that mix in the best of GovLoop (insights from community, Dorobek interviews and case studies). https://www.govloop.com/guides These are not very technical guides but may be of use to the technologist who needs to explain concepts to non technical executives and are well worth checking out.

GovLoop also offers free training events you can check out here: https://www.govloop.com/page/events

Find GovLoop at: