Get Official Texts on Local Emergencies via Twitter

It’s widely acknowledged by emergency preparedness officials that text alerts are an important part of their arsenal. As Twitter gains increasing adoption among both engaged citizens and government agencies, there is a simple outreach mechanism for ensuring that alerts are received broadly: SMS signups for Twitter alerts from official emergency accounts. While warning claxons, radio [...]

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Cool Gravity Summit: Tea Parties, Prop 8, Restoring Sanity…Oh My!

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My CityCampSF: Lessons and Next Steps

I am involved with the Gov 2.0 movement because I believe it will bring important change to calcified and inefficient governmental structures. CityCampSF, an unconference held yesterday in San Francisco, will be a success if real actions stem from the event discussions and connections. I got two action items from the event that I intend [...]

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‘Today’ and Tomorrows that Might Be

I’m speaking at Beyond 2010 Edmonton next week, and, stepping out from my usual social media, open data and Gov 2.0 fare, my presentation ties personal childhood passions and forever dreams into a talk called “Sci-fi, Digital Society and the Future of Governance.” Here’s a look at several of the books that figure into this [...]

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Luke Closs: The Innovation Pipeline for Gov

Luke Closs is a Vancouver-based web developer and co-creator of VanTrash, a civic app that notifies residents of local trash pickup schedules and won the “People’s Choice Award” in British Columbia’s “Apps for Climate Action” contest. Luke was recently interviewed on Gov 2.0 Radio, and in this guest post he discusses the benefits of co-creation [...]

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Social Media: Putting a Human Face on Government

At a couple of recent presentations on social media for local government, I asked the audiences of IT professionals which tools they were already using. At least 90 percent indicated they were using Twitter or Facebook, usually both. The battle for social media adoption has been won. However, adoption is just the first step, and [...]

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Upcoming on Gov 2.0 Radio: IT professionals weigh in Gov 2.0; Apps for Climate Action Winners

Tune in to Gov 2.0 Radio on Sunday at 9 p.m. Eastern for a look at how government IT professionals are defining and adopting Gov 2.0 in their agencies. We’ll be talking to Christina Morrison about the findings of a recent HP survey of 103 state, local and federal employees, responding to the question ‘What [...]

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Sourcing a Tweet

By nature, occupation and State of California licensing, I am an investigator. It’s one of the things that endears me to social networking, as I find the web of information endlessly fascinating. When I read a tweet, I’m looking not just at the 140 characters and the author’s name or ID, but also at the [...]

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