Gov20 Radio Interview

Radio interview after Drupalcon about our NYSenate work on open government / Gov 2.0 with open-source, Drupal specifically: listen here.

Video of my Drupalcon Keynote

Video of my NYSenate.gov keynote panel at Drupalcon 2010 in San Francisco in April 2010, alongside Dave Cole from WhiteHouse.gov and Mike Walsh from ForumOne… My bit begins at 26:00 minutes in.

Video of My Open Gov West Keynote

Video of my keynote address to Open Gov West, March 2010 in Seattle, about open government in the New York State Senate; view on the Seattle Channel.  Presentation slides are here.

Spring Speaking Schedule Re: Technology for Transparency in The New York State Senate

The New York State Senate gets a lot of bad press.  There is, however, a great deal of work going on behind the scenes to help make the Senate as an institution more transparent, efficient, and participatory for the long-haul.  This Spring, we’ll be telling that side of the #NYSenate story to audiences ranging from [...]

2010 Wish: A Non-Profit to Help Government Entities Share Code

We write a lot of code in the New York State Senate Office of the CIO. It’s all released under dual BSD and GPLv3 open-source license, and we post most of it here on GitHub. We fervently hope that our peers in government– whether in other legislative bodies, at other levels of government (e.g.: city, county, federal), or other branches of government (e.g.: NY State Agencies in the Executive Branch)– will find and make use of this code.

However, most of the time for most of our applications to date, the promise of delivering more utility more efficiently by sharing the costs of developing and maintaining application code between peer public sector entities– better leveraging investments of precious tax dollars in public sector IT– is merely a good idea.

I believe that citizens and governments alike would be well-served by an international non-profit entity (or perhaps a consortium of non-profit and for-profit entities committed to open-source?) charged with putting all these techniques together in a way that any public sector institution can easily contribute to and extract value from software development by their peers. Unlike some existing efforts, this organization would NOT be limited to moving the ball forward in a single thematic arena like “transparency” (e.g.: Sunlight Foundation) nor to a single geographic purview (e.g.: US Federal Government or New York State Government), nor focused within a specific government service sector (e.g.: Labor, Motor Vehicles, Tax), nor that is focused on a particular technology stack (e.g.: Drupal for Government).

This Blog Appears to Have Moved To Twitter

I’m a bit disappointed in myself, but long-form blogging just isn’t happening for me these days.  Twitter is a much more manageable thought-sharing and amplifying medium for me at the moment.  I hope to return to this space when I get to a new period of calm!

An Obama Series, and go to Ohio

‘Tis the season, as happens every four years, that I start receiving emailed narratives every day, passed through friends, family and neighbors virtual and literal, that tell the story of a Presidential election and the choice before us, the American people. Some are better than others, and some of the best I’ve ever received I’m [...]

Barack Obama Aerospace Community Meeting at ISDC

Please join us at an organizing meeting for supporters of Barack Obama in the aerospace community on Saturday May 31st during the International Space Development Conference. Event details: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/meeting/4v9q Organizing meeting for Barack Obama supporters attending the International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC, building on the earlier meeting on Thursday, with input from some [...]

Human Barometers, NASA, and Memes That Boomerang

Slides from NASA WebFed Conference Presentation