I had an idea on Thursday that’s gotten me really excited but which has been burning a hole in my head and taking up way too much of my mental energy since its inception. So, I started to run it by a few folks to see if I’m out of my mind or if I have something here.
For quite some time I’ve been stymied by how to harness the power of the pockets of social media thinking and activity that are in process within various functions in government agencies by tying them together into a cross-agency, cross-functional government 2.0 initiative. It seems to me that this can’t be led by any single department within any single federal agency because it’s not really their charge. It also can’t really be done by a private corporation like Microsoft or Google because then it’s a commercial venture with overt business development objectives. Think tanks have their own political leanings. Academic institutions are more about thinking and researching thank action.
So, what if we hold a Federal Government 2.0 BarCamp unconference organized by all of us: the people and organizations passionate about collaborative government?
The topic of the unconference would be leveraging social media tools and technologies to catalyze and implement collaboration within, across and for the federal government. The unconference would bring together the leading thinkers from government, consulting, academia and industry to practice what we preach:
- share myriad initiatives already in process;
- collaboratively generate ways for the Obama administration to utilize and harness the power of social media as it develops its plans for the next four years;
- provide networking between the new and transitional leadership and those of us already involved and leading government 2.0 throughout the federal government.
I was thinking that January 23 and/or 24 might be a good time to do this — right after the new administration takes its positions, but right at the beginning of them settling in and setting agendas
I think that securing sponsors and drumming up participation would be fairly easy given the tremendous existing government 2.0 network and the social networking tools that we use everyday.
What do you think?
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I think you’re thinking along the same lines of a lot of folks right now, which means that this will certainly happen and needs to.
Here’s some info that will be useful to you:
1) http://transparencycamp.eventbrite.com/ is being hosted by the Sunlight Foundation and iStrategyLabs (and anyone else who wants to help). It will focus specifically on transparency in government through technology.
2) http://barcamp.org/eDemocracyCamp2 is being organized as well for a later date in Feb.
3) I originally was planning an OpenGovLab thing along the lines of what you’re talking about, that spanned exactly the days 1/23 and 1/24 but thought it would be better to fold that into TransparencyCamp. If you lead the charge for an event on 1/23 and 1/24 I’ll certainly be there, will help, and sponsor!
Peter
Maxine,
interesting initiative – it would be great to have an unconference organized by the grass-rots/all-of-us and where we could make the agenda problem/solution centric instead of product pitches.
I’d be willing to through some energy, time and perhaps sponsor money towards realizing this event.
Cheers,
Patrick
Maxine,
I think its a great idea, but I don’t want it to be an echo-chamber, which it can be if we don’t get the people involved who in the Obama administration in which change can happen. Sure we can explore and brainstorm the way forward, but without a person to pitch our ideas to at the end of the day, what will the outcome be.
Having participated in the A-Space Barcamp last year and throwing the Intellipedia BarCamp this year, I can bring some best practices to the event.
In the A-Space BarCamp we had Mike Wertheimer himself come out to hear our thoughts at the end of our long day of talking and brainstorming. And those “wants” we’re heard in helping deliver A-Space as it is today.
For the Intellipedia BarCamp, we were able to identify what we wanted to achieve out of Intellipedia for the next year.
But the biggest part of a BarCamp I think is the face-to-face networking of the key-players who will take “2.0” to the next level.
I like your determination to have it days within his inauguration, but that might be too soon to know and plan who the key Obama players and who we want to “deliver our goals” to at the end of the day.
Maxine – this is a great idea, and one that I’ve contemplated before. However, I always got stuck at the “so what” phase. So, we have this great brainstorming session, we have this great un-conference where all of these ideas are discussed, and then…what happens? Who implements these great ideas? Who’s the organization or person to make these actionable?
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been around enough of the 2.0 crowd to realize that we’d all get together for a session like this to talk even without any promise of anything that would come from it (discussing social media is fun). But then what? If we pull something like this together, don’t we have to identify how and what we’re going to do with our great new ideas?
Rather than thinking about this as a one-time event, why don’t we form some sort of informal network a la the Blog Council focused on Government 2.0? I’m not sure if we do this on something like Intelink or Ning or what, but I think we’d set ourselves up better for long-term success if we bill this as a network of resources dedicated to improving government. Thoughts?
Maxine, I think this is a great idea. In the spring there was a BarCamp.mil, while it was a smaller group of attendees things went really well with some great conversation. The need is definitely there. Let me know what I can do to help.
I work for Oracle and don’t want this to seem like a corporate plug, but we have a social networking platform that we used for our Oracle World conference where people could submit ideas and vote them up for sessions so that the best rose to the top. It also has friends, messaging, groups, profiles, Q&A type sections in the typical social network fashion. If you’re interested I’ll see what I can do to get it released for the barcamp’s use. The group functionality really helps people to continue the conversation after the conference.
Like I said, no pressure to use it, it just worked out really well for the conference and its dead simple for people to use, especially those new to the social networking / 2.0 world. Anything I can do to help I’d be more than happy to.
Matt
Great idea, deserves to happen. Couple quick thoughts (and I respectfully request the right to relaunch any others your way):
– Keep focus on improving government performance and service-delivery
– Critical for success will be the engagement with Obama “web transition team,” in what you term ” networking between the new and transitional leadership and those of us already involved and leading government 2.0″
– Problem there is, O Team so far appears (IMHO) to be focusing on using social media and 2.0 tools not to improve governmental performance or delivery of services, but to maintain and support a “permanent campaign” and provide the ability to mobilize crowds for political agenda support. See article in today’s Washington Post.
– Agree to keep this from being a Microsoft or Google etc. effort (did I say that? 🙂
– Might be helpful to engage especially Treasury Department, which is a center of the universe right now. Getting them to acknowledge that the current reality of “Meltdown Response” being so fast-paced is what should require 2.0 tools. A wiki to maintain and share baseline knowledge on financial-sector issues would be helpful, since one hand of Treasury doesn’t know what other hand of Federal Reserve is doing, etc etc. Making a centerpiece of Financial Policy might help your effort more than just sticking with the old IC Intellipedia crowd, as much as I love them.
Good luck, let us all know how to help.
I just came back to see if my comment was showing and to see all the input so far and I noticed my earlier comment is still in moderation. It must because I have two links link my comment. I guess I need to apologize for wanting to give more information in my answers 🙂
I think this is a fantastic idea, and I’d like to echo lewisshepard’s comments regarding government services. Most e-gov gatherings I’ve been to have focused on activism and very lofty goals to change policy. Meanwhile, we’re still not doing much to leverage the Internet to help people navigate bureaucracies.
I’d love to do it around the inauguration b/c that might let me finagle a trip out to DC for the big day, but I agree with Andrea that it might be too early.
Thank you all for your responses, comments, red flags, suggestions and ideas. I really appreciate you taking the time to seriously entertain this idea with the collaborative spirit of social media.
I agree with Andrea’s comment about not making this “an echo chamber.” So, let’s pool our networks and figure out how to start open dialogue with the Obama technology transition folks.
I know Julius Genachowski’s business partner, Sean Greene. I think that reaching out directly to Julius might be a good place to start. Do any of you know Julius personally or shall I work my 1-degree of separation?
Do you think that a specific proposal, e.g. the Gov’t 2.0 BarCamp idea, or offering up our collective knowledge, experience and passion in a more general way will be more useful/engaging/enticing for him/them? I am in the process of drafting an e-mail…
Count me in, and I echo some of the thoughts already shared. Within government, currently a lot of the bigger/main agencies are leading the way (which is awesome). But, I think it’d be great to reach out to those within government agencies who want to integrate social media tools, but who have yet to do so. In 2009, there is the Social Media and Government conference that perhaps some of our leading DC social media types could attend/present to try and merge the two communitites (government and social media types) more. Look forward to seeing what develops.
Maxine, et al.,
Terrific evolution of the idea so far. Just wanted to note that the Federal Consortium for Virtual WOrlds is having an April 2009 conference of its own, but I am sure those folks both overlap some here and would be greatly interested in this idea. In fact, I’ll bet the Information Resources Management College at the National Defense University (when came the consortium a couple years ago) would be willing to help with meeting resources both in the real and virtual worlds. They have four islands in Second Life with a large (240-person) auditorium that is available for government users. In addition, Both the Coast Guard and the Navy recently have moved to set policies regarding social networking use, so they are likely players and worth studying as well.
I’m not opposed to moving out before the administration on this. My guess is that nothing related to improving government performance is going to get much traction within the first 100 days, as the financial crisis, closing Guantanamo, lighting a fire under the Bin Laden search and crafting the Iraq withdrawal will be the foci. I favor providing a comprehensive, well-thought, carefully crafted proposed plan to the administration. We should include whomever represents them, of course, but waiting seems unnecessary given the wide range of activity ongoing and beginning every day. It seems so very important to prevent anti-silo Web 2.0 efforts from becoming siloed and to help agencies from reinventing wheels.
And after all, all the efforts within agencies so far have gotten going without the Obama folks. I’m sure they would deeply appreciate a briefing on what all is underway and where the experts in agencies think things should go from here. No need for THEM to reinvent the wheel that way!
Kudos to you!
This is definitely an idea worth exploring. I would be willing to help where I can.
I’m assuming someone is putting together a list of interested participants. Please include me on it. Thank you.
Cheers,
Michael
—-
Blog Council // VP, Community
michael@blogcouncil.org // twitter: merubin
Here is a mores sucinct version of this idea.
Concept: a Federal Government 2.0 BarCamp-style “unconference” organized by the thought leaders from government, consulting, academia and industry who are passionate about collaborative government and currently leading social media government initiatives.
Rationale: There are collaborative work models in action across our federal agencies to reinvent public affairs, involve citizens, and innovatively solve challenging problems. However, to move our country through the 21st century, we need to harness the collective power of these pockets of social media thinking and activity.
Topic: Leveraging social media tools and technologies to catalyze and implement collaboration within, across and for the federal government.
Goals: Bring together the government 2.0 community to practice the collaborative problem-solving that we believe in to:
– share myriad initiatives already in process;
– collaboratively generate ways for the Obama Administration to utilize and harness the power of social media as it develops plans for the next four years;
– provide networking between the new leadership and those of us already leading government 2.0 initiatives throughout the federal government.
I continue to get good feedback and suggestions as I shop this idea around. I learned a little more today about how long the political appointment process is and how most slots won’t be filled even a year after inauguration!
I’ll keep you posted …. going to move this concept forward soon…. stay tuned.
Sounds like it could be fun, but who will be there? Will it be a mob of social media consultants or the people driving things on the Hill, in the executive branch, etc. Hopefully the latter. The smaller the individual rooms the better because it helps to force discussion (vs. lectures).
Another thing to watch out for is the creep that seems to be happening with barcamps lately – people call it a barcamp, but pre-script everything so it is just another conference and not an unconference. Add big sponsors to the mix and what could have been a barcamp turns into a New New Internet Conference (a conference that did not offer bloggers credentials because they were not mainstream media).
But enough about the dark side of it. If you decide to organize one you may want to check with the folks at the Council for Excellence in Government and see if they have anything to add.