Archive for September, 2009

In Wellington Today

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

There's an InternetNZ strategy day for the council. I'm not a mad fan of strategy for strategy's sake, but Frank March (InternetNZ President) seems pretty keen to keep it practical. We'll be nailing down issues like: who InternetNZ represents, what types of projects we can support, how we ...

Wellington on a Good Day

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

"You can't beat Wellington on a good day," say the Wellingtonians. Today is not that good day, however, and Wellington could be beaten like a red-headed stepchild. I'm in town Thursday and Friday. My agenda: Nine to Noon InternetNZ New Councilor indoctrination^Wintroduction Silverstripe catchup (I'm on their advisory board) Evensong at ...

InternetNZ: Censorware: Phone call

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

(As a new councillor for InternetNZ, I will be pitching into the issues of copyright and censorship. I'll blog all my InternetNZ work to keep folks following along at home up with the play. I'll be walking the line between transparency and confidentiality, so I beg your forgiveness in advance ...

Gov 2.0 Summit: Tom Steinberg

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Tom Steinberg is my pioneer hero of open government. His group, MySociety, is a British non-profit building things on the web. His things work: fix rate for FixMyStreet is about 50%. That means 10s of thousands of real problems that will get fixed next year. He gave ...

Gov 2.0 Summit: Clay Shirky

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Clay Shirky, clad in the world's shiniest shirt, was introduced as "The Oscar Wilde of the Internet" but that was doing him an injustice for Clay is a fantastic combination of thinker and public speaker. He entranced the audience. He gave two examples: Apps for Democracy vs the LA Times ...

Gov 2.0 Summit: Aneesh Chopra

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Aneesh Chopra is the US Federal CTO. The conversation on stage between him and Tim O'Reilly began with an explanation of the role of the CTO vs that of the CIO (Vivek Kundra). The impression I got was that the CTO has a political role while the CIO ...

Gov 2.0 Summit: Clay Johnson

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

The second Clay, hairier and less well-dressed. Head of Sunlight Labs, part of the Sunlight Foundation. I was at his house on Monday night for a turkey cook-off between him and Chris DiBona of Google. Clay won, by the simple expedient of deep-frying his birds. Clay's ...