Tweet

Gov 2.0 L.A. Hybrid Un-conference

As the 3rd annual Gov 2.0 L.A. (Gov20LA) approaches on April 21, 2012; I have been thinking a lot about why I started this conference and what it means for you, for me and for our futures. A few years back I wrote this piece “What is Gov20LA All About?”

In the 3 years since we have seen huge growth in social media, cloud computing, mobile technologies and the subsequent explosion of citizen involvement with our governments. This has caused all kinds of situations, good and bad. On the good we are seeing country after country begin to adopt open data and transparent aspects to their internal and external operations. We have seen citizens empowered to use their voice, many for the first time ever. We have witnessed several countries fall to “soft power” of people organizing, and then acting on the organization to effect change of a type we have never seen in our collective human history. On the bad, we are seeing totalitarian governments around the world cling to these new technologies and indeed even the people’s response to them; to crack down, imprison people, kill people and break up organized groups.

I have written in the past about the two headed side of #gov20 and social media in general with regard to Governments and the people who interact with them. This dichotomy is growing, not abating. We see people using technologies to force change yet at same time we are witnessing governments around the world investigate the same technologies to prevent change.

Gov20LA was created to act as a forum to collect the best and brightest people and their ideas and enable them to tell the world their stories. The idea has always been to empower people through learning about the cutting edge applications of technology in government and by the companies servicing them. We feel that by letting you see the speakers in a casual, yet live setting online – we all can learn from the human conversation and dialogue.

Technology is great, solves lots of problems and saves money when properly applied. The problem with most technology conferences and events is they are too jargon laden and usually do not encourage open dialogue with the speakers. We do the opposite. We want the dialogue. We want our speakers interacting both with the live audience in the room and the global Internet TV audience. So we have created an open environment, with some truly amazing people from inside and outside government leading the dialogue.

I am personally so humbled and excited by the continued awesome response Gov20LA receives worldwide. I can’t wait for this year. Join me. Thank you.

Tweet

Gov 2.0 L.A. Hybrid camp 2011

Gov 2.0 L.A. 2011 is upon us shortly. As the founder I could not be more excited about what is about to happen. Gov 2.0 LA started last year as a way to bring people who are not usually together in the same room to be able to openly discuss both Government 2.0 and the technology around it as well as form long standing interpersonal relationships.

The 2010 event did all that and more. The Twitter hashtag #gov20la that was primarily used for the  event has been in continuous year around use with discussions and links about Government 2.0 and gov tech. Very few live events see their hashtags be used for more than a month after the event. There was tremendous innovation and ideas that carried forward into 2010 through the manifestation of many other events as well as actual opengov and gov 2.o success stories. Personally I have said to many that it was a humbling experience – all these amazing people came together in a place they had never heard of just to take their industry further.

Well, here we go again. For 2011 we are introducing a new concept: “Brainjams” the merger of crowd-sourcing and brainstorming in a live environment. These brainjams will enable those assembled to have partially structured time and draw on the world class minds we have assembled to solve problems and address issues around technology and Gov 2.0 . There will be brainjams occurring during both Saturday and Sunday.

We also have a world class venue – The Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica, CA, literally on the beach – sand is about 20 feet from the door. We also have something more important:

A group of amazing and talented people from around the world, coming to speak to you in person and on the internet for two days. (Gov20LA actually begins on Friday February 11, 2011 with the Los Angeles Consular social media 101 boot-camp pre-event we are hosting in conjunction with the Israel Consulate Los Angeles and NPR radio in Pasadena.)

Our speaker list:

Saturday Keynote Dialog 1: Jeanne Holm, Chief Software Architect, JPL/NASA. Ms. Holm will be talking about how innovation at NASA and at DATA..gov have led to new business processes, new ways of thinking and new ways of getting people involved in the change management.

Saturday Keynote Address 2: Ambassador John Duncan, UK Ambassador for Multilateral Arms Control and Disarmament. Ambassador Duncan will be addressing Gov 2.0 from the Diplomatic side as well as asking an important question: Is Gov 2.0 Transparency or Propaganda?

Sunday Keynote Dialog 3: Jack Bienko, US Small Business Administration and R. Ray Wang, CEO Constellation Research. Mr. Bienko and Mr. Wang will discuss how Government 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 combine to create new companies, new jobs and how the underpinnings of a new style of governance will flourish on the two combining.

Panels:

Saturday: Mobile-Action – Mobile Panel with Maribel Lopez, Chad Catachio and Kurt Daradics – implications of mobile technology for the growing Gov 2.0 community, especially with regard to customer service and service implementation and delivery in both a global and hyper-local context.

Saturday: Know your Audience – Story telling with Bill Grundfest, Golden Globe and Peabody award winning Hollywood TV writer and producer. “How to tell your audience what you will tell them that they need to hear, then tell them what it is, then tell them what you told them.”

Saturday -  Brainjams and open time for unscheduled sessions will be available thru most of the day as well.

Structured Brainjam – Moderated by Kety Maria Esquivel

—-Dish Crawl Overnight ——

Sunday: Public Diplomacy and the New World with Lovisa Williams of the U.S. State Department, Gina Evans of the UK Government and British Embassy in Washington, DC  and Martha McLean of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Government of Canada and Dan Abele,  Embassy of Canada , Washington, DC. They will be re-capping the highlights of the Friday Consular Boot camp as well as discussing the state of the art in Public Diplomacy around the world and how Gov 2.0 is pushing it farther along. These four will also be leading the Los Angeles Consular Corps social media boot camp on Friday February 11.

Sunday: Privacy and you. Christina Gagnier will lead a discussion of how both individuals and government agencies alike need to be paying attention to the new legal minefields that all of us using social media and the internet need to be aware of.

Sunday: The youth and the rest of us. Evonne Heyning will lead a discussion of how to penetrate the minds of under 30 year olds and the implications it has for the rest of us.

Sunday: Open Government and ecosystem around it. Alan W. Silberberg and Jeremy Thompson will lead a discussion of how and where open government is creating new roles and responsibilities

Sunday- Brainjams and open time for unscheduled sessions will be available through out the day.

Also: We will be running a mini-crisis commons style mobile hackathon on both days.

http://gov20la-estw.eventbrite.com/ Register Today – before the venue gets full.

Tweet

Announcing Gov 2.0 LA 2011 Free (with registration) pre-event featuring the Los Angeles Consular Corps made up of representatives from foreign governments.

Pre-Event: Friday February 11, 2011. 9am-12pm.

Trainers include Lovisa A. Williams, U.S. State Department, Dillon Hosier, Israel Consulate, Los Angeles, as well as:

Los Angeles International Consulate Corps Social Media bootcamp 101. This Gov20LA pre-event is free and open to the public, but requires registration – which is limited by the number of seats. Gov20LA thanks National Public Radio, KPPC 89.3 FM who will be hosting this at their studios in Pasadena, California. For the first time, the Los Angeles Consulate Corps of Foreign Country missions and consulates will be coming together to receive state of the art basic training in social media from some of the panelists and speakers from Gov20LA. Look for more information shortly about registration for this free part of Gov20LA 2011. We look forward to working with the Consulate Corps of Los Angeles as well as State and Federal agencies for this historic event. This event is co-sponsored by Gov20LA and the Israel Consulate in Los Angeles and sanctioned and supported by the United States Department of State.

Gov20LA has made the international growth of Gov 2.0 one of the 5 major focuses for the 2011 event. We could not be more pleased to feature this training (boot-camp) as the pre-event to Gov 2.0 LA 2011. Not only does it facilitate the type of open dialog and easy to understand methods that Gov20LA has become known for, but it will really highlight the interest amongst the International community for Gov 2.0 and opengov initiatives. It also brings together another focus: the increasingly hyper-local nature of Gov 2.0.

We will be posting the registration information for this pre-event soon – please note it is different from the Gov 2.0 LA 2011 registration found here.

We will be announcing lots more content soon, so keep an eye out.

TweetChristina and Jonathon were very gracious to invite me on to their show, “This week in Cause.” We had a lively discussion about Gov 2.0, what it means for all of us; and an update/recap of Gov20LA 2010/2011.
Thanks for the opportunity to be on the show!

TweetThe second day of the 2010 Gov 2.0 LA “Gov20LA” Un-conference was marked by the energy inside as well as the continued biblical rains outside. The 2010 Gov20LA saw an unprecedented 121,000+ unique visitors on our 2-day long live stream, and at this point I had only seen part of the statistics for the first day.

TweetAlan W. Silberberg and Bill Grundfest led a discussion at the 2010 Gov 2.0 LA Camp, “Gov20LA” about Language and how it can both bring people in and exclude people at the same time. We also talked a lot about culture change issues and “Getting Past No” as well as the concept of “You are all in Show Business now, Congratulations!”