Government 2.0 Expo Debrief

I started to write this post in a cab as I was heading back from the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington D.C. last week. I remember my head was engulfed in new insights and ideas. I’ve been playing catch-up ever since but it was well worth the 3-day excursion.

As mentioned in my previous post, my goal for this event was to absorb and connect. This was the first social media/web 2.0 related event I attended in a while where I wasn’t speaking myself. This allowed me to open up some additional data absorption chambers in my head and relax instead of obsessively fine-tuning my own content right up until the last minute as is the usual case.

First of all, let me just say that the conference was very well organized by the O’Reilly folks as usual. It seems that whenever I wanted to know where something was, they had people placed to direct me exactly where to go or answer my questions just as they were formulating in my head. Same applies to the Washington Convention Centre staff, who were A+ all the way. I was also delighted to see more fellow Canadians this year in attendance, although still nowhere near the numbers that we should be at.

I’m sure there will be plenty of great Gov 2.0 Expo summary posts and conversations all over the net (just follow the #g2e hashtag or take a look at the news coverage), however I want to take a slightly different approach by posting up some key takeaways from sessions that stood out for me. Please note that I didn’t attend all sessions since there were multiple streams. I’m also not including all the great discussions I had and people I met during the social elements of this event as that would take up the bulk of this post.

DAY 1

Session Notes:

• How Online Collaborative Games are Improving Policy Making Michael Bean (Forio Simulations)
  • Average console game costs $40M, while simulation/modeling game budgets are a mere fraction of that.
  • Game dynamics can be used in civic engagement
  • Try Googling Climate Policy Simulation Games or check out:
    • Climate Bathtub
    • Climate Momentum Simulation
  • Making something more realistic does not necessarily make it better –>To prove that realistic games are boring, a game was created called Desert Bus
  • Opened my eyes to the world of simulations and games as a tool for civic engagement (brought back memories of SimCity 2000)
  • Want to create your own policy simulation? Try out Forio.com

My Favourite Plenaries – 5 minutes each, links go straight to the videos:

• Apps for the Army Jeffrey A. Sorenson (U.S. Army)
• Sunlight Foundation Contest Winners Clay Johnson (Sunlight Labs)
• Graffiti Tracker: Utilizing Data to Fight Crime Timothy Kephart (Graffiti Tracker Inc.)

Additional links I jotted down that day:

• Virtual Alabama – 3d visualization project
• Xpirze.org – A $10 million+ award given to the first team to achieve a specific goal, set by the X PRIZE Foundation, which has the potential to benefit humanity.
• Data.gov Apps Showcase – Take a  look at some of the latest apps created from open data via data.gov
• Whopaidthem.com – Political campaign funding visualization
• Best visualization of how a bill becomes a law from the Design for America Contest (see all the winners here)
• County Sin Rankings – Quite possibly the most creative yet simple visualization of actual health data
• Everyblock.com – A news feed of local public information based on open data
• CiviGuard – Mind blowing tool for citizen to first responder engagement during a crisis
• Law Help Interactive – A tool that takes complicated legal forms and simplifies them
• Go.usa.gov – A short URL created specifically for the U.S government (because 3rd party ones can`t match the strong gov brand)
• Make Love Land – A land sharing experiment in Detroit based on micro-real estate
• Firstresponder.gov – A first responder community of practice

Day 2

Session Notes:

• Open Government Ninja 101: Skills, Strategies, and Stealth David Hale (National Institutes of Health)
  • David talked about the creation of Pillbox, a rapid pill identification system based on open data
  • Total employees to create Pillbox= 9
  • Pillbox for iphone was created by a student in 3 weeks
  • Pharmville RX –Facebook game created for free by enthusiasts
• A Human Driven Data-centric Approach to Accountability: Analyzing Data to Prevent Fraud, Waste and Abuse in Stimulus Alex Fishman (Palantir Technologies), Douglas Hassebrock (Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board)
  • I wish there was a video for what i saw in this session since it absolutely blew me away.
  • Palantir is the most stunning data visualization platform I have ever seen. I felt like I was Tom Cruise in the Minority Report when he`s scanning future crimes.
  • Alex and Douglas used their platform to show how fraud suspect leads can now easily be proven guilty by visually exposing and linking data
  • Here are some demo videos of some of  their other visualization tools
• Building a Culture of Experimentation Fred Dust (IDEO)
  • A session on re-thinking how to approach problems
  • I learned two things here:
    • That 100%  innovative companies like IDEO still exist
    • That I need to download the Human Centered Design Toolkit

My Favourite Plenaries – 5 minutes each, links go straight to the videos:

• Open Data, Baseball and Government David Eaves (Centre for the Study of Democracy)
• Creating Passionate Citizens Kathy Sierra (Creating Passionate Users)
• The Democratization of Content Gary Vaynerchuk (VaynerMedia)

Additional links I jotted down that day:

• Oilreporter.com – Open data based app created to track BP Oil Spill effects
• Excelgov.com – A conference dedicated to creating a high performance government
• Openstreetmap Haiti – A collaborative wiki effort to map streets in Haiti after the earthquake
• Grassrootsmapping.org – Oil spill satellite imagery can apparently be created with a kite and $200
• Crime Reports 2.0 – The popular crime data mapping tool has been updated (even more updates coming soon)

Day 3

Session Notes:

• Beyond Apps Contests: The Present and Future Possibilities of Civic Innovation Peter Corbett (iStrategyLabs)
  • My key take-away from this session was a slide that illustrated the progressive steps of open-data civic engagement. Can you guess what step most Canadian government organizations are at?  Hint: it rhymes with “bun” :
    1. Local government info
    2. Open data catalog
    3. Apps contests
    4. Civic hacker networks
    5. Civic innovator networks
    6. Civic innovation
    7. Civic marketplace
  • I was also amazed at just how far the original Apps for Democracy contest had spread worldwide and within the U.S.A
  • The World Bank will soon be launching Apps for Development

My Favourite Plenaries – 5 minutes each, links go straight to the videos:

• Law.Gov: America’s Operating System, Open Source Carl Malamud (Public.Resource.Org)
• Healthcare Needs a Redesign Jay Parkinson (The Future Well)
• Global Engagement Starts at Home Alec Ross (State Department)

Additional links I jotted down that day:

• Intelink – A group of secure intranets used by the United States Intelligence Community (my link only points to Wikipedia article)
• Arcgis.com – Online maps and apps for public use
• Esri.com – Same as above
• The Times UK Article – Every UK citizen is to have a personal government web page
• Zipcar.com – Car sharing
• HHS.gov/open – Yet another example of open government data
• Expertlabs.org -  A non-profit trying to answer the question: “What are the big scientific and technological challenges that America should tackle?”
• NATO Training Mission – Afghanistan – It cost NATO $50 to create this website (it’s merely a content mashup)

Favourite quote from the expo: “Public servants are content experts and citizens are context experts”

I thought I’d end off this ridiculously long blog post with Doctor Jay Parkinson’s speech on the future of health care. Yes, I did also include it in my links above but chances are you missed it.