Times they are a changin

I am going to discontinue this blog and have moved the content over to rfahey.org. This change was one of the resolutions I made  for 2009. It allows me a lot more control over how I blog and what kind of tools I use.

I initially created this blog on wordpress.com, because it was the easiest platform to use. Over Christmas I’ve learned a bit more about the technology behind wordpress, and have consequently setup the software on bluehost – which is super simple to do.

To check out further posts see rfahey.org.

 

Software for Civic life – affecting postive social change

Joshua-Michéle Ross has great blog post related to an interview with Mike Mathieu of Frontseat.org. Frond Seat is a civic software company and incubator, whose objective is to build software for civic life. The interview is enlightening in how Mike sees the tech community providing innovative services based on freely available raw data from Government institutions.

I’ve embedded the two videos below, and have outlined some of Mike’s comments. The points outlined below are paraphrased from the video conversations.

Software for Civic life – Part 1

• Historically software has been really expensive to develop, but now software is getting cheap

• The focus of innovation is more around data and communities of users

• Front Seat are experimenting with ways of taking advantage of cheap software, and data to make the world a better place

Front Seat has created Walkscore as a means to measure the walkability of neighborhoods. It plugs into the Google local search API to rate neighborhoods based on 13 different categories. It is available as a web service and it’s walkability ratings can be easily used by third-party real estate sites.

Countmore.org is a another site created by Front Seat which is targeted towards voter registration for college students in swing states. It’s based on a supreme court ruling in the 70s that says college students can either register to vote in their home or college state. The site was built in a couple of days and shows students if the electoral race is closer in their home or college state. It then gives them a way to register online to vote.

• When we think software for civic life – we think how can you be a better citizen, how do I make better choices.

• We have hundreds of ideas in the idea bank and it’s a trade off between how much investment would it take, the importance of the issue and the opportunity for change. Front Seat is like a social hedge fund – creating software to where there is an opportunity to make a disproportional positive impact for social change.

Software for civic life – Part 2

• With the Sunlight foundation there is the idea of more and more open data from Government, but don’t hold your breath on the Government releasing more data.

• Mysociety has a lot of projects which are similar in vein (to Front Seat). The objective is to create simple ways for citizens to connect with Government. The famous project is Fixmystreet.

• Tom Steinburg’s advice was don’t do any projects that rely on you being able to get the Government to open the data, because either budget issues, political issues etc. will keep that from happening.

• Walkscore, Rockthevote and the Sunlight Foundation are groups that are doing things that the Government is not.

• The Sunlight foundation is a great example, where one of the projects is to create a unique ID for all the senior decision makers in Government. The rational is that you can connect up different databases e.g. the Federal Elections Commission donor database, and you can then map that against voter records and how people voted in Congress. They’ve shown some very interesting correlations in how the votes of Congress people change when a certain industry quadruples their donations to that candidate in the week before a vote.

• It’s interesting to see some of the data types and services that Government typically held onto, or where in control of, are passing into public domain in terms of infrastructure, mapping etc.

• The focus in the for-profit world in technology has shifted from software as competitive advantage, to utilising data and communities. On the other hand Governments, civic organizations, non-profits etc. are sitting on piles of data. They have active communities of interest which provide for a huge opportunity in data mining to improve the efficiency of their operations.

• I know of one case a social service group in Seattle was dealing with public inebriation. They were spending about 2 million dollars annually dealing with that issue. They went and tracked down the data and found about half a dozen individuals caused 80% of those expenses. They then actively cared for these 6 people through intensive interactions with social workers. In the end they saved half their budget just by looking, and having transparency around that data they collected.

• There is an inhibition within Government around making data more transparent and freely available. Most parts of Government are not paid to take risks. They’re paid to be efficient and maintain the status-quo. I think the future is the Government opening up the data, but not doing the innovation themselves. The tech community can do the innovated based on the raw data feeds from Government.

• There is a lot of talk about the Obama administration naming a CTO. I think the single biggest thing they can do there is make the mandate for different agencies – including Congress – to make data feeds publicly available to people who want to make the world a better place.

Summary

There is lots of data currently available that can be used improve civic life and increase transparency in Government. The Apps for Democracy competition demonstrates that individuals can make use of this data to create usable applications to serve the public good.  This trend looks to continue with initiatives all over the world including the UK’s recent Social Innovation Camp. The most interesting developments, however, will be in relation to the Obama administration and how they’ll approach this subject. If the commitments to public data within their Technology white paper are enacted, the future for transparency and innovation in Government to citizen interaction looks bright.

 

Resolutions for 2009

Below are a list of actions I’m really hoping I get around to completing next year:

1) Write and blog more – I set this blog up a few months ago, but haven’t got around to blogging on a regular basis. I have managed a few blog posts on SAP’s Developer Network, but I really want to blog on a consistent basis here. I want to blog more on Enterprise 2.0 activities and community development and organisation.

2) Get more involved with Gov 2.0 – I have been incredibly impressed with the work of the Sunlight foundation in the US. Also, the inititives Tom Watson MP has been promoting, such as the UK Government barcamp and the Show Us a Better Way competition have been very impressive in highlighting the use of new tools by Government departments. I will hopefully be attending the Government barcamp in January and really want to write more about this new dynamic that will change how citizens interact with Government.

3) Migrate blog to my own domain – I really want to migrate from wordpress.com to my own domain. I’m intending to do this – I’ve heard it’s very easy with services such as bluehost – early in the new year.

4) Go to Conferences – Over the past year I’ve watched with envy many fantastic presentations from conferences and events such as Enterprise 2.0 in Boston, Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and New York, Office 2.0 in San Francisco and Le Web in Paris. There is great opportunities to follow the events at these conferences using Twitter and to even watch videos of presetations, but you miss the social networking opportunities if you’re not there in person.

5) Go to a Barcamp – I’ve never been to a barcamp event before. I’ve followed many of them on Twitter, and should get the chance to attend the UK Government event in January.

My other plans are to continue using Twitter and interacting in areas of Enterprise 2.0 e.g. Blogs, wikis, communities etc.

 

Data catalog from District of Columbia

Nate Nash tweeted today about a new site from the Distict of Columbia. I’ve been checked it out for the last 30 minutes and felt I had to blog about it. The site, and what it enables is awesome. It provides public access to city operational data through the Internet. It allows users to subscribe to live data feeds in Atom format and access data in XML, Text/CSV, KML or ESRI Shapefile formats. The awesome thing is the kind of data that is being provided. It allows for RSS feeds on

• Crime incidents
• Current construction projects
• Purchase orders
• Juvenile Arrests and Charges and more

I think this is a standard that many other city and local government authorities should aspire to. This provides for a great level of transparency and accountability – especially in the areas of crime, construction and procurement. Imagine being able to see and analyse all the purchase orders that are being raised by the city authority! I know of many local government entities that do not even provide this kind of information to their own employees e.g. within their finance departments.

Much of the data on the site can also be mashed up with google maps to provide locations of construction projects, crime incidents etc. This mashing up of operational data reveals an extraordinary insight into what is happening in particular areas.

This is a kind of gold standard of data transparency all other local authorities should be judged against.

 

Funny video

I’ve watched this video so many times, but it’s still very funny. Check it out http://snowboardermag.com/videos/flash/suns-out-guns-out-falling-down/. I think it’s the music that makes it.

 

Government 2.0

Mashable has a great post on Government 2.0 today. The post talks about Government adoption of Social software, and social media tools such as Twitter. There are many examples in the UK of areas of Government using Twitter. I currently follow various local councils on twitter, along with DowningStreet and CommunitiesUK. These provide a much easier platform with which to interact with Government. Also, having ministers like Tom Watson on Twitter, provides Government with a much more social and friendly interface. It is easy to interact and send messages to real people, rather than to email addresses or web forms. When you get to know someone, including miscellanous details about their lives (on their terms rather than through newspapers), it enables more empathy with them and understanding of their views.

There are lots of US Government agencies and representatives on Twitter with a great list at fly4change. Using this medium as a communications tool and to engage with the public in conversations has the potential to change perceptions of Government departments and Officials. As comcastcares, and others have demonstrated, the more social and real the method of communication, the more understanding, patience and respect people will have for the message. As such, an increase in the use of social software and social media to interact with the public, has the potential to transform the current cynical view many people have of politicians and civil servants. Once Government can be seen on a more human level, hopefully the appreciation and respect we have for official entities will increase, allowing for a much more grown-up discourse.

 

2 most popular wiki questions

Today I was speaking on the phone to a HR manager (not for the company I work for) and talking about wikis. After speaking about using them for perhaps 5 minutes, I was asked the questions one of the – if no the number 1 – most popular wiki question:

1). What’s a wiki?

I tried to answer that it’s an editable webpage that anyone can change and updated. I then elaborated on this with the example of wikipedia. She then asked what I guess is the second most popular wiki question

2). What happens if people put the “wrong” information up?

This was coming for the perspective of someone working in HR. I guess when she said “wrong” she ment inaccurate information although I’m not sure. I explained how wikis rely on the concept of the wisdom of crowds and how it is up to the community to monitor the content on wikis. Also, within enterprise environments users are usually logged in using LDAP mechanisms which means there is no anonymous editing allowed.

In the end the HR person said ‘oh, we have an intranet so we probably wouldn’t use it’. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to explain all the benefits and accepted this remark. The company – one of the big 4 – does have a global wiki installed, but it goes to show it benefits and opportunities haven’t reached their HR department yet. This is a pity as the HR department in any organisation can use wikis to help with collaboration and knowledge sharing. The benefits of wikis need to be explained and shown though in real life scenarios before adoption can flourish.

Wiki adoption and case studies

There is lots of resources available on how to grow wiki adoption. Some of my favourite include:

• 21 days of wiki adoption by Steward Mader
• Case study of a wiki changing an Enterprise
• Allen & Overy case study
• Deloitte case study
• Dresdner Kleinwort case study

In order to gain adoption it’s often necessary to explain case studies of other companies using wikis. The is lots of other information at http://community.e2conf.com/index.jspa and on various vendor sites. Hopefully, my next conversation with this HR individual will allow me to explain more of the benefits and possibilities available with using wikis.

 

Fantastic video by Mike Wesch

Just watched a great video of a presentation “An anthropological introduction to YouTube” by Mike Wesch. The video is  the Library of Congress a mix of the presentation interspersed with various YouTube videos. It’s a fantastic explanation of the rise of the YouTube community, how people interact with it and how it presents a mirror of ourselves back to us.

 

Hardware and software I use

In homage to Lifehacker and their recent article on Favourite Software and Hardware I’m going to list a selection of what I use at home and at work:

The basics – All the software and web apps below are free to use, and many are opensource.

Firefox. I use this everyday on my work PC. Unfortunately, for SAP related tasks I need to use Internet Explorer as some applications will not function correctly in Firefox. Nevertheless, nearly all business applications and work fine using this. I enhanced the browser with a  a few add-ons including:

• Diigo which I use for all my bookmarks
• Various work search plugins (just .xml files)

Foxit Reader. I use this as it is quicker to load and read PDF documents. I often find that Adobe Acrobat is very slow when opening PDF files, and Foxit is certainly much less hasle.Xobni. This makes using Outlook easier and more ’social’. It’s possible to search all my emails quickly and also to view all emails related to a particular person. For anyone that uses Outlook at lot, I really recommend it.

Twhirl. I use this to keep a check on Twitter during the day. At home this is constantly running in the background. At work, I open it a few times during the day, as otherwise it is too distracting.

GIMP. If I need to create or manipulate pictures for wiki work etc. I use GIMP. It takes a while to get used to the UI, but after a while you realise how powerful it is.

Camstudio. This is a great tool to capture video in windows. You can capture video in AVI format and it can convert to SWF. For the Mac, I use Screenflow.

Printscreen. I heart this piece of freeware. I use it all the time to do screen captures. I have it setup so that when I press F10 it will activate and allow me to capture a specific area of the screen to either the clipboard or a .jpg file. It’s a great tool to document steps e.g. in wiki or SAP. For the Mac, I use Skitch.
Primary OS. My work PC runs on Windows XP Professional Version 2002 Service Pack 2. However, for personal use I use a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X Leopard.

Peripherals. Well don’t have any except a mouse.

Webapps.

Netvibes. I use this to store all my podcasts and RSS feeds. I have opened up some of my Netvibes page so you can view some of what I read at http://www.netvibes.com/rfahey.Netvibes is probably my favourite web app.

Twitter. I use this a lot, but mainly with Twhirl.

Diigo. I use this a lot to collect bookmarks. My bookmarks are available at http://www.diigo.com/user/faheyr/

Remember the Milk. I use this sometimes to keep track of tasks. Mostly, however, I use the To do list within Netvibes.

Sproutbuilder. This is a great tool to build widgets. I’ve built a few for various things and hope to use this more.

Zoho Creator. This is a great tool to build forums with databases. It’s great for storing information or for conducting surveys.
Summary

Overall, I use web services more than I use any applications on my PC. Most of my work is conducted through my Firefox browser. I rarely use Microsoft Word – except when requested to by a client – and I keep away from Powerpoint as much as possible (I use Keynote on my Mac instead). SaaS type applications are becoming more and more popular and this trend is going to intensify over the coming years. Therefore, the most important application of them all is the browser!

 

Netroots Nation Keynote

Just watched a great presentation from Lawrence Lessig about a new initiative called change-congress. The story and the idea conveyed is presented in a very powerful fashion through his distinctive presentation style. Well worth the hour or so if you’re interested in US campaign financing.