2010 was full of amazing stories and experiences, both personal and professional. I’m grateful for the many opportunities I had speak to brilliant, fascinating people about technology, government, media and civil society. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from my interviews this year, many of which were captured on video. Some were filmed with my iPhone 4, others with a Canon 110si, others by O’Reilly Media’s professional video team after I joined the company as its new Gov 2.0 Washington Correspondent.
Regardless of the quality of light, image or sound, each interview taught me something new, and I’m proud they’re all available on the Web to the public. The list below isn’t exhaustive, either. There are easily a dozen other excellent interviews on my channel on YouTube, O’Reilly Media’s YouTube channel, uStream and Livestream. Thank you to each and every person who took time to talk to me this past year.
20. Professor Fred Cate on electronic privacy protections and email
19. Google Open Advocate Chris Messina on Internet freedom
18. Foursquare Creator Dennis Crowley on the NASA Tweetup and #IVoted
17. Co-Chairman of the Future of Privacy Forum Jules Polonetsky
16. NASA CTO Chris Kemp on cloud computing and open source
15. Portland Mayor Sam Adams on open data
14. Former Xerox Chief Scientist and PARC Director John Seely Brown on education
13. NPR’s Andy Carvin on CrisisWiki
12. ISE Founder Claire Lockhart on government accountability
11. Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior on the evolution of smarter cities
10. Ushahidi Co-Founder Ory Okolloh on crowdsourcing
9. Senator Kate Lundy on Gov 2.0 in Australia
8. Intellipedia: Moving from a culture of “need to know” to “need to share” using wikis
7. ESRI Co-Founder Jack Dangermond on mapping
6. Sunlight Foundation Co-Founder Ellen Miller on Open Government
5. HHS CTO Todd Park on Open Health Data
4. FCC Tech Cast with Expert Lab’s Gina Trapani
3. Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak on the Open Internet
2. United States CTO Aneesh Chopra on Open Government
Yesterday, a leaked screenshot from an internal Yahoo! product meeting created widespread throughout much of the Web: delicious, the social bookmarking giant, appeared in the “sunset” category. There are petitions to save it, offers to buy it, a movement to to open source it and even a suggestion that it should be moved into the Library of Congress.
A day later, delicious has responded. Spoiler: they’re not shutting down. The statement on what’s next for delicious from the blog is posted in full below.
Many of you have read the news stories about Delicious that began appearing yesterday. We’re genuinely sorry to have these stories appear with so little context for our loyal users. While we can’t answer each of your questions individually, we wanted to address what we can at this stage and we promise to keep you posted as future plans get finalized.
Is Delicious being shut down? And should I be worried about my data?
– No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.
What is Yahoo! going to do with Delicious?
– We’re actively thinking about the future of Delicious and we believe there is a home outside the company that would make more sense for the service and our users. We’re in the process of exploring a variety of options and talking to companies right now. And we’ll share our plans with you as soon as we can.
What if I want to get my bookmarks out of Delicious right away?
– As noted above, there’s no reason to panic. We are maintaining Delicious and encourage you to keep using it. That said, we have export options if you so choose. Additionally, many services provide the ability to import Delicious links and tags.
We can only imagine how upsetting the news coverage over the past 24 hours has been to many of you. Speaking for our team, we were very disappointed by the way that this appeared in the press. We’ll let you know more as things develop.
-cyeh · Chris
I’m looking forward to learning what happens next for delicious; there appear to be a number of options that might be palatable to long-time users, particularly the developer community. While my usage took a nose dive over the past two years, I’d like to be able to keep using my 2353 bookmarks there and the service in general.
I’m particularly curious about whether delicious could up in the Library of Congress. If billions of tweets are worth storing, why not this vast collection of collectively curated hyperlinks?
Last weekend, I was proud to join a fascinating group of people in the first News Foo out in Phoenix, Arizona. I’m still thinking through what it all meant to me. Covering events in Washington has kept me extremely busy from the moment I returned.
Almost by definition, you can’t go to everything at an unconference. And by definition, an unconference is what you make of it, meaning that if you to a session to happen, you need to propose it. If you don’t like the one you’re in, vote with your feet. The open structure means that everyone will have a different experience, a reality that was reflected in the tweets, blogposts and feedback that have emerged in the days since the first News Foo concluded in Phoenix.
Newsfoo is a variant of Tim O’Reilly’s famed Foo camps, which have a wiki unconference format. People create the sessions as they go, and they camp out together. The social + intellectual experience is a bonding opportunity. There is also, for example, a Sci Foo camp which is consponsored by O’Reilly, Nature mag and Google. Now there is a push to do a Newsfoo, which would bring technologists and journalists together in a high-level discussion, that looks forward rather than back. It would tackle cool problems, both content side and business side.
To expand on that concept, posted before the event, News Foo was a collaboration between O’Reilly Media, Google and the Knight Foundation. Each hour or so, four or five sessions frequently competed for attention, along with freewheeling conversations in hallways, tables and in the open spaces of Arizona State University’s beautiful journalism center. As with every unconference, the attendees created the program and decided which sessions to attend, aggregating or disaggregating themselves.
If you’re interested in other reactions to News Foo, several excellent posts have made their way online since Sunday. I’ll be posting more thoughts on Newsfoo soon, along with book recommendations from the science fiction session.
For those who were not present, a post by Steve Buttry is particularly worth reading, along with the lively dialogue in the comments: “News Foo Camp: Not fully open, but certainly secret.” Buttry reached out to Sarah Winge, who provided a lengthy, informative comment about what Foos are about and how “Friend D.A.” works. If you’re not familiar with either, go check out Steve’s excellent post.
As he notes there, heavy tweeting was discouraged by the organizers, a request supported by the thinking that being “fully present,” freed of the necessary attention that documenting an event accurately requires of a writer, will result in a richer in-person experience for all involved.
Over the course of the weekend, I certainly tweeted much less than I would at the average conference or unconference. But then foo isn’t either.
I did take a few moments to share resources or stories I heard about at newsfoo with my distributed audience online. Following are 28 tweets, slightly edited (I took out the #Newsfoo hashtag and replies in a few) that did just that, rather like I’d microblogged it. If you’re confused about the “twitterese” below, consult my explainer on the top 50 Twitter acronyms and abbreviations and my thinking on how #hashtags on Twitter are like channels on cable TV. For many more tweets from other attendees, check out “Newsfoo at a Distance,” a Storify curation.
1. #Newsfoo is an unconference in Phoenix, AZ this weekend. Technologists & journalists talking about “what’s next.”
New research from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project sheds new light on the use of Twitter In its “Twitter Update,” the Pew Internet report shares key demographics, behaviors and insights on the rapidly growing social network that has continued to be one of Silicon Valley’s hottest startups. Pew researchers found that 8% of online adults said they use Twitter, with some 2% tweeting on a typical day. Pew’s research currently estimates that 74% of American adults are Internet users.
More stats:
Users skew younger: Internet users aged 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than older adults.
Minorities are there in strength. Minority Internet users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter than white Internet users.
People who live in cities are more likely to tweet. Urban residents are roughly twice as likely to use Twitter as rural dwellers. (That said, the majority of people live in cities.)
What are people sharing? Hint: It’s not what they’re eating. Personal updates lead the list, followed by work updates, sharing links to news, posting “general life observations,” retweeting other people and direct messaging.
All in all, it’s a fascinating picture of Twitter. You’ll learn a lot more at Pew Internet’s “Twitter Update,” including the sample size and methodology behind the report — so go read it.
Less than a year after I called for tech companies to publish a a public political ad file as open data online, Facebook has committed to doing so this August, through an API. Working with Congress to draft a law … Continue reading →
As Mark Twain famously blogged, a lie can be tweeted halfway around the world while the truth is still unlocking its smartphone. Misinformation is unintentional. Disinformation is not. A “misinformation virus” infects minds instead of computers, spreading socially across homophilic … Continue reading →
This morning, James Grimaldi reported that Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has told two U.S. Senators that he has proposed “to rebuild and re-engineer” the agency’s online electronic comment system “to institute appropriate safeguards against abusive conduct.” … Continue reading →
When I asked whether when or if it is acceptable for the United States government to charge companies, journalists and the public for government data, citing the example of paywalled immigration data, the chief information officer of the United States … Continue reading →
Last fall, the U.S. government delayed formation of the fourth national action plan after committing to participation with a public consultation – despite historic regressions on open government across federal agencies under the Trump administration. This May, the White House quietly … Continue reading →
On May 29, senior officials from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the State Department confirmed that the United States will develop a new National Action Plan for Open Government for the Open Government Partnership this spring … Continue reading →
This past week, Facebook launched a new political ad transparency website. Facebook believes that “shining a light on ads” will increase transparency, which in turn “will lead to increased accountability & responsibility over time – not just for Facebook but … Continue reading →
When the president or others with access to his Twitter account block American citizens from following @realDonaldTrump based upon the viewpoints they express, it violates their First Amendment rights. In a historic decision, a federal judge ruled today that it … Continue reading →
The Bot Wars, begun they have. Over the past two years, automated social media accounts and fraudulent regulatory filings have been used by anonymous parties to obscure public opinion, distort public discourse, and corrupt the integrity of rulemaking in the … Continue reading →
The VA is being neither open nor transparent about its missing open government plans or policies. On March 29, 2018, I made a Freedom of Information Act request to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in which I … Continue reading →
RT @EricLiptonNYT: FOLLOW ALONG HERE: Here is a story (in Tweets) abt an 8 yr fight by EPA over an air pollution rule violation at one of l… 22 hours ago
RT @glichfield: Four weak points in the US electoral system that hackers might target in the US midterms—from @techreview's new tech and po… 4 days ago
RT @dabeard: “When we look back at these extraordinary times, I strongly believe that our free press will be recognized as heroes" —@SenBlu… 4 days ago
“The way forward is not to cultivate nostalgia for the old-world information gatekeepers…. It’s to figure out how o… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…4 days ago
RT @glichfield: The new issue of @techreview that will hit newsstands at the beginning of September is all about how technology puts democr… 4 days ago
I have seen Twitter make mistakes limiting third-party clients in pursuit of profit, user choice, & public benefit… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…4 days ago
RT @pressfreedom: When American leaders stand up for a free press, they embolden courageous journalists who put their lives and liberty on… 4 days ago
RT @NPRinskeep: “The freedom of the press is an individual liberty... your right as an American to read what you will, to write what you th… 4 days ago
You could spend a long day listing all of the organizations or individuals who are putting government data online, from Carl Malamud to open government activists in Brazil, Africa or Canada.
Putting a dollar value on clean water, stable markets, the quality of schooling or access to the judiciary is no easy task. Each of these elements of society, however, are to some extent related to and enabled by open government. If we think about how the fundamental democratic principles established centuries ago extend today purely […]
In an age where setting up a livestream to the Web and the rest of the networked world is as easy as holding up a smartphone and making a few taps, the United States Supreme Court appears more uniformly opposed to adding cameras in the courtroom than ever.
On January 10th, 2013, the OpenGov Hub officially launched in Washington, DC. The OpenGov Hub has similarities to incubators and accelerators, in terms of physically housing different organizations in one location, but focuses on scaling open government and building community, as opposed to scaling a startup and building a business. Samantha Power, special a […]
