Open Government and Innovation Conference, Washington, DC

A co-worker attended the Open Government & Innovations Conference in Washington, DC on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and forwarded his own little summary. Much of what I read reminds me of what we've been learning about open source vs. closed source. My co-worker attributed his note-taking to the twitter-feed that ran beside the podium and repeated quotes from the speakers' speeches. In his summary I read the following:

"Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. Chief Technology Officer of the United States, highlighted the central theme of President Obama’s vision to leverage social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies to define more transparent, open government. Already in implementation across several agencies, open government encourages accessibility, transparency, participation and collaboration both within government and between the government and the private sector. The general rule of open government is this: if the data or information is non-privacy and non-national security; it should be made public. In other words, 'SHARE everything, only protect what you must'. This is in stark contrast to the old modes which was 'PROTECT all the information, only share what you must.' "

Other speakers at the conference continued on this theme of the advantages of a more open and transparent government, not just because of benefits to the American people but because the power of openness can benefit U.S. security.

Web 2.0 pioneer and guru Tim O’ Reilly also spoke at this conference on the topic of web and project development:

"O'Reilly said that it is better to develop simple systems and let them evolve, rather than building complex systems with too many specs, standards, and overhead. All too often, these complex systems run inefficiently." I found this to be a point well taken in light of our produsage assignments.

O'Reilly noted that some of the most successful internet startups including Twitter, Craigslist, and Flickr were built on simple frameworks that required little maintenance and overhead. He cited for example that in 2005, Craigslist had a staff of only 18 people.

One of the quotes attributed to O'Reilly is highly reminiscent of what we have been reading in our course texts: “Lower the barriers to experimentation. Failure is an option”.

Following is a link to the Conference Webpage, you can click on the pictures of the speakers to hear recordings of the presentations with slide presentations over Adobe Connect. I can recommend that Aneesh Chopra's presentation is well worth listening to.

www.opengovinnovations.com