Posts By Tim Bonnemann

SXSW 2011: Future15 Session on Government and Technology

It took a couple of attempts (see here, here), but now it looks like web-based public participation will finally get some exposure at SXSW this year. Here’s the announcement: Future15 Lineup for 2011: Shorter is Better At the 2010 SXSW Interactive Festival, we launched a series of short-form panel content called Future15s. These fast-paced sessionsRead… Read more »

Looking for Participatory Politicians

This post originally appeared on the Intellitics blog: Looking for Participatory Politicians We know there are a lot of (online) tools for participation available today, and we find out about more examples of how they are being used almost every day. About three weeks ago, someone asked me if I knew of any politicians stronglyRead… Read more »

Public Participation: Four Common Misconceptions

This is an abbreviated version of an article on the Intellitics blog. Read the full post here: Public Participation: Four Common Misconceptions Based on my observations listening to the discussions around Open Government, the following four aspects of the term public participation tend to get easily and commonly confused: 1) Public participation applies strictly toRead… Read more »

First look at Seattle City Council budget consultation

Seattle City Council last week launched a budget consultation for their 2011-2012 budget. I did a quick analysis of their IdeaScale site following this checklist: Is it clear who is the convener? Does it say what the site is about? Does the site educate participants about the issue at hand? Is the promise to theRead… Read more »

The Ethics of Public Participation

This post was originally published on the Intellitics blog on Thursday, August 5, 2010: The Ethics of Public Participation. Subscribe to our blog via RSS or follow us on Twitter. It seems the topic of ethics and integrity in public participation is coming up more often these days (see my comments here, here). Just forRead… Read more »

Join the planning team for SF Bay Area open government event (next call 5pm Pacific today)

Hi, We’re having our 3rd planning call today to discuss a potential open government unconference in the SF Bay Area. We’re still very early in the process, anyone interested in making this happen is welcome to join. Event details (please RSVP): July 28, 2010 from 5pm to 6pm Dial-in Number: 1-213-289-0500 (Los Angeles, long distanceRead… Read more »

New DC CTO not so hot on apps contests?

Bryan Sivak, Washington DC’s new CTO, in an interview recently about the outcomes of their Apps for Democracy contests (paraphrasing): Applications spun up by these contests tend to be more “cool” than useful to the average city resident. Designed for devices that aren’t necessarily used by the large populations that might need to interact withRead… Read more »

Now playing: “This Week in Participation” (TWiP)

We’re in the process of launching “This Week in Participation” (TWiP), a new podcast slash interview series slash internet radio show on, you guessed it, participation. The first couple of episodes went live earlier this week: TWiP 1: Urgent Evoke (11 minutes) http://twipcast.com/blog/2010/03/02/twip-1-urgent-evoke/ TWiP 2: Crowdstorming (14 minutes) http://twipcast.com/blog/2010/03/04/twip-2-crowdstorming/ The format is pretty casual. WeRead… Read more »

Ten Things to Monitor As Agencies Invite Input On Open Government Plans

This post was originally published on the Intellitics blog: Ten Things to Monitor As Agencies Invite Input On Open Government Plans Now that a whole lot of agency.gov/open websites are live and many agencies have indeed set up a ”mechanism for the public to […] [p]rovide input on the agency’s Open Government Plan” it’s timeRead… Read more »

Combo RSS for 26 agency idea/discussion forums

Update 2010/02/10: Added two feeds from HHS. Update 2010/02/08: Actually, it’s only 25 agencies whose feeds are included here. Sorry for the counting error! 😉 * * * I put together a Yahoo! Pipe that takes the RSS feeds from 26 agency.gov/open websites (or rather, their corresponding idea/discussion forums) and combines them into one RSSRead… Read more »