Sep 13, 2011 at 7:00 pm MonkeyWrench Books 110 E. North Loop Austin, TX 512-407-6925 Please join MonkeyWrench Books and the Texas Observer for this conversation with Abby Rapoport. As the “education reform” movement has come to dominate policy, more and more education dollars find their way into mega-corporations. Testing contracts alone are worth hundredsRead… Read more »
How many times have you walked out of a situation and said ” I did not get ANY of the things that I wanted!” If this has happened, you walked in without knowing your BATNA. BATNA stands for Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. It’s your backup plan; your plan B. Quite simply, when youRead… Read more »
My thanks to Joel Sarfati, Director of 40 Plus of Greater Washington D.C. and Professor Ray Kimball of Montgomery College’s TechLeap Program for inviting me to give presentations on “How to Manage Social Media for Busy Professionals” last week. Both events had great audiences, and I appreciated the vigorous question-and-answer sessions. Two slide decks shareRead… Read more »
Some evenings on my way home from work, I play a small private game of chicken. Now I have played it for the last time. If there are too many people at the bus stop – and no, I don’t know how many makes too many – that’s a sign that the gap between busesRead… Read more »
Day 25 Water Main Extension Most of the first half of my morning was spent working on a cost estimate for the water main extension I have designed. I also filled out all the IEPA permits for the project and had our water superintendent sign them. Then I filled out the EcoCat to determine ifRead… Read more »
As local government officials begin to sort through last month’s dramatic spending reduction deal (the Budget Control Act of 2011) and the impacts of New York-based Standard & Poor’s (S&P) Ratings Services’ subsequent lowering of the federal government’s long-term credit rating, it’d be easy to simply give in to the negative media coverage and acceptRead… Read more »
Legislative XML for the Semantic Web: Principles, Models, Standards for Document Management (Springer 2011), a collection of scholarly articles on the use of XML and Semantic Web technologies in connection with legislative information systems, has been published. The volume is edited by Professor Dr. Giovanni Sartor of Università di Bologna CIRSFID; Professor Dr. Monica PalmiraniRead… Read more »
There are over 350 participants in the Making Mobile Gov Dialogue and this week we wanted to highlight mobile product accessibility issues agencies grapple with like Section 508 compliance. When we searched the MMG Dialogue, here’s what we found: “No one is really talking about accessibility and Section 508 with Apps. PLEASE remember to developRead… Read more »
The Open311 platform is one of Civic Commons’ core initiatives; it’s an Application Programming Interface (API) and a growing set of software tools that help cities manage service and information requests from citizens. We see it as a core element of an “open” city IT backbone. Open311 is also a rapidly growing, collaborative, open sourceRead… Read more »
When Code for America selected me as a Google Summer of Code Intern for the Government Gems and Eggs project this summer, I knew the next few months were going to be awesome. For the first time ever, I was able to meet and work with people truly committed to making government data more accessible.Read… Read more »