Have spend most of today in Microsoft Tech Support Hell. After my Outlook Client stop sending/receiving after Tuesday’s Windows Update. I’ve been spending too much time being bounced around between various Support Desks, no fewer than six times. Each time repeating the same information; having the Support staff unable to open the case number documentationRead… Read more »
There are many ways to communicate, as I got a lesson this morning. Yesterday, I got a text, which I misinterpreted, due to lack of detail. We were about to commit significant resources to an ongoing project when a chance call degraded the whole effort to much ado about nothing. Seems to me a textRead… Read more »
This holiday season you may be traveling far and wide in search of some R&R before the coming year, you might be reconnecting with family, you may be working yourself to the bone as 2014 too quickly approaches, or perhaps headed to one last holiday fiesta. What I often find during the holiday season, betweenRead… Read more »
An oft-discussed subject in the civic tech world is the cavernous divide in the underlying technologies used by the private tech sector as opposed to those used by government entities. Some stylized examples: open source vs. proprietary; Ruby on Rails vs. .NET; cloud services like Heroku or Amazon Web Services vs. in-house server hosting; Unix-yRead… Read more »
This holiday season you may be traveling far and wide in search of some R&R before the coming year, you might be reconnecting with family, you may be working yourself to the bone as 2014 too quickly approaches, or perhaps headed to one last holiday fiesta. What I often find during the holiday season, betweenRead… Read more »
We recently read an inspiring piece from the Kettering Foundation, an NCDD member organization, that we hope you will take a moment to read. It is a heartfelt tribute to the amazing legacy of the late Nelson Mandela, written by KF Interntional Resident and graduate student at the the University of the Witwatersrand in SouthRead… Read more »
“Who would ever send $500.00 in twenty dollar bills through the mail?” wondered my friend, Debbie, who was amazed when she opened the bulging envelope with extra postage on it. Several weeks ago Debbie’s husband, Jeff, had been hard at work replacing a rotted floor and laying new carpet for Christmas when he had aRead… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda The Value of Open Data in Our Economy and Society: The New America Foundation hosted a lively discussion and a few keynotes on the topic of open data. If you couldn’t make it, you can still watch the video, or, if you’re driving home for the holidays, play the audio through your speakers.Read… Read more »
The book Reinventing Government by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, released twenty years ago had a big impact on me. I created the non-profit Center For Reinventing Government due to the change in thinking the book brought about for me. Ted Gaebler has been the City Manager of Rancho Cordova for ten years. Rancho CordovaRead… Read more »
2013 was a great year for the growing movement to open up government and build towards a future where our local city is truly by the people, for the people, and of the people in the 21st century. However we still have much to do and much to learn. OpenOakland was created to fulfill twoRead… Read more »