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Emergency 2.0 Australia, a project examining how Social Media can assist in Emergency Management.
Testing gapminder with Aussie data
This is just a test 🙂 We are playing at the govhack day today:
Opening up government data – get hacking people!
So much cool stuff has happened since I started working in the government. The most exciting thing now is that a load of government data sets have been opened up (both at a federal and state level). This is an ENORMOUS step forward towards more openness, transparency and accountability in government, and I am extremely excited about it!
Now, we seriously need to get our collective tech community butts into gear, and show why open access to data is important and awesome for democracy, society, collaboration and (warning, about to use the “i” word…) massive innovation and creativity.
There is a mashup competition running, supported by the Gov 2.0 Taskforce and there are currently 4 mashup camps running in Australia, including a huge one in Canberra called GovHack at the end of the month! There are also some events happening in Sydney hosted by Google and Open Australia.
So this is a shout out and call to action for all people passionate about hacking, Open Standards, FOSS, open democracy and open knowledge to come along and participate in, well, an enormous and wonderful turning point for our society!
I’ll be at the Canberra mashup camp (GovHack) for most of the time, and will be trying to get along to the Google events and the Open Australia one. I encourage all of your to do your own mashup camps within your communities, be it a FOSS user group, web 2.0 group, standards or any other sort of community. Let’s see if we can ge mashup camps happening all over Australia!
The events and competition are not just for technical people, so imagine how you might be able to use your skills to contribute to a mashup, and ultimately to a more open society.
Get hacking, mashing and have fun out there! Catch you online! 🙂
PS – for those who are wondering or concerned, yes the funding for the Taskforce is provided by Microsoft, however it is managed by and completely at the discretion of the Taskforce, led by Nicholas Gruen, who are a wonderful group with all the right ideas and principles on openness and access. Don’t let the mere involvement of any company or individual rob your of the opportunity to contribute to something so awesome, and to have your very important perspectives represented on the national and indeed global stage. A full explanation from the Taskforce which should clarify any concerns is on their website.
links for 2009-10-12
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A talk by Andrew Krzmarzick about what people look for in Gov 2.0 leadership. Interesting read. Reflects what you look for in any community leadership, so I'm not sure it is Gov 2.0 specific, but useful.
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An interesting guide. "Procuring Web 2.0 Technology for the Federal Government"
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A great blog post containing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham City Jail. An amazing read both to reflect his work and approach, and as a lesson in inspirational writing and change-making.
links for 2009-10-01
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Amazing application for analysing data and in particular relationships and people. This is a short video demo of the data resulting from Public Sphere 3 on ICT & Creative Industry Development. It is very cool, and interactive!
links for 2009-09-30
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Interesting article. "Our behaviour as journalists is now measurable. And measurability gives the lie to the pretence that journalists behave like scientists, impartially observing the petri dish of society."
links for 2009-09-29
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Gorgeous poster for foss.my 2009, featuring a gorgeous kid in a penguin suit holding the OLPC laptop I gave to her at last year's foss.my 🙂
links for 2009-09-22
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"The Marine Corps' ban on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and other social media could hurt morale more than it helps security, a public policy researcher said. "The ban is at odds with realities of the 21st-century military," said Chris Bronk. Very interesting.
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"Managing staff who participate in social networks." – some great links and guides put together by Laurel Papworth! Thanks!
links for 2009-09-21
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"Far from heralding in a "2001: Space Odyssey" dystopia, Baron believes that social networking sites, blogs and the Internet are actually making us better writers and improving our ability to reach out to our fellow man." Very interesting!
links for 2009-09-18
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Awesome timeshifting graphing tool. Very nice!
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"It has come to my attention that the music industry now wants royalties for those 30-second clips of music you hear in iTunes." Insanity! Great article.
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"So in case it's of use to others who are thinking of doing the same, I've turned BIS's Twitter strategy into a generic template Twitter strategy for Departments" Quite useful for gov esp politicians. A little over the top if terms of risk mgmt, but very useful.
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"As a preview it's rough around the edges, may your love for data guide you." – Lovely, interactive and mashable datasets publicly available. Really useful!
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"data visualizations you just gotta love…" – Lovely blog for chart and data philes 🙂
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"How does the government spend our money – and what would you cut? Click on the link to hear economics editor". UK Government spending in beautiful interactive format. Nice!