Wikinomics of Leaks
The return on investment from open government data is starting to be shown by projects such as apps for democracy. What about the current WikiLeaks cablegate release of American diplomatic cables? With the Apps for Democracy contest, there were 47 web, iPhone and Facebook apps built on government data, with an economic return of 400%. The … Read more
Notes on Wikileaks
I recently met Julian Assange. My conversation with him helped to shine a light on for Wikileaks’ internal processes, just as Raffi Khatchadourian’s brilliant piece in the New Yorker and Julian’s TED talk also helped to do. Julian’s point, which I agree with, is often that newspapers are failing because of bad journalism. How many … Read more
Marginalized by Unicode
Communities that are most marginalized continue to be so online. People who do not have access often speak languages that are not in Unicode and live in places that have never before been mapped, often not even photographed. Some of these things can be considered excessive compared to actual needs. The question, however, is access. … Read more
Transparency trumps objectivity
Visualizations can help hold governments accountable. How much aid was promised? How much sent? How much actually received? And can what happens in Haiti change the conversation. Transparency trumps objectivity.
Haiti’s need for community-led reconstruction
The outpouring of support in response to the devastating earthquake has been astounding, with over $58 million being raised by Hollywood alone through the “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon organized by George Clooney. The European Union’s 27 nations are contributing $575 million. U.S. charities have raised $470 million for disaster. The U.S. is providing the … Read more
Armenia’s New Media Landscape
Last week I was in Armenia looking at the current media landscape. It was a pleasure to be back again after I was there for Barcamp Yerevan back in April. It was fun to be back and exploring the media sector in more detail, applying what I learned from the civil society tech brainstorm sessions … Read more
Participation Camp
Tish Shute has a fantastic overview of Participation Camp. It was fantastic to be a part of it and brainstorm about the Open My City project and ideas with such a smart group of people at the cutting edge of government 2.0. Read all about it on her blog.
