By adrielhampton,on June 26th,2011%
After spending the last several weeks exploring mostly the social CRM (customer relationship management) functionality of my new company,NationBuilder,tonight I dug into the CMS (content management system).
(See a few screenshots of CRM fun here.) I’d done a little work with events and blog pages,but tonight I decided to pull Gov 2.0 Radio,the Third Thursdays civic tech mixer,and more of my blogging all together. NationBuilder,with its rich text editor and easy-to-edit templates is the perfect platform for pulling together my disparate activities,which range across several WordPress,Blogger and Posterous blogs,Eventbrite pages and email boxes. My new NationBuilder site allows folks to post and promote their own civic tech events,and to blog on the Gov 2.0 Radio page and my own blog tab. I hope you’ll check it out. By adrielhampton,on June 24th,2011%
Plenty of great ideas and actions came out of last weekend’s CityCampSF,and tonight we’ll take them further as the San Francisco Summer of Smart continues. Here are some of the highlights from Saturday:
Planeando la Ciudad Abierta –Planner an avid CityCampSF supporter Maryra Madriz covers the camp for a Venezuelan social media blog,including a look at the Blockboard App and Loveland’s Detroit virtual renewal project. Thoughts on CityCampSF –Ciaran reflects on the unconference format,SF’s dark fiber network,open mapping and the SF Fire App. Want to Fix Your City? There’s a Camp for That –Milicent Johnson of Shareable discusses bringing SimCity principles into real municipal life,digital divide issues and community engagement. The World Changes When We Change It –I write up a bit of progress on the SF Fire App initiative (photo above show project volunteers from the SF City Attorney’s Office). SF developers,public servants pitch their civic tents at CityCampSF –GovFresh contributor Jessica Pearce provides a wealth of coverage,including several videos of mayoral candidates and event organizers discussing the camp. She also focused on the SimCity-like efforts of the Loveland team and on the SF Fire App AED-finder project. Camping in San Francisco? Reset Pitches In with Gov 2.0 Crowd at City Camp –Patrick Stelmach from ResetSF provides an extensive wrap-up of the camp. Stay involved by signing up for email updates at my Wired to Share “Adriel Nation”site,and by participating in the ongoing Summer of Smart events. By adrielhampton,on June 23rd,2011%
On Tuesday,Luke Fretwell,Dustin Haisler and I spoke for a couple hours to a delegation of 17 municipal,provincial and federal Chinese officials about Gov 2.0 and civic innovation in the U.S. Dustin described how his company,Spigit,encourages idea generation and helps filter through thousands of opinions to create actionable suggestions. Luke discussed grassroots public participation and the evolution of civic technology activism in San Francisco.
I shares examples from across the federal,state and local governments in the U.S. of agencies using social media to increase efficiency and solicit greater public participation. The Chinese were especially interested in how to encourage more public input in planning processes and municipal-level decision making. I was also able to share examples of public-private innovation partnerships,such as the SF Fire App initiative,and to provide each member of the delegation a copy of Bob Fine’s “The Social Media Monthly.”
By adrielhampton,on June 20th,2011%
 Getting key players in the same room at CityCampSF on Saturday,we made some serious progress on the SF Fire App initiative,a project aimed at accurately inventorying and mapping all of the AEDs in San Francisco. Eventually,the data from this project will be used by emergency rescuers and Good Samaritans,and in efforts to fill in gaps in coverage of these life-saving devices.
On Saturday,Javier Muniz of Granicus coded up a demonstration map with known locations,Brett Husbands of Firmstep provided a form for gyms and other AED owners to submit information on their devices,and volunteers from the City Attorney’s Office continued public outreach and data verification. City Attorney Dennis Herrera and representatives from the SF Fire Department addressed the citycampers about the importance of this project,which will literally save lives.
On the thank you note for CityCampSF sponsors,one camper wrote,“Thanks much for helping us change the future.”And that’s what will do.
For more on the second CityCampSF,which brought campers from as far as Virginia Beach and Detroit,check out coverage from Shareable. More photos here. By adrielhampton,on April 17th,2011%
 The new Gov 2.0 crew in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia. I haven’t been blogging here much due to a busy schedule and lots of other blogging around the civic tech space,especially in San Francisco. Most of my Gov 2.0 blogging is now news oriented,and can be found at the Gov 2.0 Radio site. In case you missed it there,we’re very happy to have Allison Hornery of CivicTEC as a regular co-host on the show. Continue reading KL Gov 2.0,ThirdThurs.org,SFTechDems.org,SFFireApp.org,LetsDoItSF.org and More to Come By adrielhampton,on April 3rd,2011%
The more time I spend thinking,advocating and researching around Gov 2.0,the more clear it is that open source,open ideation and open innovation are the keys to global progress. Thanks to social networks and near-zero cost communications,it is possible to quickly build loose teams around ideas,to research existing solutions and to collaborate across cities and continents. It’s the spirit with which we’re building sffireapp.org,and it is applicable to any number of civic good projects.
Our challenges are too great and time too precious. Never build it twice. By adrielhampton,on March 29th,2011%
Before launching official social media sites,it is very important to have a strategy specific to your organization. This does not have to be a heavy policy document,but it is essential to success and ongoing evaluation to have stated goals,milestones and next steps in mind. This template is based on U.S. EPA web manager Jeffrey Levy’s social media approach,“Mission,Tool,Metrics,Teach.”
Designing a strategy works best when organized succinctly. For example,the research firm Forrester has built a practice around their POST Method:“People,Objectives,Strategy,Technology.”
Continue reading ‘MTMT’:Templating Social Media Strategy,Jeffrey Levy Style By adrielhampton,on January 25th,2011%
Fire Department App –PSA from Fire Department on Vimeo. Imagine,you’re in the middle of a weekly team meeting when your iPhone vibrates. You stand up and calmly tell your coworkers,“There’s been a heart attack in the first floor gym. I’m CPR trained. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Similar scenarios may soon by playing out all over the country thanks to groundbreaking use of the location-aware features of modern smartphones and access to emergency dispatch information from local fire departments. In the San Francisco East Bay,it could be happening in a matter of days,as the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District rolls out its new ‘Fire Department’app for iPhone,which launches publicly today. I felt the world change
A couple weeks back,I found myself in Chief Richard Price’s office with my friend Joe Hackman,eyes glistening with tears as we watched a PSA video for the application (read Joe’s thoughts on what the new app means to our SF East Bay community). In the video,a 72-year-old man collapses at the lumber store;across the parking lot,a young man in an electronics store gets an alert “CPR needed” – his phone gives him an address and map of where to go,and shares the location of the nearest automated external defibrillator. Sitting in that office,seeing an app that puts real life-saving information at the fingertips of any willing and trained volunteer,I felt the world change. The creators of this application have moved beyond the real‐time Web to the right time Web. – Tim O’Reilly,O’Reilly Media
Chief Price and his staff first conceived of this application more than a year ago,after an incident in which they were having lunch and learned on their radios that a man was having a heart attack just steps away. Heart attack-induced brain death begins in just minutes,and fire department staff simply cannot arrive fast enough to save most people –but any army of CPR-trained volunteers can. And while they have had to be in exactly the right place to respond,the new app will dramatically extend the ability of everyday citizens to save lives. Price told me that he has just 43 firefighters on duty during the day,but in his suburban district of 170,000 people,10 percent have CPR training. “You can see the significance,”he said. Area residents will see the app PSA in local movie theaters beginning this weekend. Price and his staff developed the iPhone application in partnership with the Center for Applied Informatics at Northern Kentucky University. Over the coming weeks and months,he will work with the International Association of Fire Chiefs and developers at Workday to bring the free application to Android and other mobile platforms,and to spur widescale adoption.
 “The value of this application is far too important to society to not ambitiously share it with other communities around the globe,” Price said. In the San Ramon Valley alone,community members who download the new app could help respond to as many as 100 calls a year. Across the U.S.,nearly 300,000 people die each year of cardiac arrest. “I think in the big picture,what we recognize is that of the people who have sudden cardiac arrest,less than one in three get CPR,” said heart surgeon Junaid Khan,president of the American Heart Association’s East Bay board. “Without CPR,a person really has very little chance of survival. For the first time,a smart phone application can actually help save a life.” ‘You can get there faster’
Dr. Khan and Chief Price also talked about the added benefit of creating more responders. Historically,even CPR-trained individuals sometimes balk in the face of crisis,but now self-identified volunteers within 500 yards of a heart attack in a public place will receive push notifications,increasing the likelihood of two or more responders,who can encourage one another and even take turns administering CPR. “I think this is really a perfect marriage of technology with a government service and volunteers who want to participate,” said Kahn. “Every minute lost dramatically decreases your chance of survival. Literally every minute counts.” I asked Kahn about the medical savings associated with early response in terms of less long-term damage. He said more data is needed for such an epidemiological study. “If you get the patient to the hospital before significant damage,the chance that they would successfully recover obviously increases. This app would let you know. You can more likely get there faster than the fire department.” 
To learn about CPR and AED training in your area,visit the AHA’s website. For more information on the new application and an electronic press kit,visit the SRFPD’s website. To download the SRVFPD’s app now,visit ‘Fire Department’in the iTunes store. Chief Price will be a guest on Gov 2.0 Radio on the evening of February 6,2011,to discuss this new technology. By adrielhampton,on January 24th,2011%
 My short definition of Gov 2.0 is roughly this:harnessing emerging technologies to make government more transparent,efficient and collaborative (defining government more in terms of governance than politics,and including citizen participation and solution co-creation in the “collaboration”goal).
What inspires me about the Gov 2.0 movement is that it is empowering everyday public servants and citizens,and it represents a fundamental shift to self-determination and solutions-orientation in tackling tough challenges in our complex global society. In that,it is a departure from past transparency movements that have been more antagonistic in nature and have used legislation as a stick to try and force disclosure,limit campaign finance and mandate programmatic spending levels. Much of that departure has been fueled by developments in information technology in the past decade (including the near-zero economic cost of global communications and collaboration). Gov 2.0 is about renewal and solutions,whether they come from “official”sources,ask-forgiveness later activism,or weekend hackathons. Focuses of Gov 2.0 activists include grassroots citizen engagement,openness and two-way communication in social media,and releasing government data for economic and social benefit. I recently asked on Twitter what inspired others about Gov 2.0. One armed forces public affairs officer told me “it’s to finally see so many government participants in open communications.”Other feedback included: Aaron McGowan,Canadian open source,data and transparency activist:“A better future,restoration to democracy,economic growth &opportunity”; Sid Burgess,Oklahoma-based Gov 2.0 strategist:“Meeting passionate people in government”; Oscar Gonzalez,Orange County web developer:“the real possibility of actual citizens participating.” What inspires you about Gov 2.0? By adrielhampton,on January 19th,2011%
In discussions around the state of the Gov 2.0 movement in San Francisco and the planning for the next CityCampSF,one thing is clear –the movement in San Francisco must grow up,and part of that maturation is involvement in the political process. Exactly what that looks like remains very fluid. However,the first step is to frame a basic set of political principles supported by local Gov 2.0 advocates. Many communities are at this step,and I’m working on a blog post for the UK Local Government Information about what a Gov 2.0 manifesto for local government might look like. From my Twitter community,I’ve already got some great input around the balance between transparency and secrecy;more agile and effective privacy regulations;and support for the good work of public employees. A local Gov 2.0 platform should also support broader national and international goals,as often our municipal elected officials are the people who will rise to higher political office. What do you think should be part of a Gov 2.0 political manifesto? It needs to be narrowly tailored,but also powerful. Here’s a recent post from Alex Howard on the definition of Gov 2.0 for starters. | | |
Connect with Adriel