vote for OpenGovernment.org in NewsChallenge - before 5pm ET tmw

[David Moore :: OpenGovernment]

Hi all, 

David with PPF here, I'll be posting more-frequent development updates & preview links here on this OG G-Group before OpenGovernment.org's re-launch this Spring. What's good everybody.

Our terrific OG technical lead, James McKinney of Open North, will welcome developer discussion here on the more-technical side & open-data offerings. 

As background, last week James & I had a great time attending the SxSW Interactive conference in Austin, circulating with the Knight Foundation community, re-connecting with other #opengov & #opendata advocates, and giving a sneak preview of our new site UI at the Knight expo booth. Focus on open Q&A with city elected officials, with social sharing of community issues as on We The People. I wrote more on the OC Blog last Friday about the niche we seek to fill with Q&A, as has been proven popular at the federal level with We The People and in other countries. 

Also to report, James has been admirably pushing things forward with the Popolo open standard for city government data. PPF is glad to be supporting this impt. standards work and looking forward to discussing it at Transparency Camp, the Sunlight Foundation's un-conference, in D.C. from May 4th-5th. More on that below. 

The most pressing update in this email is to request your views, applause, and comments on our OpenGovernment.org submission to the Knight NewsChallenge :: 

https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/opengovernment.org-a-wethepeople-for-state-city-and-local-governments/

... please check it out, and help us maintain our momentum - click "applaud this" in the right-hand sidebar. You'll briefly register a free OpenIdeo account or login securely through Facebook Connect, and then your applause will count - we're currently ranked 37th out of over 600 submissions (just published last Friday afternoon) - on the second pate of most-viewed projects, aiming for front-page, haha - we're gunning for you, Phil. (Just kidding dude, Democracy Map is hugely impt, see below.) Applause has to be received by 5pm ET tmw, Tuesday, so please give 'er a hand now - and leave a comment, happy to chat on that public forum during the imminent "feedback" phase. 

Please spread the word to your networks and help OG get more traction as a free, libre, open-source, open-data, not-for-profit project - forward this email as you see fit, with an encouragement to applaud OG's NewsChallenge app, and here are some suggested FB & Twitter updates to post on social media :: 

Soc. networking ::

Vote for OpenGovernment.org in the #NewsChallenge - "We The People" for every level of government: http://kng.ht/13XMh02

Micropublishing :: 

Vote for @open_gov in the #NewsChallenge - "We The People" for every level of government: http://kng.ht/13XMh02 #opengov

... I should mention that you should check out the screenshots of our clean new site design, available on our NewsChallenge page, with spiffy web app UI done in responsive design by our awesome front-end dev contractor Steve Trevathan of Dobot (out of Cambridge MA - see update up top this OG blog post). More screenshots & preview links to come, of course, still iteratin'n'n'n, but please feel free to send early early impressions my way.

Here's the direct link to our NewsChallenge proposal - please support our work to bring OG to all 50 U.S. state governments and hundreds of U.S. city governments this year as a free public resource in re-usable, re-mixable code - a user-focused experience in posing questions to elected officials and conveying ideas to people in local government :: 

https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/opengovernment.org-a-wethepeople-for-state-city-and-local-governments/

... while you're logged-in to NewsChallenge, please applaud & comment on James' proposal for open data standards that we'll be using on OG :: 

https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/legislative-open-government-data-standards/

... and last - there are many worthy suggestions in the NewsChallenge, I'll try to write a blog post singling out some important work & those from non-profit allies - but I wanted to highlight our friend Phil Ashlock's stellar proposal for the vital infrastructure Democracy Map (the third time he's submitted! Or fourth! So useful, so overlooked...) :: 

https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/democracymap/

... though ideally we'd get 1500+ more views first. Just kidding again, Phil. 

More to come, ping me anytime for a more detailed update, david at ppolitics.org / davidmooreppf on AIM / Skype, #opengovernment in Freenode.net on the ol' I-R-C. Excited to get our latest work out into the open this spring.  

-David

https://twitter.com/open_gov

https://twitter.com/ppolitics

[David Moore :: OpenGovernment]

Hi everyone, 

Checking in for the first time since Monday the 18th with an update on our NewsChallenge proposal for rolling out OpenGovernment.org nationally. 

Currently we're 16th overall in most-viewed & 8th overall in most-applauded, which is good standing. Thank you to everyone on this 78-member mailing list who applauded us and spread the link. NewsChallenge semi-finalists will be announced this Friday at 5pm ET. So under 48 hours remaining.

With a couple promotions from friends-of-PPF like Chris Hayes, Zephyr Teachout & Reihan Salam, last week we jumped almost 500 views in 24 hours. Which is approximately what we'd need to crack the top-10 most-viewed proposals. 

I've had these asks up on the OpenCongress homepage for the past two weeks, re-upping them here on this G-Group - please help us spread the word! I won't belabor this point but OG is a small non-profit team, without dedicated project fundraising time or outreach staff beyond what I can kick out myself on email lists like this - so help us out :: 

1. Please post a social media update like the below (short links included) :: 

Just gave applause to OpenGovernment.org in the #NewsChallenge - "We The People" for every level of government: http://kng.ht/13XMh02

Click "applaud this" for @open_gov in the #NewsChallenge - "We The People" for every level of government: http://kng.ht/13XMh02

... more info on OC Blog re: the user signup flow on the NewsChallenge page. It's truly not onerous. 

... I'll also note we got some great Twtr mentions but our FB reach could use some attention, so please, if you have reach on that service or are obligated to be present there for professional reasons, give us a link & some 'likes' there. 

2. Upvote on /rpolitics: We should have "We the People" petitions and Q&A forums for every person in Congress any time we want. (Link.)

3. Feel free to forward this email to your wider networks, it's all free & libre for the public benefit. We have a good amount of development yet to do before OG re-launch in May and being a NewsChallenge finalist would increase visibility of our open data standards (Popolo!). But more importantly, NewsChallenge support would allow us to roll out OG nationally - to hundreds more U.S. cities & potentially thousands of municipalities - in open-source remixable code.

4. While you're logged-in to OpenIdeo on NewsChallenge site, please view & applaud the other NewsChallenge projects I highlighted in my OC Blog post :: 

Most important: Legislative Open Gov’t Data Standards – by OG Technical Lead James McKinney of Open North. PPF is proud to support the open Popolo Project – you’re invited to join the discussion. Really clutch for rolling out OG for Q&A with thousands more U.S. municipalities. 

Democracy Map API – by our friend Phil Ashlock, one of the five most-viewed projects – another vital piece of infrastructure for finding & contacting everyone who represents you in government, as we were hoping to build with our original OpenGovernment.org back in 2010-2011 (as a version of OpenCongress for all 50 U.S. state legislatures, in partnership with the Open States project). His fourth time submitting, this time I think you got the pitch down, buddy, haha. We’ll aim to move forward together and hopefully be able to coordinate with a robustly-supported Democracy Map API on the new version of OpenGovernment at local levels.

eCitizens – a commercial startup led by Jerry Hall, looks cool, their legislative alert features could be useful (hopefully they remain open-source) for OG’s planned features to offer public discussion forums & Q&A surrounding city council agendas.

Making Meetings Matter – from my friend Frank of the non-profit OpenPlans, where I am glad to rent workspace in NYC. The OpenPlans team does self-evidently high-quality work and has truly admirable wide networks among open-data, civic engagement practitioners in cities across the country. Widgets for displaying agenda info would go far towards making city-level deliberation more widely accessible, among other features of their proposal.

... let me know what you think of our proposal, ping me anytime on IRC or Skype, I'm easy to reach & eager to talk. Thanks for following our progress on OG, excited to get it back out into the wild.

-David

https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/opengovernment.org-a-wethepeople-for-state-city-and-local-governments/

AIM / Skype: davidmooreppf

IRC: #opengovernment on Freenode