Preview of Gov 2.0 L.A. 2013 From Twitter.

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Gov 2.0 L.A. 2013 is almost here.

As the founder of @Gov20la “Gov20LA” as it is referred to, I could not be more excited and proud. As the event gets ready to head into our fourth annual one; we are getting ready to make history, break some trendlines, and lead the dialog for another year.

But before discussing the amazing people who will be speaking I would like to highlight a major achievement of Gov 2.0 L.A.:

Since our first event in 2010, we have created and enabled an environment around building our speakers base as one that represents our society. So we have 50 percent female speakers and 50 percent male speakers. This is a critical achievement and comes at a critical time when this very issue is the subject of TV, Radio and written debate. Just recently there was an article by Nilofer Merchant (@nilofer) in the Harvard Business Review, with one of the salient points being made is that LESS than 20% of all conference speakers and panelists are Female. Less than 20%.

So Gov20LA is proud, as am I, to be able to say that we have beaten this particular national average and beaten it solidly. I continue to ensure that the speakers split for Gov20LA is evenly split between men and women, and did so because it is the right thing to do, not because we thought that in four years everyone would be talking about it. But that is what has now happened.

Gov20LA 2013 is going to rock! I could not be more excited about the powerful collection of women and men who will be speaking,

[View the story "2013 Speakers for Gov 2.0 L.A. " on Storify]

Thank you! We look forward to seeing you in person and in our live stream on April 20, 2013.

Alan W. Silberberg, Founder, Gov 2.0 L.A.

Moving down the Gov 2.0 Continuum to Deep Change Agent.

In the last 5 years or so “Gov 2.0” (Government 2.0) has grown from being a name coined by William Eggers to now becoming the umbrella term for serious change in Government, and not just here in the United States, but around the world.

Many people, including myself have written much about the term Gov 2.0 – everything from “What is Gov 2.0” to lists of people leading current efforts. Lots of other angles have been covered by both the traditional media and online media.

I focus primarily on people power and how people are at the heart of any Gov 2.0 discussion, whether in print or in person. In fact I have called Gov 2.0 a “good revolution” and as we have all seen in the last few years, this is true regardless of country. I do not mean to state that Gov 2.0 is causing revolutions. Far from it. However, the openness and transparency that Gov 2.0 efforts around the world advocate for; driven by mobility and the cloud – have allowed people to be heard. To hear each other, those people whether in government or civic life, in business or entertainment.

Now thanks to the “Triangle of Gov 2.0″ which is the social media and open computing use; the mobile and device specific tools; and the cloud which facilitates both; we now see individual people gaining access to information and power never seen before in our history in more than one country at a time. Now this is happening in multiple places.

People are driving the change. People are adopting the tools. People are leading the way in forcing governments around the world to be more open and accountable. With this innovation of course comes the other side. The very same tools that can promote openness and transparency can and are in turn used against the people by governments, both democratic and not.

But we are so past the “What is Gov 2.0″ phase that I wrote about in 2010. We have blown past the “look the government is using twitter and facebook” phase. Indeed, we have entered the big data and deep analytical tool phase – complemented by more and more machine readable databases that are continually presenting new and innovative uses and creating new businesses and jobs. But people are still at the heart of the matter. Without courageous leaders willing to stand up to the buffeting forces of politics, budgets and fear; we would not be seeing the deep and dramatic changes we are witnessing unfolding in many countries, and many cities, and localities. People are driving this change, this is the constant in Gov 2.0 since 2007.

Thank you CTO Vision!

Alan Silberberg: A Pioneer in Gov 2.0
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Alan W. Silberberg, the founder and CEO of Silberberg Innovations, sat down with me last week and talked about his work in Gov 2.0 and of the live streaming event, Gov 2.0 LA. Over the course of the next few weeks we will explore each of these focuses more intently, while this post will give [...]

This post by SierraCobb was first published at CTOvision.com.

Look Back at Gov 2.0 L.A. 2012

It Was Amazing. Thank you to all who made Gov 2.0 L.A. 2012 a success for the 3rd year in a row. We had over 44,000 people participate in our livestream of the event from at least 19 countries.

A huge Thank You goes out to Callfire, Citysourced, Rockcreek Strategic Marketing, Davenport Institute, TechZulu, for sponsoring and making this event happen.

All of the videos will soon be posted on to our Vimeo Page at http://www.vimeo.com/gov20la and additionally we will be posting the presentations shortly as well.

Enjoy this Storify post about the various tweets, photos, blogs, etc coming out of this event.

[View the story "Gov 2.0 L.A. 2012 in Tweets, Pictures, Blogs" on Storify]

Rocking Citizen Power in 2012.

As the 3rd annual Gov 2.0 L.A. (Gov20LA) approaches on April 21, 2012; I have been thinking a lot about why I started this conference and what it means for you, for me and for our futures. A few years back I wrote this piece “What is Gov20LA All About?”

In the 3 years since we have seen huge growth in social media, cloud computing, mobile technologies and the subsequent explosion of citizen involvement with our governments. This has caused all kinds of situations, good and bad. On the good we are seeing country after country begin to adopt open data and transparent aspects to their internal and external operations. We have seen citizens empowered to use their voice, many for the first time ever. We have witnessed several countries fall to “soft power” of people organizing, and then acting on the organization to effect change of a type we have never seen in our collective human history. On the bad, we are seeing totalitarian governments around the world cling to these new technologies and indeed even the people’s response to them; to crack down, imprison people, kill people and break up organized groups.

I have written in the past about the two headed side of #gov20 and social media in general with regard to Governments and the people who interact with them. This dichotomy is growing, not abating. We see people using technologies to force change yet at same time we are witnessing governments around the world investigate the same technologies to prevent change.

Gov20LA was created to act as a forum to collect the best and brightest people and their ideas and enable them to tell the world their stories. The idea has always been to empower people through learning about the cutting edge applications of technology in government and by the companies servicing them. We feel that by letting you see the speakers in a casual, yet live setting online – we all can learn from the human conversation and dialogue.

Technology is great, solves lots of problems and saves money when properly applied. The problem with most technology conferences and events is they are too jargon laden and usually do not encourage open dialogue with the speakers. We do the opposite. We want the dialogue. We want our speakers interacting both with the live audience in the room and the global Internet TV audience. So we have created an open environment, with some truly amazing people from inside and outside government leading the dialogue.

I am personally so humbled and excited by the continued awesome response Gov20LA receives worldwide. I can’t wait for this year. Join me. Thank you.

Gov 2.0 L.A. 2012 Confirmed Speakers

www.gov20la.com

The speaker list for Gov 2.0 L.A. 2012 is out:

@nigelcameron Nigel Cameron
thinking | speaking | tweeting | blogging || future | tech | policy | values || c-pet.org | nigelcameron.org ||

@Jon_Ferrara Jon Ferrara #sCRM
Pioneer; creator of CRM solutions, CEO – Nimble.com, Founder of GoldMine. Interests; Social Business, Customer Lifecycle, Acquisition, Enchantment; Retention.

@JeanneHolm Jeanne Holm
Evangelist, Data.gov; Chief Knowledge Architect at NASA/JPL

@acc_cto Bill Marion
Chief Technology Officer; Former AFCEA President; Unified Comms driver; Cyber, Intel; Missions Systems Expertise; Vision for Kinect, Mobile, and leadership.

@AndrewNebus Andrew Nebus
Background in technology development, command and control systems, government records, and infosec with a passion for Gov 2.0

@craignewmark craignewmark
customer service rep & founder for craigslist; craigconnects

@lewisshepherd Lewis Shepherd
Live in Virginia, work in DC and Redmond, play on the web. Director of Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.

@JulianneShinto Julianne Shinto
CEO, Imprimpatur, Co-Founder Twain Group. Presidential Candidate Surge Adviser, Micro Gesture Training. Elections. Politics.

@alanwsilberberg Alan W Silberberg
CEO, Founder, Silberberg Innovations, Gov 2.0 L.A. Twain Group. Dad. Innovator and tech consumer.

[View the story "Gov 2.0 L.A. 2012 Confirmed Speakers" on Storify]

http://twitter.com/?list_id=gov20la-2012-speakers#!/IdeaGov/gov20la-2012-speakers/members

CLICK BELOW TO REGISTER FOR OR SPONSOR THE APRIL 21, 2012:

Gov 2.0 L.A. Sponsorships and Tickets Available now

We are pleased to announce that we are now accepting both sponsorships and ticket sales for Gov 2.0 L.A 2012, April 21, 2012. The complete list of confirmed speakers will be announced within a few weeks.

We have three levels of sponsorship, platinum, gold and silver. Individual tickets are priced at $75.00 which includes lunch and ensures an accurate head count. All sponsorship levels include some tickets and marketing and branding opportunities that vary per sponsorship levels. As in the past years, this event is user generated, both in terms of sponsorships and content. We rely on your sponsorships and ticket purchases to provide continuous live stream, HD videos and interaction from the internet before and during the event on a global scale. Gov 2.0 LA would not exist without your continued help and support.

Thank you, and use the link below to choose how many tickets or what level of sponsorship you want, and the checkout process is quite easily done.

Please go to Gov20LA and do it there:

THANK YOU AND SEE YOU IN APRIL!

3 Themes for Gov 2.0 LA 2012 (and it’s our 3rd year!)

The third Gov20LA is coming up soon. In fact in April of 2012 at the same location as this year.

As we have in the last two years, the event will be fully live-streamed and interactive with twitter, facebook, chat.

We are past the point where the “Gov 2.0″ in our name does more than evoke recognition. It is time to focus not on the theoretical but on the practical. This past year the world has witnessed upheaval and change on a scale that is new to all of us. When we did Gov20LA this year - Tunisia had just fallen, and the crisis in Egypt was just erupting in full; we had a collection of the some the world’s leading thinkers about guess what, social media in times of crisis and governments. It was to be sure pretty amazing timing. Hopefully the drama this coming year will once again be focused on the amazing speakers we will soon be announcing and the world eyes will be watching us with the ability to learn without being present in the room necessarily.

The three themes of this upcoming Gov20LA are going to be:

1. Business inside Government and how it is rapidly becoming different, things like SCRM are being deployed and government is basically being forced to restructure itself.

2. Goverments’ use and management of social media in crisis like the earthquake, hurricanes, riots.

3. Engagement is now being taken as a for granted thing, “everyone has a facebook page” but how real is it and how are crowd-sourcing and public private partnerships re-arranging the landscape?

We are requesting two things from you.

1. If you would like to submit a panel idea or speak please contact us here.

2. We will be issuing a follow up post before January 1, 2012 with regard to sponsorships and corporate opportunities, but if you are interested in sponsoring the event or some part of it, please contact us at Gov20LA@Gmail.com. Once again we appreciate all of the previous sponsors of the past two years, and could not have done it without each and every company and person who stepped up to sponsor the event.

Reputations becoming like credit?

Remember those old AOL commercials on TV, the”You’ve got mail” campaign? It was wildly successful as a marketing slogan, as a commercial, and even as the title of a movie.

Times change. Social media is no longer just a buzzword, but really a part of daily life. It might even be like a utility in the near future, something the average person literally cannot live without. Now the new thing is a play on the old one, “You’ve got Klout.” Or do you? Or do you have Peerindex? Do you know your grade on Grader? Do you know what your Kred is?

It’s ok, most people have no clue. But you need to get a clue. It might seem like fun and games as in the social media stock market “Empire Avenue.” But the reality is people are watching. Employers, potential employers, clients, friends, enemies, ex-spouses, competitors, the police, governments, and of course giant database companies. It is like credit scores were maybe 25 years ago: they mattered but they did not rule your life like credit scores such as FICO do now. Social media influence and “credibility” are of increasing importance. So these scores, whether real or gamed; whether you subscribe or not, matter.

Klout did it again. They went and changed everyone’s numbers. Yes, everyone, even if you are not registered with them. They still monitor you, like a credit rating agency in real life. But most of the other analytical tools that measure social media don’t change as radically or as often as Klout. So what? Consistency is the key to listening and monitoring. These changes affect people’s reputations and people have little direct control over how those changes directly affect them. Klout risks losing market credibility with such wild changes to peoples numbers, without any charts showing historical records and how those numbers changed according to algorithmic changes as opposed to changes in the users social media behavior.

People are upset as evidenced by the thousands of tweets and posts on facebook; at least who follow this or care. But it affects all of us; at least all of us using the internet. It affects all of us with an email address attached to any social network, and therefore what people see in Google and Bing searches when they look you up. It really affects us because there are no standards being applied to the social analytics we are talking about, so numbers vary widely between the providers, and as Klout has demonstrated twice in the past 3 months can vary widely within one service.

Think about the big picture. Do not just rely on one of these services, but you should be actively checking on the health of your reputation. There are ways to make changes, but it requires one to pay attention first. You need to. Others are already.

Takeways from Gov 2.0 L.A. 2011 Listening and Learning

Gov 2.0 L.A. 2011 is now behind us. Such an amazing experience. Thought leaders and practitioners, entrepreneurs and government leaders all came together in one place, for an out of the box weekend filled with very smart people and ideas as well as collaboration and innovation.

My big takeaway as the Founder of Gov20LA:

The amount of listening and learning going on now at all levels of Government, whether international or local is vast. We learned from the Canadian, British and United States Governments just how much active listening is occurring on the global social media stage right now. These countries are both pushing out content in their own and many other languages, but are actively listening and seeking engagement from citizens (not always their own) in other countries. This is a profound statement, and shows clearly the need for Governments to create social media listening command centers (like Dell has for example.) At the same time, we learned from local leaders some of the challenges they face not just in listening but in creating actions out of the issues at hand. I must have heard the term “listening” from almost every panelist and speaker this weekend.

The other big takeaway is the amount of learning going on right now. Two, three years ago, the learning was “so what is this social media/gov 2.0 stuff anyways?” Now – that learning has leapfrogged to best practices, to what is working and not working, and to what lessons can be applied from the private sector into the public sector and vice-versa. We have gone from “what is open source” to “which open source platform/software are you using and why?” The learning is going on from one level of government to another, from one country to another and from one person to another. Remember word of mouth? Social media just expands on that and creates a broader cycle and more rapid response to the word of mouth.

My third powerful takeaway: there is a quiet evolution occurring that is actually creating new companies, new jobs and new possibilities for the marketplace. The explosion of open data is creating new pathways for entrepreneurs to attack centuries old problems in some cases. The interest of the news media and society at large in social media as intensified in recent months due to the continued use of social media as a change agent in the middle east and due to the fact that social media is becoming ubiquitous in much of society. But we also have a very bifurcated social media arena globally. In the west social media means internet (mostly) based platforms and networks. But in many places in Africa, or Latin America, the only social media available is SMS based off of mobile platforms with no graphics or video. But yet these SMS based social networks allow for micro-finance banking to occur in areas where even just a few years ago there were no communications abilities let alone “banking” abilities. So the changes that these tools and technology are producing is profound already.

Did social media cause the events in Egypt, Tunisia? Most of the attendees seemed to agree (loosely) that while social media and mobility played a huge role in these events, it was not the social media itself that was the cause, but rather a highly efficient tool that was tactically and strategically applied in a chaotic situation. There has always been “viral marketing” we have just moved from slower forms of communicating those ideas to instant delivery. What social media did do in those countries was provide a place for planning, strategy implementation and networking and recruiting. But it still took real people to make a real decision to put their real feet on the real streets. So social media was but just one part of a much larger picture driving these historical events unfolding in front of our very eyes.

We are way past rhetorical and ontological debates about “What is Gov 2.0″ or “what is Opengov.” We are now into the delivery phase of the good revolution we call loosely “Gov 2.0.” In fact anyone still spending time debating what “it” is has already benched themselves from the tremendous action and movement in this space now.

My most quoted statement from the weekend:

“*We* are the shareholders. *We* own this business called government.”