Personal Democracy Plus Our premium content network. LEARN MORE You are not logged in. LOG IN NOW >

Notes on Curation: Looking Back on #PDF13, And Ahead

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, June 11 2013

Photo: Esty Stein / Personal Democracy Media

Did we "Think Bigger?" Yes! Beyond the many great individual talks and panels, I was struck to see several cross-cutting themes emerge over Personal Democracy Forum 2013's two days. Read More

WeGov

WeGov News: New Staff, New Partnerships, New Backing!

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, June 5 2013

techPresident's WeGov section is bulking up with a new staff editor, an expanded editorial mandate, a partnership with the engine room, and fresh infusions of support from the Omidyar Network and the United Nations Foundation. Read More

#PDF13: Here's the Breakout Schedule: 90+ Speakers; 20+ Great Sessions [UPDATED]

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, May 20 2013

The scene at PDF 2012's opening

We're almost done nailing down the schedule for Personal Democracy Forum 2013, just a little less than three weeks away. In addition to our main hall keynotes, we're pleased to be offering more than 20 in-depth breakout sessions featuring an amazing array of 90 expert speakers. This year we've developed several core tracks for the breakouts: Net-powered organizing, the growing civic stack, tech policy, and political data. We also will be offering a few sponsored sessions with partners from Mozilla, Omidyar Network, Thoughtworks and a special workshop run by GitHub. Here's what we have lined up for you in each track... Read More

Why "Gender 50/50" Is An Important Challenge and Commitment for the Tech Industry

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, April 23 2013

Credit @adriarichards

It's 2013, and while some big tech conferences like Social Media Week are rolling out commitments to move toward real gender balance in their speaker mix, others like TechCrunch Disrupt are still reproducing the male-dominated events that dominate the field. What does it take for things to change? Read More

PDF 2013 Main Hall Preview + New Speakers!

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, April 10 2013

With PDF 2013 less than two months away, here's an advance look at the main hall talks, plus a whole new round of confirmed speakers. Read More

Book Review: Evgeny Morozov Doth Protest Too Much

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, April 9 2013

By Chatham House, via Wikimedia Commons

According to Evgeny Morozov, the world has gone crazy and he's one of the few sane people left. His strange new book, "To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism," goes so far to build up straw men for his attacks that he suggests contemporary technologists would have ensured Rosa Parks could never have committed her legendary act of civil disobedience. And it gets worse ... Read More

A Modest Proposal: Start Facebook.org

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, March 25 2013

By Derzsi Elekes Andor via Wikimedia Commons

The news that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is working with a group of tech entrepreneurs to start a new independent political group aimed at influencing US policy on immigration and other issues prompts the following question: when is this giant social network going to start taking its own civic responsibilities more seriously, especially as it comes to how Facebook implicitly influences political processes all over the world? Read More

WeGov

techPresident is Hiring! Full-Time Assistant Editor/Writer Wanted for WeGov

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, March 22 2013

We're looking for an enterprising and well-organized assistant editor to join our existing (and illustrious, hardworking and spunky) team in tracking and reporting on how technology is changing politics, government and civic life. Read More

First POST: Droning

BY Micah L. Sifry | Thursday, March 7 2013

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers:The aftermath of Rand Paul's anti-drone filibuster, the U.S. Attorney General defends the Swartz prosecution, Rush Limbaugh discovers that Twitter isn't representative of all Americans, OfA's Jim Messina pushes back on critics, Knight's Prototype Fund makes its first grants, Morozov on Italian politics, and more. Read More

OFA Targets Congress on Guns and Some Members Fire Back

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, February 27 2013

Whatever else you might say about Organizing for Action -- whose funding mechanism looks like a classic influence-peddling scheme -- the suggestion that the group is creating spam-bots to harass opposing members of Congress is ludicrous on its face. Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed today >

The Thicker China's "Great Firewall" Becomes, the Subtler the Doors to Sneak Through

As China announces it will tighten restrictions on access to the Internet, Chinese citizens show that they've developed new ways around them. GO

tuesday >

Cory Booker Hires Democratic Organizing Veteran Addisu Demissie To Manage Senate Run

Newark Mayor Cory Booker has hired a veteran of the Democratic organizing world Addisu Demissie to manage his run to succeed the late New Jersey Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. GO

ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools

ShareProgress, a left-leaning tech startup in downtown San Francisco, launched its social sharing optimization platform Tuesday after several months of testing with the progressive advocacy group CREDO Action. GO

New Organizing Institute to Move from Collecting Election Data to Organizing Election Officials

The New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit that trains campaigners and is no led by former Obama for America data director Ethan Roeder, is launching a new initiative next week aiming to "fix that" for local elections. NOI will announce a national network where local election administration officials can congregate to share solutions to common issues. It's a transition for a team at NOI that had previously been managing the Voting Information Project, which collects data on polling places, election districts and voter registration deadlines and prepares it for third parties in machine-readable format. In the 2012 election cycle, backed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and partnered with Google, VIP made information available in all 50 states. GO

Russian SOPA Passed First Reading

A first draft of a law nicknamed “Russian SOPA” was approved by the Russian parliament last Friday, June 14. Like the original Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill will establish penalties and procedures for online copyright violations.

GO

monday >

Czech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal

The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.

GO

friday >

Mayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit

The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO

New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy

New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO

Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup

Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.

GO

A “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award

“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO

Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China

Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.

GO

thursday >

U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday

A long dormant independent agency that was at least nominally supposed to exercise a modicum of oversight over the booming intelligence-industrial complex is scrambling to meet up next Wednesday, but the public will still be none the wiser about what it plans to do, since it is a closed door meeting. The only indication that the toothless ... GO

Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data

Reporters are shoaling around the news that New York City's new bike sharing system, Citi Bike, is benighted with problems stemming from its high-tech software. But that's not putting the brakes on plans to explore what programmers might do with data generated by the system by hosting a Citi Bike Civic Hack Night later this month. GO

Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy

Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO

wednesday >

New Russian Law Makes Publication of Information on Gay Rights Illegal

On June 11 the Russian parliament passed a bill against “homosexual propaganda” that effectively outlaws gay rights rallies and bans informational or pro-gay rights material from publication in the media or on the Internet. Violators of the law will risk heavy fines and censorship and, in the case of a media outlet, risk being shut down. It had near unanimous support, passing in a 436-to-0 vote, with only one abstention.

GO

More