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

PdF Brings Election Crowdsourcing to Mexico via 10Questions

BY Daniel Teweles | Tuesday, May 3 2011

Full Disclosure: In my role as PdF's VP of Business Development and Marketing, I manage the 10Questions platform and its international expansion. If you're interested in using 10Questions in your election, I'm the guy to ... Read More

We're Hiring a Community Manager in NYC!

BY Daniel Teweles | Monday, March 14 2011

Year after year PdF continues to grow and thrive because of our community members. More than just content consumers or event attendees, they challenge and provoke, listen and comment, and more often than not, make their ... Read More

PdF Network Calls- Open to the Public!

BY Daniel Teweles | Monday, January 31 2011

Personal Democracy Forum (the publisher of this website) launched the PdF Network in 2009 to give innovators working at the intersection of technology, politics, government and non-profits unparalleled access to experts, ... Read More

Upcoming PdF Events in NYC

BY Daniel Teweles | Wednesday, January 12 2011

PdF is pleased to announce three upcoming events in New York City that we think you'll find continue to tap into the zeitgeist in an engaging and intellectually provocative way. PdF Presents: A Symposium on WikiLeaks and ... Read More

10Questions.com: Video Answers Can be Fun

BY Daniel Teweles | Wednesday, October 20 2010

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Jan Brewer finds her voice after, well... losing it: Now that candidates across the country have answered their constituents' crowdsourced questions via video on 10Questions, I've taken a ... Read More

10Questions Update: Candidate Video Answers are Streaming In

BY Daniel Teweles | Friday, October 15 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum You asked, and the candidates have answered. Video answers from 9 candidates are now live on 10Questions.com. So surf on over and check them out. Then vote. ... Read More

10Questions: New Candidate Confirmations and Videos!

BY Daniel Teweles | Monday, October 11 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum With less than a month until to go until Election Day, campaigns across the country are busy enticing voters, and now, rounding up tech-savvy interns, new media ... Read More

10Questions: Phase 1's End; A Preliminary Analysis

BY Daniel Teweles | Monday, October 11 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum The first phase of 10Questions recently came to an end. Questions for candidates and votes on which questions the candidates should answer are no longer being ... Read More

Some candidates "don't have time" for constituent questions

BY Daniel Teweles | Friday, October 1 2010

10Questions is a project of Personal Democracy Forum 10Questions is an experiment, and as such, different campaigns have different perceptions of the value added provided by directly answering questions submitted by and ... Read More

10Questions Update: 10 Days to Ask Questions and New Videos!

BY Daniel Teweles | Friday, September 10 2010

To help pump up the crowd (pump it up) and spread the word about 10Questions, we made a new video with our good friend Jacob Soboroff, Executive Director of Why Tuesday?. Another video is after the jump. 10Questions is ... Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed monday >

The UK Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

GO

Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

On Threshold of Telecom Revolution, Future of Internet Freedom in Burma Uncertain

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

friday >

Chilean Anti-Corruption Resource: A Crowdsourced Database of Social and Political Connections

In countries where a small minority of social circles have a majority of the political and economic power, personal relationships can affect major decision-making, a serious concern of anti-corruption activists. A new web platform stores personal profiles of key players in Chilean business and politics, complete with biographies and personal and professional connections through family, education, social circles, employers and coworkers, to make tracking social relationships and conflict-of-interest easier. Called Poderopedia (from the Spanish word for power), the project sounds kind of like LinkedIn, but the creation and management of profiles is being crowdsourced out to journalists, activists and concerned citizens.

GO

Middle Eastern Telecom Accused of Working With Saudi Arabia to Spy on Citizens

Mobily, an arm of the state-owned Middle Eastern telecom giant Etihad Etisalat, has been accused of working with Saudi Arabia to develop software that would allow the government to bypass protections for social media users. The exposé comes from Moxie Marlinspike (neé Matthew Rosenfield), an expert in a certain type of malicious Internet attack called MITM (man-in-the-middle), whereby attackers intercept and secretly alter private messages exchanged via email and other social media platforms. GO

Saudi Religious Leader Warns Twitter Users of Consequences in the Afterlife

In late March, Saudi Arabia's top religious cleric said Twitter was for clowns and corrupters. Earlier this week, he said anyone using social media, in particular Twitter, “has lost this world and the afterlife.” His comments might be laughable, if they did not come at a time when the Saudi government is looking into monitoring or blocking social media sites and eliminating user anonymity.

GO

thursday >

What The Other Silicon Valley Immigration Group Is Doing This Month

A bipartisan coalition of political advocacy, business and tech groups are moving ahead to launch a social media blitz next week designed to persuade members of the Senate to vote in favor of immigration reform legislation supported in Silicon Valley. "We're going to create a virtual digital storm," said Jeremy Robbins in a Wednesday ... GO

The New Yorker Hopes "Strongbox" Is a Wiretap-Proof Sieve for Leaks

The New Yorker yesterday became the first outlet to implement DeadDrop, a new system for sources to submit information to journalists online in a more secure and anonymous way than, for example, email. GO

Female Organizer of Pakistan's First Hackathon Stresses Collaboration Over Competition

After Pakistan banned Valentine's Day this year, Sabeen Mahmud started an online protest in which people uploaded photos to mock the government ban. In the weeks following she received death threats and menacing phone calls, and early on she had to stay home from work. That did nothing, however, to keep her from further organizing. Last month, the café she started in Karachi hosted Pakistan's first ever hackathon, which tackled problems including sanitation, crime, disaster management, and education. She even invited a government representative to observe the initial conversations, tackling sensitive areas like government inefficiency and elections.

GO

wednesday >

White House Innovation Fellows Project Spins Off Into A Business

Clay Johnson and Adam Becker joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to help the White House fix the way government does business. Now they're turning that mission into a business themselves. GO

Fighting Fires With Data, New York City Launches New Safety Inspection System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that New York City has implemented city-wide a new risk based inspection system focused on fire safety that is driven by analytics from multiple city agencies. GO

Chinese Netizens Use Digital Initiative to Gain Media Attention for Unsolved Poisoning Case

Last month a medical science student at a Shanghai university died from poisoning, allegedly murdered by his roommate. The specifics of the crime echoed a case from the mid-1990s, in which a 19-year-old student was poisoned with thallium. That case has once again been thrown into the media spotlight, but after 18 years the media has changed and the spotlight means a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo or an online petition to the U.S. President.

GO

PDF France 2013: “Au Code, Citoyens!”

This year PDF France will take place in Paris on June 13, with the theme "Au Code, Citoyens!" ("To Code, Citizens!") The speakers' lineup includes some of the continent's leaders in the digital revolution. GO

tuesday >

Website Imitation is Flattery in New York City Council Race

A New York City Council candidate who had made his name as a technology consultant and spearheaded an open government initiative several years ago found parts of his website copied by another City Council candidate in a different borough, as Politicker first reported. GO

Mike Honda Locks Up Establishment Support, But Challenger Has Ear of the Silicon Valley Elite

Some of Silicon Valley's most influential business people will hold a fundraiser in San Francisco this Thursday for Ro Khanna, the 36-year-old lawyer who's challenging 71-year-old California Democrat Mike Honda for his 17th Congressional District seat. The names at the top of the invite: Ron Conway and Sean Parker. They're apparently forming a committee to help Khanna build his campaign. The other bold-face names who are listed as part of the 'committee in formation' include Salesforce.com's Founder and CEO Marc Benioff, Benchmark Capital General Partners' Matt Cohler and Peter Fenton, tech entrepreneur Shawn Fanning, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, her big data venture investor husband Zach Bogue, and Conway's SV Angel colleague, Founder and Managing Partner David Lee. GO

More