#PDF13: Here's the Breakout Schedule: 90+ Speakers; 20+ Great Sessions [UPDATED]
BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, May 20 2013
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
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
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
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
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
Can Social Software Change the World? Loomio Just Might
BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, February 18 2013
After nearly fifty years of development and roughly twenty years of mass adoption, the Internet hasn't created many truly useful tools for groups. We may live in the age of "ridiculously easy group formation," but if you've spent any time as part of a group, you know that all the most popular internet tools --email, list-servs, blogs, chats, and wikis --basically suck at group coordination. None of these tools are built to make it easy for large groups to make decisions together. But a new upstart from New Zealand called Loomio, born in the fertile ashes of the Occupy movement, may have cracked the code. Read More
Announcing PDF 2013 Theme "Think Bigger" + New Speakers!
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, February 12 2013

We've chosen "Think Bigger" to be the theme of our 10th annual Personal Democracy Forum conference it in part to honor our late friend Aaron Swartz, who used that phrase it in an email he wrote to me where he asked, "Why not harness the power of the Internet to work on the larger-scale problems?" Why not, indeed.
Bigger data and more powerful technologies can also mean bigger threats to freedom and bigger misunderstandings too--we're hardly of the view that just because it's technology that must mean it's changing things for the better. But as with every PDF conference, we're aiming to focus on the people, ideas and projects that are really making a positive difference in how the world works and people live.
To that end, we are also pleased to announce the following keynote speakers...
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