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

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

WeGov

Can Social Software Change the World? Loomio Just Might

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, February 18 2013

The Loomio mascot

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...

Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed today >

Crowdsourcing Waste Management Solutions in Montenegro

For once we aren't talking about the worldwide scarcity of toilets, just good old-fashioned household waste. Montenegro has a garbage problem so bad even the tourists are complaining about it. A new mobile app sponsored by the Agency for Environmental Protection, NGO Ozon and United Nations Development Programme in Montenegro will hopefully get citizens involved in reporting illegal garbage dumps. GO

monday >

Her Majesty's 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

Burma's Upcoming Telecom Revolution Will Probably Not Bring Internet Freedom

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

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