Sheila Campbell and Rachel Flagg kick off the second plenary session of the Government Web Managers Conference, noting that this the seventh annual web managers conference. (In 2001, it was just 12 people sitting around a conference room, Sheila notes.) They also note that these sessions are open to the media, but the breakouts will be off the record. Up next are Katie Stanton, director of citizen participation for the White House, and Bev Godwin, director, online resources & interagency development, White House. Their topic is citizen participation and engagement, and we expect to hear about new initiatives to engage the public online, and what people can do at their agency to build greater participation with target audiences. Again, here are my verbatim notes, not precisely for quotation, though when I put something in quotes, it's pretty accurate. Comments and observations in [brackets].

Hello everyone. I’m thrilled and honored to be a new contributing blogger on techPresident.com and Personal Democracy Forum. This is my first extended attempt at blogging, so bear with me as I get into my own groove and work out some kinks as I go along (I told my bosses this would just be a “pilot” so that should give me some latitude if it turns out I’m not very good at this!). But seriously, in full disclosure, you’ll see from my bio that I’m no professional writer or journalist like many of the other bloggers. I doubt you’ll be reading my posts because of my brilliant prose. But what I’m hoping I can offer—as co-chair of the Federal Web Managers Council—is an insider’s view of the government web manager community and the challenges and issues we face every day in trying to transform government websites to better serve the public. I want to share some observations from inside the trenches. And I want to get a dialogue going about how we can work together to effect meaningful, lasting change. Over the past year, I’ve seen too many conversations in the echo chamber, where government people just talk to government people or the “we-want-to-reform-government” folks only talk to other government reform folks. This blog is a small attempt to try to address that.