Phase2 Drupalcon 2010 Proposed Session Topics

Session voting for Drupalcon 2010 in San Francisco started today and I am very proud of the great entries that our team at Phase2 has prepared for the conference. In total our team proposed 13 sessions that cover 5 of the 6 categories and run the complete range from business topics to graphic design, architecture and code development. We would love your vote and chance to share what we have learned this past year.

Drupal in Government Part 1: Five government sites using Drupal effectively for open government initiatives

Why is Drupal important to the the Federal government? That is the main topic I will cover in a 3 part guest blog series on GovFresh. GovFresh works to inspire government-citizen collaboration and build a more engaged democracy. It features Gov 2.0, open gov news, guides, TV, tech, people and official U.S. government feeds, all in one place.

The first post Five government sites using Drupal effectively for open government initiatives provides some high profile examples of who is using Drupal effectively in government and why Drupal is a great fit for what these sites are trying to achieve.

My second post will focus on the unique aspects of providing web content management for government that are relevant for Drupal (i.e. what can Drupal learn from Government?) And my final post will provide ideas and predictions for the future of Drupal within the Federal government.

What Does the Open Government Directive Look Like?

On the first anniversary of the President's inauguration, I wanted to share some thoughts about the historic Open Government Initiative and discuss the implementation details of last month's Open Government Directive. Since we are developers, we wanted to do more than talk and write about what open government is, we are interested in how it actually looks and works to a user on the web. So we prepared some mock-ups for this purpose and shared it around town. This mock-up demonstrates both our concept for the user interface and content of a great /open site, but also prototypes what a simple approach to open government data and communications could be through a templated installation of Drupal we would like to build if some agency wants one?

Go.USA.gov the Government URL Shortener using Drupal

"Does the world really need another URL shortener?" Asked TechCrunch in a snarky post by Erick Schonfeld on October 13, 2009 entitled Go.USA.Gov! Our Taxpayer Money Hard At Work Shortening URLs. He was referring to Go.USA.Gov the new URL shortener that lets government employees create short .gov URLs for their links. Go.USA.gov also tracks the number of clicks each shortened URL receives, so you can measure the impact of the spread of those links. We feel this is more like an example where the government rapidly and inexpensively deployed something innovative that will protect the reputation of government assets on the web.

Today We Release Tattler, What Is It? Why Is It Unique?

Today we are releasing our first publicly available open source version of Tattler on Drupal.org. Tattler is a way to monitor topics you are interested in and learn who is talking about them, where, when and how.

Tattler might be used by a researcher, journalist, blogger, technology analyst, or PR specialist or anyone looking for a better way to research on the web. In other words, Tattler is for those that don't just listen to, but help shape the public policy debate - either with coverage or research. So what is unique about Tattler?

Can the Semantic Web Really Save your Site?

Yesterday, I had the privilege of moderating a panel session at the Online News Association's 2009 Conference in San Francisco on the use of semantic web technologies for publishers entitled "Can the Semantic Web Really Save your Site?" Our 3 guests included two CTOs for major online news organizations and a semantic web author and technology expert. I was really looking forward to this and was not let down at the caliber of knowledge these guys brought to the table (literally).

Acquia Podcast 13: Phase2 Technology Interview about Tattler

In this podcast, Bryan House from Acquia talks to Frank Febbraro, Jeff Walpole and Irakli Nadareishvili at Phase2 as they talk about Tattler, OpenPublish and the role of solution-oriented distributions in Drupal.

The Linked Data.gov Experiment

As we usher in this new era of open data and government transparency by making raw data available to the public in platform independent formats on Data.gov, we could be overlooking one of the simplest and most sincere opportunities to show what the open data movement is about: Linked Data. Linked data is the key to connecting government data sets to other government data and external data sources on the web.

I am hoping to create interest for a community-led project to prototype an RDF enabled dataset for Data.gov and link it to other related data sources in the Linked Data Cloud.

Highlights from the NTEN 09 Conference in San Francisco

Last week I traveled to San Francisco for the NTEN NTC09 conference. I met some great people, learned a lot about what non-profits are doing and thinking about web technology these days, and chatted it up with fellow open source champions in the Drupal, Plone and Joomla communities. I concluded my visit with a presentation to the San Fransico Semantic Web Group and the Drupal Users Group on our work with Open Calais and the development of the OpenPublish tool.

Getting Psyched for Drupalcon DC

Here at Phase2 we are really getting geared up for Drupalcon next week on our home turf here in DC. We are very proud to be a Gold sponsor for the event. Drupalcon is the premier Drupal event this year and we have been waiting for this for what seems like forever. Thanks (in no small part to our friends at DevelopmentSeed), the hard work of planning is over and now it is time to get down and Drupal.