Archive for January, 2012

It’s been a really busy week of registration woes – who’s in, who’s out, and why?? – but I think we’re getting closer to having a class. The site for the class is getting much better thanks to the amazing Kate Kontiris. And today we’re all going to Dudley for their open house.

At the same time, I’m trying to figure out how to help the school become a hotspot for tech/gov efforts. We’re hoping to have some class sessions over at the Media Lab and get space at Harvard’s iLab for group work. We’re also going to do some of the usual speaker-series stuff, but with a twist – organized physically/temporally close to the very-well-attended happy hours at HKS, and with Foo-like breakout rooms for self-nominated interested students in particular discussions. Plus dinner.

The idea is of course to make this not just a brainstorming place but also a creatively critical place, with a focus on real projects. Plus food.

I’m also hoping to arrange quartets soon, if it can be done.

Doc Searls was just here in my new office at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and he said “I had to give up blogging when I was working on the book. I didn’t think I’d have to.”

Well, I did that – and I’m still finishing up the last few nits on the book – and blogging has just not been in the cards. But I have sworn to write about this new class that just kicked off today. I’m trying to make it as public as possible.  The site is here:  https://sites.google.com/site/dpi682spring2012/.  There’s a Twitter account with a really great duck-rabbit avatar:  @tech682. The class will be broadcast, starting next week, at my Google+ profile.

Speakers for the class won’t be Skyping in, I guess.  They’ll be Plus-ing.

The first day was crowded – we don’t know who’s definitely going to be in the class.  I did a quick summary of angles in the gov/tech world, beginning with The Problem With the PlayPump, one of the best cautionary tails about tech-happy-talk ever, for which I have Michael John Gorman of the Science Gallery, Dublin, to thank.

The students had a bunch of comments.

I asked:  How could governments work more effectively using digital technology? They said:

• Instead of moving paper, use a click
• Use technology to track responsible govt actors – reward them for a good job – change incentives
• Help agencies to interact better with one another
• Save money on paper and storage
• Improve service delivery – give information to govt once, instead of many times to many agencies
• Automatically enroll all kids in a particular income bracket into public health programs

Great stuff. We’ve got students from many different countries with widely varying experience.

Then the New Urban Mechanics team came and blew us all away with their description of their agile, virtual, encouraging, innovative approach to bringing new ideas into government.

All in all, it was a great start.  More tomorrow.