“Open data is not, however, as the author of the Future Gov article suggests, a “branch movement” for either Gov 2.0 or open government at all: it’s a core component of building powerful government platforms for innovation, on the order of weather data, GPS or the Internet itself. Watch for how health data provisions new businesses in that evolution.”

English is not my first language so maybe I understand it wrong but I read: Opendata is not a branch of gov20 or opengov ?
Opening up data does not “only” imply new services and innovation, it’s also about using web 2.0 tools to produce better access and transparency that will generate dialogue between administrations and reusers. Dialogue, involvement, coproduction are some of the consequences and these aspects belong to your definitions of both gov20 and opengov.

“Mark: I am not interested in attending conferences for communicators unless I’m speaking. I’m actually doing work and innovating.”

I think that presumes an attitude which I don’t think you hold, that one is unlikely to learn from anyone else. Or that conference attendees don’t say things worth hearing.

It sounds like something that would be said by someone in “broadcast only” which I don’t take to be the case from your thoughtful posts, which show you’ve absorbed (and condensed) a lot of external thoughts.

I consider myself fairly knowledegable about Cloud Computing (I was told by one of the Google reps that I knew more than he did) but I attended a conference a few months ago and was exposed to some great lessons and developed some new ideas

j

First, this posting is not about Twitter. Some of the people on this list have accounts some don’t- and some (as was noted in one comment) have accounts that are not active. The reason for including the Twitter names was simply to give each reader the option to follow those on the list that may post things of interest to them.

Next, the subject of my post was not The Most Innovative People in Government IT (though many of the people on this list would certainly make that list). The topic was The 25 Most Fascinating Communicators in Government IT, and it was based on my personal experience. As I touched on in the post, I’ve spent the past several years arranging high level round table and panel discussions between many of the most influential leaders in the government IT community including most of the Deputy CIOs, CTOs, White House Administration staff, and senior executives from the high tech industry. Consider this list more like a movie critic’s Top 25. There are clearly many more than just 25 great communicators in this space. This is simply a list of my personal top 25 favorite communicators selected from the hundreds of fantastic speakers in the government IT community that I’ve heard from and learned from at my events or other events in town. These are all people who can explain complex issues in simple terms and make non-sexy topics exciting. They are able to speak to the heart of a matter without mincing words and have the ability to inspire and motivate people to take action on a particular issue or cause. Emerson said, “Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.”

Gifted communicators can motivate others to achieve greatness. Exceptional communicators can unite people to accomplish extraordinary things together.

Gov 2.0, god curse the name, has always had at it’s core the concept of innovation. Innovation is doing, not talking.

As a correlating point, communicators are always the last wave. A trend is generally over when communicators figure it all out. No offense, again, to communicators.

Mark, I don’t believe Aaron said any of these people were “All flash, no substance.” I think the remark (Aaron, correct me if I’m wrong) was aimed at this page. It is a list of peoples names and titles with no explanation for their inclusion or links to any fascinating communication.

As a citizen concerned with transparency in government, I applaud all efforts to modernize and improve communication within government entities and between government and ‘the rest of us’. I would love to learn what these (no doubt fascinating) people have done in this area.