Brian Purchia
Brian Purchia is a communications strategist that has led media strategy for politicians, tech start-ups, and Fortune 500 companies.
His recent successes include organizing the first mayoral forum on Gov 2.0, SFOpen 2011 and leading communications for Change.org, an online platform for social change. The New York Times says Change.org’s profile “skyrocketed,” with Purchia as Communications Director.
From 2006-10, Brian was San Francisco Mayor Newsom’s New Media Director. Purchia was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as Newsom’s “go-to guy for new, and especially social media” for his implementation of a groundbreaking new media strategy called “gutsy” and “brilliant” on NPR. Purchia’s work, described by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark as “genuinely innovative,” led to Newsom ranking as #1 mayor for his use of social media by the leading search engine for finding and tracking consumer-generated opinions, Samepoint.
Newsom’s extensive new media operation was used to build the mayor’s reputation as an environmental leader. In 2010, Newsom was selected the greenest mayor for the second year in a row by TreeHugger. Brian was also the driving force behind the nation’s first open data law, open source software policy, and API for government.
San Francisco has led the nation with Gov 2.0 innovations, like Twitter311 – connecting the City’s 311 Call Center to Twitter — allowing residents to contact the City about potholes, graffiti and interact with government in real time with a tweet, DataSF.org – the City’s one stop shop for government data that has empowered developers to create incredible apps that bring city data to life, and Open311 the first national API in government.
Last week’s election brought a new party to power in our nation’s capitol and shook up the political landscape in San Francisco. With Mayor Gavin Newsom’s ascension to Lt. Governor of California there is a job opening in City Hall. His election has officially kicked off a process to name an interim mayor and who it’s going to be has been the buzz of the City for well over a year.
If you live in the U.S. and have turned on your TV or surfed the web in the past 24 hours, chances are you have seen one, or more likely hundreds, of political ads. You cannot shake the wall-to-wall political coverage about the significance of next week’s election.
An open source union movement
Earlier this year, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ignited an open source movement in government when the city approved the nation’s first open source software policy. Now, another movement — labor may be getting behind this effort. I have been asked to speak with Local 21 of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE/AFL-CIO) today about Gov 2.0 initiatives I helped lead for Newsom and why unions should embrace open source technology.