Gov 2.0 Heroes

Gov 2.0 Hero: Jim Gilliam

Jim Gilliam talks about his many Gov 2.0 projects, including NationBuilder, White House 2 and act.ly and what inspires him to make government work.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

When I found out computers could talk to each other, I fell in love. That was over 20 years ago, and I’ve spent most of my career using the internet to bring democracy to different industries. I was involved in partnering with Netscape to bring the Open Directory Project to Lycos and Hotbot back in the late 90′s. Yahoo built a directory by hand, and Chris Tolles had this crazy idea that he could crowdsource a much better version. This was probably one of the first Web 2.0 projects, before the term even existed.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Craig Newmark

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark talks about Gov 2.0 and social media’s role in democracy.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Adriel Hampton

Private investigator, new media strategist, founder, co-host & co-producer of Government 2.0 Radio and Gov 2.0 Hero Adriel Hampton.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

It really was seeing how the Barack Obama campaign was using low-cost communications to allow folks from all over the nation to get involved with the campaign right from their home computers. That woke up the journalist and activist in me, and I started looking around what was going on in the tech activism space. I was also doing a lot of networking on LinkedIn, and started tinkering around a bit with the Government 2.0 group there. Then, in the summer, Steve Ressler posted on LinkedIn asking folks to check out GovLoop. I joined when Steve’s site was just shy of 1,000 people, and found it extremely valuable in terms of networking around tech-enabled government reform. I also learned a lot about Web 2.0 working with activist Jon Pincus to oppose the first big bank bailout, and I learned that there were all these great applications out there that can be used to make government more democratic, on the cheap.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Jeffrey Levy

Gov 2.0 Hero and Director of Web Communications Environmental Protection Agency Jeffrey Levy talks Gov 2.0.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I started doing Web 1.0 at EPA in 1994, and I’ve been working with great people ever since, both at EPA and not. As the new tools came along, it was a natural progression. Much of Web 2.0 meshes very well with our broad mission, after all. More specifically, I first did Web 2.0 when my team was tapped to help then-Deputy Administrator publish his blog a couple of years ago.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Lewis Shepherd

Gov 2.0 Hero Lewis Shepherd, CTO of Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I’m an odd duck in this realm, a bit older than most of the Gov 2.0 forefront folks. I participated in Gov 1.0, and in Gov 0.9 before that, and in Pre-Wired Gov before that. As a kid in the ‘60s I was a political junkie, and I made candy money at the age of 6 by swarming parking lots for my local congressman in North Carolina and putting his bumperstickers on cars. A nickel a car for me, and no permission sought; people would at some point discover they had been driving around advertising their Member of Congress. Imagine if politicians today were remotely adding a banner ad to constituents’ personal websites and blogs! During grad school at Stanford two of my professors (Condi Rice of the last Administration, Dennis Ross of the new one) arranged a Pentagon gig for me as a Soviet foreign policy analyst in the Pentagon’s “internal think tank,” the Office of Net Assessment; it was 1985 and I already had my own PC, so I expected a shiny supercomputer on my desk at the Pentagon. Instead, I got an IBM Selectric II typewriter. I evangelized use of new technologies then, and again with my early jobs in city government.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Andrea Baker

Gov 2.0 Hero Andrea Baker, Director of Enterprise 2.0 Navstar-Inc.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I think I was always destined to be a part of Government 2.0. I joined the U.S. Army straight out of high school and wanted to become a linguist, which I did. In addition to learning Arabic, I became a Signals Intelligence Analyst. I would stay at work long after my shift was over to find a way to better pass along the information to the next person on shift and back stateside. I created one of the first robust Military Analytical websites on Intelink. It was probably transparency before such a thing was called that. I am happy to say the site still exists, but has expanded and improved with the times. After leaving the Army to become a contractor supporting the U.S. Federal Government I have spent my career taking transforming my contracts into transparent and open environments.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Christopher Dorobek

Gov 2.0 Hero Christopher Dorobek, Co-anchor Federal News Radio 1500 AM’s Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris and Editor-in-chief, DorobekInsider.com.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I have been covering government technology for a long time — more than 17 years now. I started out as a reporter at Government Computer News, then worked for an early dot-com covering government called PlanetGov.com, and then at Federal Computer Week, where I eventually was the editor in chief. At FCW, we hosted the first conference on government’s use of Web 2.0 — it was 2007 and there were only a handful of agencies that were even thinking about these tools. And I have been fascinated by these Web 2.0 tools for several reasons. One is because they seem uniquely applicable to the government. (More on that below.) Another is that these tools are really evolving organically. They are largely evolving from the consumer market, so they don’t come across as an enormous enterprise application. They are also, by and large, easy — and sometimes even fun — to use.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Steve Radick

Gov 2.0 Hero Steve Radick, Social Media Lead, Booz Allen Hamilton.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I started working at Booz Allen in 2003 as an entry level strategic communications consultant. For three years, I worked on a variety of projects across the public sector, providing support in the areas of media relations, change management, stakeholder engagement – pretty much anything involving internal or external communications. Then, in 2006, I discovered Intelink and Intellipedia. That’s when I realized the potential of Government 2.0. Of course, we didn’t call it that – back then it was just an innovative use of some cool technology. But, I didn’t just see wikis and blogs, I saw all of the IT security myths and information sharing excuses get thrown out the window. If the Intelligence Community was able to use blogs and wikis to share classified information across 16 different federal agencies, then these tools could certainly be used in other areas of the government. At that point, I decided that I was going to do whatever it took to bring the principles of openness, transparency, and sharing to my company and the rest of the government.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Scott Horvath

Gov 2.0 Hero Scott Horvath, Public Affairs Specialist/Web Developer, U.S. Geological Survey.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

Fast and furious! Well maybe not quite that fast, or furious for that matter, but definitely a nice pace.

I’m a code monkey by trade, for almost 12 years now, but I have a B.A. in Communications. So everything I create is done from a communications perspective (not an IT one). Being able to combine the communications knowledge with web development experience has been very beneficial to where I’m at today … immersed in Gov 2.0.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Steve Ressler

Gov 2.0 Hero and GovLoop founder Steve Ressler.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I co-founded a group called Young Government Leaders, a professional organization that now consists of over 2,000 federal employees. I was responsible for launching our first website as well as our presence on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace. Based on my experience with YGL and these other social networks, I saw a true need for an online community devoted to the government sector where we could focus on sharing best practices and ideas to improve government. Thus GovLoop.com was born and it is often used as one of the case studies of Gov 2.0.

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