Gov 2.0 Events Heroes

Rob Rhyne, User Experience Designer at SRA International, will present “Invisible City” as part of the Gov 2.0 Expo Government as a Provider section.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I’ve worked in Knowledge Management as a designer and developer 8 years for a government contractor. I’ve redesigned numerous systems, increasing user buy-in simply by increasing the feedback loop for the design and construction of those applications. It became obvious that user trust was directly linked to their understanding and control of the application.

Specifically to Gov 2.0, I’ve developed a concept I call Invisible City (no relation to Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”) that is a vision for an Augmented Reality that utilizes data services provided by a local municipality in a mobile application. It’s a natural combination of current mobile technology with a government that opens the doors to its data storage and collection procedures. I see the government becoming a data platform that provides application developers a rich set of information and information collection resources to facilitate citizen interaction with government.

Rita J. King is CEO and Creative Director of Dancing Ink Productions and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I’ve been studying the cultural effects of digital anonymity since 1996, but when I discovered a Muslim woman in a virtual Jewish synagogue in Second Life in 2006 I realized that global culture had entered a powerful new realm. The idea of “avatars” is polarizing. Some people instantly see the benefit of this new form of identity and community construction while others, believing that avatars dehumanize people, are appalled. I was not a gamer, nor did I ever expect to be mesmerized by the virtual world of Second Life after a friend of mine who works at IBM suggested that I check it out. I was reading Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth,” and I searched on temples, synagogues, churches and mosques during my first few hours and days in Second Life, which was how I found myself at prayer services in a virtual Jewish synagogue speaking to a Muslim woman.

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, 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 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, 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 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.