San Francisco mayoral candidates to share their open government ideas at SFOpen 2011

Today is a big day for open government everywhere, especially San Francisco.

I’m pleased to announce that eight major San Francisco mayoral candidates will participate in SFOpen 2011, a townhall forum focused specifically on open government, citizen engagement and leveraging technology to build better government. The event will be held June 16 at Automattic (home of WordPress) and will be moderated by tech legend Mitch Kapor.

Participating candidates include Michela Alioto-Pier, David Chiu, Bevan Dufty, Tony Hall, Dennis Herrera, Joanna Rees, Phil Ting and Leland Yee.

As part of this announcement:

• Candidates will begin blogging their ideas on the newly-launched sf.govfresh, where fellow candidates and citizens will have the opportunity to engage with them openly and directly.
• We've started an idea platform, SFIdeas, so that citizens can share their ideas for San Francisco.

At a time when government needs to leverage the power of collaboration, this is an excellent opportunity for candidates to show their commitment to the principles of open government. It’s an opportunity for open government to be a major discussion topic right at the beginning of the political process. Hopefully it will serve as a model for candidates and open government advocates everywhere.

This wouldn’t have happened without the great work of Brian Purchia and the support of Change.org, Automattic, Third Thursdays SF, Gov 2.0 Radio and CityCampSF.

So, learn more about SFOpen 2011, the candidates, start sharing your ideas for new San Francisco and stay tuned for a great discussion on the future of one of the world’s leading open cities.