New Thoughts

Obama’s Citizens Briefing Book— Cool open government tool

After 8 years of feeling like the American people had no allotted space in government I am happy to say that I think that
http://change.gov/ is super cool.

Follow the above link: If you click on the “citizens briefing book” option on the intro page and sign up for a free account you can submit your ideas for the new administration. If you just want to browse, you don’t have to sign up. So far there are thousands of ideas submitted by Americans from every part of the globe and from every profession. Once you’ve logged in,  you have several options: you can vote on the ideas that other people have submitted by voting up or down according to what you like or dislike, you can submit your own ideas to be voted up or down by others in the community, or you can abstain from voting and still comment on others submissions. The site constantly updates and you can browse the ideas by subject or by popularity. Following the inauguration, the ideas will be compiled and presented to the newly elected President… MR. OBAMA!!!  YAY!!!

Obviously, since my coping mechanism was to spend the last year of the Bush administration writing a mammoth open letter to government, I find this new option WAY exciting! Being the obsessive individual that I am, I have submitted just about every idea that I discussed in my letter. I’ve been such a geek about the whole process… it been fun to read peoples comments and vote on other ideas. It’s the dialogue I had hoped for when I wrote the letter initially. In fact, some of my ideas are so unappealing to people that, they now have  a -70 rating. (because each vote is worth 10pts, if your thought gets voted down to zero and another individual disagrees with your idea— that person’s vote puts you in negative territory) I think it’s really cool—great dialogue with great possibilities.

I would love to see more tools like this implemented as we move forward into this new chapter of government. Try it out… you will like it.
For now, I am going to assume that the direction this new administration has chosen is honorable in their intent and in their ability to offer good will, transparency, and openness until they give me reason to feel otherwise—In fact I am giddy with with the desire to participate.

Next week I am headed to DC for the inauguration. I don’t have tickets to anything, so I don’t have high expectations that I will get to see much of the actual inauguration. My plan is to document the landscape of people who traveled to DC for this crazy historic moment—which will of course lead to thousands of photos if all goes well. Lets hope that the cold doesn’t cripple my motivation