I’ll admit to being a bit skeptical about Gov20Camp when I heard that attendance was going to exceed 500 people.  While I am familiar and comfortable with the concept of a bar camp unconference, I just hard a hard time imaging how you organize such a large group.  I was one of the first sponsors of the event and did so with the expectation that 50-100 really smart people would get together and share ideas.   I had a hard time imagining what would happen when amplified by a power of 10x.  I’m happy to say I was wrong and this was a tremendous event.

Given that no agenda was set until the attendees arrived and proposed topics in the open introduction, the event had some incredibly rich content and discussions.  I was reminded of the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference circa 1993-94 time frame where you had the right mix of brainpower, passion, and talent to allow big ideas and actions  to emerge.  Organizations like the EFF were just starting to get their legs and a lot of us were trying to figure out exactly what the implications of these emerging technologies were.  We had a lot of ideas and made a lot of predictions and while a lot came true (because we worked to make them true), I think most of the folks from that era would agree that we got a lot of things wrong and a lot of what we got wrong was based on an inherent bias to underestimate the potential that lay before us.  As Bruce Sterling noted a few months ago:

When you can't imagine how things are going to change, that doesn't
mean that nothing will change.  It means that things will change in
ways that are unimaginable. - Bruce Sterling

From the sessions I attended yesterday, I think the biggest challenge is not going to be “think different” but rather “think bigger”.  In his closing remarks during the Us Now film panel Mark Drapeau noted that despite being the number 2 trending term on Twitter all day, none of this matters without scale and engagement outside this community of enthusiasts.  This issue of engagement is the biggest challenge that the Gov20 community faces.

In several of the sessions I also noticed a tendency to focus too narrowly and drill down into the weeds on issues that matter to us immediately versus the long-term implications of the issues.  Gov20 privacy is not about how you set up your Twitter profile, it is how you create a construct that facilitates both privacy and participation across the spectrum of social media technologies.  To that same extent, setting up your organization on Twitter does not a social media strategy make.  While I realize that baby steps and technology adoption are important, we need to think bigger.  Everyone at that conference probably agrees that Twitter is a tremendously enabling technology, but the real question is not how we use Twitter, but what does Twitter 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 look like and how do we create strategies and change the dynamics of government to allow for the adoption of current and future enabling technologies?  If you are struggling with Twitter 1.0 implementation now, just Twitter about it on #Gov20Camp and I am sure you will get dozens of volunteers willing to help you out.

I was also incredibly happy to see such strong engagement by State and Local participants at the Camp.  I truly believe that the State/local environment will be the proving ground for a lot of these technologies as they can more easily handle the issues of scale and scope.  Social media volunteers should be looking to help these organizations engage and provide the proving ground for how Gov20 works.  I noticed participants from as far away as King county Washington.  Kudos to them for making the trip and being so thoroughly engaged.

I also hope our technologists and web 2.0 gurus were paying attention to the technology requirements emerging from the many panels.  I noted several opportunities for creating enabling technologies that are needed right now.  For example, a vetted directory of legitimate government users on Twitter was a requirement I heard emerging over and over.   If you want to follow King county, how do you know it is a trusted source and is the real King county?  A trusted directory would be easy to implement and score a home run right now.  A few smart techies pulling all-nighters and a handful of volunteers are all you need.  I’ll buy the pizza and mountain dew!

It will be interesting to see the splinter camps form that will also allow for deep diving on particular issues.  For example, I’ve already signed up to participate in the camp that looks at how technology can be used in emergency situations.    While I imagine that Gov20Camp will continue to be a successful event for years to come, these focused initiatives will also be essential.

Overall, this was an incredibly rewarding event and I am proud to have participated and sponsored it.  I regret I can’t make it to day two, but with three kids and a full Saturday agenda, I would need some family2.0 technologies to make that possible.  Good luck on day 2, I’ll be watching the stream and checking out the live blogging so please step-up and keep them up2date!

These posters starting emerging throughout the conference. I am not sure who was creating them, but they were outstanding. I'm secretly hoping it was our high school student volunteers.

Google Voice is an interesting service and seems to work well. A couple of observations:

1)Voicemail is not forwarded as an attachment via email. Every other service I have tested does that.

2)SMS integration is very nice and is one area where Google is ahead of the curve.

3)Granularity in settings is severely lagging. For example, I can not pick whether to ring my phones in sequence or all at once. I also can’t set it ring a certain number of times. I can not disable voicemail on the service (e.g. to always get the voicemail on my iPhone with Visual Voicemail). All services I’ve become used to.

4)There is only one widget badge to use…take it, leave it, or design your own.

5)Transcription is a nice service, but spotty at best.

6) No ability to port numbers into the service.

7) I’m worried about my number for life changing. This already happened to me once when the service was GrandCentral. I hope Google has a better handle on things.

If you are looking for a neat solution backed by a big player, Google Voice is worth taking a look at. However, if you need an enterprise class or small business solution, I would still recommend FreedomVoice or RingCentral, with RingCentral being my preferred vendor these days.

I’ve been a DirectTV customer for over 6 years paying about $100.00 a month for services. I’ve recently switched to FiOS and called DirectTV to disconnect my account. Imagine my surprise when I was told that:

1) The replacement DVR I bought for $200.00 is considered “leased equipment” that must be returned to them. This is a tremendous rip-off. It was never disclosed to me that I purchasing “leased equipment” at the time and I certainly wouldn’t have paid $200.00 for something that I would not own.

2) When I replaced the DVR, they activated a two year agreement. Keep in mind, I’ve been a customer for 6 years at this point and have NEVER had an agreement with them. They said the agreement was disclosed to me on my next bill after the activation. We use online bill pay so we did not see, nor do I think I would have noticed it on a bill had they sent it (who reads the small print on every bill they get). Also, it is unethical business practices to disclose a new agreement to someone 30 days after the transaction and activation. I can promise you I would not have agreed to a 2 year contract for satellite TV services which I have always purchased on a month to month basis for 6 years.

The end result: I have have to ship them back a box I paid $200.00 for AND I have to pay a $360 cancellation fee. Even when talking to a supervisor I could not get them to budge on this.

I will never be a DirectTV customer. I would warn anyone considering them to stay far away.

UPDATE:  May 8, 2009 – It turns out that Directv never cancelled my service!  I had to call and go through the process and now I have an additional two months of charges to dispute!  This company is a fraud.  I’ve filed a better business bureau complaint.  I would encourage you to as well.

http://www.la.bbb.org/Home.aspx