Gateway to Gov - Research and Discussion Blog

Find your polling location and vote!
http://maps.google.com/vote

Google just announced a new tool for finding polling locations, absentee ballots and the various deadlines along the way.

“We developed the site in the hope that it will increase voter participation. We were helped by a number of partners, including many state and local election officials, the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others involved in the Voting Information Project.”

http://maps.google.com/vote

via TechPresident

Starting a non-profit is as hard, if not harder, than starting a for-profit — and for all the financial risk and hard work invested starting a not-for-profit public service organization, very little (if any) chance of a financial return, no less any form of remuneration for the years of effort invested. If I’d only known how difficult it would be to get things started… but I suppose hindsight is 20/20.
Approximately 28 months in now, I know I’ve got a pretty clear picture of the sector - I’ve read about, seen or used a majority of the different e-democracy/online advocacy projects that a variety of different organizations, universities, governments and individuals have undertaken over the past ten years and have had first hand exposure to nearly every US-based effort undertaken in the past three years. I’ve read hundreds if not thousands of pages of papers, reports, proposals, studies and various other publications… and attended dozens of conferences, meetings, workshops, un-conferences, camps and every other variation of gathering one can imagine, meeting literally hundreds of people along the way, many dozen of which I can see significant potential for collaboration with, and several I’m actively engaging with, working together, trying to find a way forward -

Thats all well and good -  and while I’ve cross-pollinated many ideas along the way (like a bee to flowers?) I have yet to make any direct, substantiative, developments on the core proposal(s) Gateway has been putting forward …and grow increasingly fatigued at the prospect of writing/refining yet another grant proposal. Fundraising is, apparently, not my forte.

Many potential funders (read: dozens of program managers / foundation execs),  while intrigued enough to spend 60-90-120 minutes on the phone, apparently didn’t hear the secret-passphrase or such… and in the end, our project, while intriguing, was deemed to fall outside their core funding area… or they really wanted to “wait and see”.

Well, risk-adversity and angel/seed investment might not be the best bedfellows — and quite frankly, I sometimes I wonder if everyone wouldn’t have benefited more if I’d played the for-profit tech-startup-lottery (making the next eBay or such) potentially putting myself in the position to *be* the funder for projects like ours, as opposed to wasting countless hours asking other people to fund what I could have funded myself if I hadn’t put countless hours into asking other people for funding! Argh. Anyhow, sorry about that - needed to get some steam off my chest.

Well, this blog post is starting to get quite lengthy… thanks for reading and I’ll be back with more *positive* blog posts soon. Best to all -

Too busy to say much now, but PdF ‘08 is well under way and there is no shortage of brilliant & inspiration people, projects and presentations.

If you weren’t able to attend PdF in person, check out the video streams below -

http://www.mogulus.com/pdf
http://qik.com/scobleizer
http://qik.com/video/112014

ISOC-NY has put together a nice list of the various social media outputs from PdF ‘08.

Twemes: pdf2008
Summize pdf | #pdf | pdf2008 | pdfdebate
Twitter: inonate | mlsif
flickr: pdf2008
Video: scobleizer|Qik | Blip | YouTube
Live Question Tool: pdf2008

OneWebDay is sponsoring a forum discussion tomorrow, Wednesday June 4th, at 6:00PM. Ben and I will be participating and look forward to a lively and productive discussion.

More details:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=15155383871
http://internetpro.meetup.com/51/calendar/7958368/?a=cr1c_grp
http://onewebday.org/?p=296

There has been a lot of talk over the past 10 years about the so-called digital divide – the disparity between those who benefit from new technologies and those who don’t – and its impact on online advocacy. Traditional thinking has been that the divide is primarily a problem of access – once you provide affordable computers and fast Internet connection, new populations of people will begin to utilize the web. Our friends at DigitalDivide.org rightly point out that the issue is not so much about access, but about the benefits gained from being connected. If, for example, you give thousands of computers to people in a developing nation, but do not provide them the skills to utilize the web for productive purposes, then you are really doing little good.

One of our main purposes at Gateway is to give people a way to connect with others in their community about issues of concern. It is our belief that when people connect on the grassroots level they can create solutions for meeting community needs. This will encourage more people to utilize the Internet. As computer prices and connections costs are lowered our goal should be to create platforms to help bridge the divide. The question is not only how to get people connected, but what they will do once they are.

This coming September 22nd, 2008 is One Web Day, an annual celebration and awareness day for the Internet.

Every year Internet users around the world are asked to join together, both online and off, to learn, teach, discuss, debate, celebrate, promote and protect a free and open internet. This is a day in which we communicate not only on the Internet, but about the Internet. It’s a day to celebrate the marvelous accomplishments we’ve made so far and brainstorm about the amazing possibilities yet to come. And why not have fun doing it? One Web Day observances can take many forms: from discussion groups, workshops and presentations, to parties, concerts and any other “woohoo, the internet rocks!”-style celebration one could think of!

This year’s OneWebDay celebration has a particularly salient theme - Participatory Democracy! A free and open internet, much like healthy democracy, is greater than the sum of its parts. Never before has mass participation been empowered in that way in which it is now possible - thanks largely to the free and open nature of the internet coupled with the free and open nature of Democracy!

And hey, what better to do than have a day of interconnected, simulcast parties to celebrate it?!

Seriously now ~ Gateway applauds this year’s OneWebDay theme and looks forwarding to helping make it a huge success!

I just finished reading a short but informative article by Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry (Personal Democracy Forum) , with contributions by Steven Clift (E-Democracy.org), entitled Expecting more from your e-government. Its an excellent read, short and informative and makes an important point.

Just a quick reminder for everyone - this coming Tuesday (Feb 5th) is the primary day for many states, including NY. NYC polls are open from 6AM to 9PM - find your polling place, if you haven’t already, and get ready to vote!

NYC Residents - Poll Site Locator
http://gis.nyc.gov/vote/ps/index.htm

NY State Residents - Call your County Office and ask where your polling place is.
NYS County Elections Office Locator

Not Registered?? Shame on you! Just kidding - kind of. Get registered! Unfortunately NYS has yet to adopt a same day voter registration policy, in fact the registration form has to be snail mailed in at least 25 days prior to an election.. but hey, at least they cover the postage, right?!

NYS Voter Registration Form — Register today!

Outside NY? Check the League of Women Voter’s  SmartVoter.org

Voting is about more than picking a candidate, its about participating in our democratic government. This is a undoubtedly a historic moment in American political history. Get involved - get your friends involved, get your family involved, get your neighbors involved, get your coworkers involved - make sure everyone you know is planning on participating!

Cheers,
- Lou

I’m pleased to announce two new individuals joining the Gateway effort - Matthew Barash and Alicia Schaefer. Matt is joining the professional staff of Gateway to Gov, leaving a full time position as a Business Analyst for Forbes Magazine. He is taking on the role of Project Coordinator, organizing and undertaking a number of Gateway-related efforts.

We’re also pleased to have Alicia Schaefer join us. She will be assisting us in the various voter registration and district boundary data-culling operations we are currently undertaking.