ignitegov

The GovHub presentation will have an introduction to the general ideals of GovHub and what we hope it will be, and then use 3 roles or characters to describe the problems when governments and open source developers try to work together and how GovHub and other collaboration tools like it can help solve those problems. GovHub partners are Greg Lind, a web based software developer and architect, currently employed by Metro Regional Government in Portland, Oregon. John Miller formerly of Lewis and Clark College and Metro and Jarhid Brown from Metro and formerly the Department of Defense.

What happens when you combine two risk-taking government employees, an active developer community, and a bus schedule? Unlimited amounts of innovation, improved customer service, praise for an embattled government agency, and a model for building a government/citizen developer partnership. Hear how the Massachusetts Department of Transportation learned from TriMet that open is better. Laurel Ruma is the Gov 2.0 Evangelist at O'Reilly Media and co-chair of the Gov 2.0 Expo. She joined the company in 2005 after working for five years at various IT analyst firms in the Boston area. Laurel is also co-editor of Open Government, published by O'Reilly in 2010.

Abraham Hyatt is the production editor at the technology news site ReadWriteWeb. He was the creator of the Digital Journalism Portland conference in 2009, and previously worked as the managing editor at Oregon Business magazine. He can be found online at abrahamhyatt.com and @abrahamhyatt on Twitter. Abraham is one of the editors at the tech news site ReadWriteWeb. Last February something happened that made him suddenly realize that there are a significant number of people who are navigating the Web in ways they don't understand. This Ignite presentation is a unique case study -- sometimes funny, sometimes serious -- that illustrates that the problem is bigger than those of us who develop online tools, produce content and create user interfaces realize.

Deb Bryant introduces the first ever IgniteGov, and she invites the Gov community at-large to put on IgniteGov events. Selena Deckelmann, IgniteGov Chair, informs the audience about what to expect from an Ignite for those unfamiliar with the format.