Science Library Pad

Canadian Open Government Consultation Final Report

The Final Report of the Canadian Open Government Consultation has been posted

http://open.gc.ca/consult/results-resultatstb-eng.asp

It's a straightforward summary of the input provided.

There were over 260 submissions to the online consultation.

President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement states

These consultations were also instrumental in developing our Open Government Action Plan which I will present in April 2012 at the Open Government Partnership in Brazil. Each element of the Action Plan is supported by what we heard during the consultation process.

The key messages reported are

• Make information and data easier to find by improving the search function on government websites.
• Improve the organization of government websites, in general, by creating centralized portal(s) to provide catalogues of Government of Canada information and data in one place.
• Make more information and data available in standardized open formats with improved metadata, tagging and indexing.
• Promote the availability of open data through better communications and marketing.
• Improve consultation tools and websites by making them more user-friendly (e.g., plain language, no acronyms, etc.) and more interactive through the use of social media.
• Ensure that Canadians know that consultations are taking place and demonstrate that something is being done with consultation results.
• Be more open with Canadians by improving policies and rules so that government data and information is open by default.

The final report itself doesn't provide any specific information about what will be included in the Open Government Action Plan, however the January 2012 update to the Open Government Partnership described some initial possibilities.

UPDATE 2012-04-18: The Open Government Action Plan was released on April 11, 2012.  ENDUPDATE

Canada's Action Plan will be posted to is posted at the OGP website

http://www.opengovpartnership.org/countries/canada

The OGP meeting is in Brasilia, April 17-18, 2012. The OGP has posted a preliminary list of attendees (Excel format).

Canadian representitives listed are

• Stephen Walker - Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) - Stephen is the contact for all OGP related matters: stephen.walker@tbs-sct.gc.ca
• Tony Clement - President of the Treasury Board - @TonyClementCPC
• Erik Waddell - TBS - @ErikWaddell
• Michael Gurstein - Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training - @michaelgurstein
• Harvey Low - Representative - Canadian Council on Social Development, Community Data Program
• Fernando Perini - International Development Research Centre (IDRC) - @fperini
• David Eaves - @daeaves - David is also on the Canadian Government Advisory Panel on Open Government
• Pierre Boucher - Deputy CIO of Canada

The hashtag is for the event is #OGPBrasilia2012 #ogp2012 and the Twitter ID is @opengovpart

Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training

open policy @ DFAIT - Storify of the tweets

A lightly-curated Storify of the ~500 tweets from the February 9, 2012 event at DFAIT.

open gov video - Minister Clement speaks at Public Sector Engage - Nov 22, 2011

President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement gave a keynote address to open Public Sector Engage 2011.  He begins speaking at 03m15s in. The text of the speech is available, although he makes some asides that I believe are not in the text.

Opening remarks by the President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for FedNor, Tony Clement from PSEngage on Vimeo.

Key phrases:

• the importance of a collaborative approach
• technology as an important tool for change
• sometimes innovation means that you're going into areas that have not been gone through before
• Internet tools allow public sector employees to be more productive than ever before [my translation from the French]
• the public service must make sure it possesses the capacity and the expertise necessary to respond not only to today's demands, but also in 5, 10, 20 years [my translation from the French]
• competencies related to work, teams and collaboration will be necessary [my translation from the French]
• "I consider myself the Minister responsible for championing innovation in the government"
• the use of productivity-enhancing Internet-based tools & services that allow people to share information, engage in a dialogue, and collaborate
• open government in Canada: open data, open information, and open dialogue
• Canada has signaled its intent to join the international Open Government Partnership

Direct quote from Minister Clement:

Our government is encouraging the use of new Web 2.0 tools and technologies such as of course blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube... you name it. These tools help create a more modern, open and collaborative workplace and lead to more just-in-time communications with the public. I was recently before a Senate committee reviewing these issues and I said it makes no sense to have our employees--any employee--but certainly our new employees to have more access and more interaction in the coffee shop on their way to work than actually in their workplace. That is not a workplace of the future... I see a few heads nodding here so I think I've struck a little bit of a chord.

UPDATE 2011-12-19: You can watch his Senate committee testimony as well as read some of the quotes, linked from my posting Internet & social media - Official Languages examination - Senate Committee videos.

Previously:
November 23, 2011  Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government, social media [also from the PSE2011 event]

Treasury Board President Clement speaks about open government at GTEC

GTEC is a big annual IT tradeshow/conference for the federal government in Ottawa.

Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board, did the opening keynote.

I like to tell people that when I was Industry minister, I was responsible for Canadian innovation. Now that I am President of the Treasury Board, I want to champion innovation in government.

...

a government that takes on the challenge to be a global leader in openness, transparency and security.  We have already taken some steps towards making that government a reality. But there is much more to do.

...

We can transform the way we do business by harnessing IT in new ways—including

• An understanding of the value of social media tools, as a way to bridge the distance between government and Canadians; and
• A further commitment to all three streams of Open Government—Open Data, Open Information and Open Dialogue.

Our Government is committed to offering Canadians greater opportunities to learn about and participate in government, in the economy, and in our democratic process. They will have greater access to data from federal departments and be able to find, download and use information they want more easily.

Our Open Government activities are detailed at www.open.gc.ca, where we describe actions to strengthen Open Data, Open Information and Open Dialogue. We will post information about new activities as they are undertaken.

As announced last March, starting in 2012, all departments and agencies subject to the Access to Information Act will be required to post summaries of completed information requests on their websites.

Canada will soon have the chance to step on the world stage as a leader in Open Government. We were one of the countries to signal our intent to participate in an international Open Government Partnership.

As part of our leadership role in increasing governmental transparency and accountability, Canada has joined the international Open Government Partnership. This important initiative was launched by the United States and Brazil and aims to secure concrete commitments from other governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

Having joined the partnership, we will be delivering an Open Government plan informed by broad consultation by March 2012.

Being part of this partnership will offer Canada a means to connect internationally through its Open Government agenda. This will be an opportunity for Canadian companies to showcase their innovations.

In the long term, open governments and economies will pay dividends for our business sector. They also stand to have an impact on Canadian society in general: increasing transparency, accountability and citizen engagement.

from Notes for remarks by the President of the Treasury Board - Speech for GTEC 2011 Canada's Government Technology Event - October 18, 2011

Notable is his specific committment to an Open Government plan for Canada by March 2012.

This is a reiteration of our existing commitment to the Open Government Partnership - the country page for Canada has a letter of intent from Minister Baird and the text "Country Action Plan coming in March 2012".

Tony Clement tweets at @TonyClementCPC

The Open Government Partnership is @opengovpart

and GTEC is on Twitter @GTEC and hashtag #gtec

Here is a Storify (my tweets along with a couple from Tony Clement):

Previously:
June 3, 2011  open data in 2011 Canadian Speech from the Throne
June 1, 2011  open data statement in Canadian Digital Economy Strategy update
May 20, 2011  open data supported by Treasury President Clement

DataCite conference - Data and the Scholarly Record: the Changing Landscape - Aug 2011

DataCite will hold its second Summer Meeting on August 24th and 25th [2011] at the historic Shattuck Plaza Hotel in Berkeley, California. The Summer Meeting will be a 1.5 day event and is open to all. You can register at:
http://datacite2011.eventbrite.com/

DataCite blog - DataCite Summer Meeting “Data and the Scholarly Record: the Changing Landscape” - June 30, 2011

DataCite is a service for providing permanent DOIs to data sets, in particular to enable consistent citation of data sets in the scientific literature.

There are many international partners in DataCite, CISTI's role is to establish DataCite Canada.

open access to publicly-funded EU research and data

In a speech to the LIBER 40th Annual Conference (Liber 2011) conference, Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda stated that the European Commission will be extending open access requirements so that it covers all EU-funded research as a principle, and she mentions that she is working to extend the current OpenAIRE infrastructure to include scientific data.  She also talks about the key role of research librarians to preserve scientific research & data.

She briefly discusses the Europeana repository, including full-text search, and a goal to hold 30 million digital objects by 2015.

Here's her presentation (YouTube video)

In case you're wondering about the first library she mentions at the beginning, I think she's referring to Nineveh.

She has a blog http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/neelie-kroes/ and frequently tweets from @NeelieKroesEU

The Liber conference tweeted from @liber2011bcn and used hashtag #liber2011

Video link via @carenmilloy via @ccbuhr

eOECD - Internet Economy: Generating Innovation and Growth

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been building its knowledge and messaging about the Internet through a series of meetings, including

October 2007.  OECD-Canada Technology Foresight Forum on the Participative Web (held in Ottawa) - http://www.oecd.org/futureinternet/participativeweb - My posts on the forum are under tag oecdwebforum2007.  The OECD blog that I contributed to appears to be offline, but you can see an archived version.

June 2008.  OECD Ministerial Meeting on the Future of the Internet Economy (Seoul, Korea) - http://www.oecd.org/FutureInternet

June 2011.  OECD High Level Meeting.  The Internet Economy: Generating Innovation and Growth (Paris) - http://www.oecd.org/internet/innovation

The latest meeting will take place June 28-29, 2011.  A webcast will be available.  The hashtag is #eOECD

They will be discussing broadband policy and also policies for an open Internet.

Government of Canada Collaborative Management Day - June 9, 2011

Thanks to incredible work by a dedicated team from across the government, Collaborative Management Day will be June 9, 2011.  It is about the new management styles that are made possible by new technologies and ways of working.

The event is full but (probably Government of Canada only) registration for the webcast is still available.

The hashtag to follow is #goc3

UPDATE 2011-06-10: An archive of ~1550 tweets with the #goc3 hashtag spanning from June 5 to June 9 is available.  Desktop Archivist XML format.

GovCamp Canada 2011

GovCamp Canada 2011 is soldout with a lengthy waiting list. Thankfully, our friends at The Streaming Network stepped up in a big way as sponsors to provide web streaming for 3 of our five tracks: Govt Tech & Open Data, Public Involvement & Communications and Public Service Innovation will all be live streamed to a national audience and for all who could not attend in-person. Session videos will also be archived along with any slide presentations.

from GovCamp Canada 2011 Schedule Announced & Sold Out

Event is June 8, 2011.

Hashtag is #govcamp

UPDATE 2011-06-08: Livestreams available at http://govcamp.ca/videostreams

JCDL 2011 in Ottawa

Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

http://www.jcdl2011.org/

http://www.jcdl2011.org/registration

June 13-17, 2011

Restaurants

Here's a map with some restaurants - mostly ones I have been to (and like a lot), as well as a few others that are highly recommended.  Most of these places fill up fast, so you should make reservations.

I haven't found there to be one review site that dominates, but UrbanSpoon will give you a reasonable sense of the places people in Ottawa are going.

There are restaurants and pubs along Elgin Street and Bank Street.  There are also lots in the Byward Market, but I don't know the Market very well.

Getting Around

The Market is to the north of the University of Ottawa.  If you want to go to the downtown core area to the west of campus, there is a pedestrian bridge (the Corktown Bridge) across the Rideau Canal at Somerset Street.

The various OCTranspo buses that stop at Campus Station can also take you directly or connect you to most locations in the city.

Bixi bikeshare will also be available, however detailed information about it won't be released until May.

UPDATE 2011-06-07: Bixi bikeshare info available at http://capital.bixi.com/  ENDUPDATE

Apps

Ottawa is an open data city.  There are lots of apps from the Ottawa Open Data Apps directory and the Apps4Ottawa contest that can help you discover and navigate around Ottawa.  (You can also check out the list of apps that won the 2010 contest.)

The city also paid to develop an app called Discover Ottawa.  The Museum of Civilization paid to develop an app as well.

Currency

Below is some updated info on Canadian money, from an OECD blog post I wrote for a conference they had in Ottawa in 2007 (now only available from archive.org).  This info will sound pretty basic for anyone who has been to Canada or who is used to using debit and credit cards, but I thought it might be useful.  Note for Americans: At the time of this writing, the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar (today's exchange rate is 1 USD = 0.96 CAD).

The currency is the Canadian dollar.

1 canadian dollar in us dollars

1 canadian dollar in euros

The commonly used currency includes:

• a dollar coin, golden in colour and slightly larger than a quarter, the dollar coin is often called a "loonie" as it has a Loon depicted on the face
• a two dollar coin, bi-metallic with an outer silver ring, slightly larger than the dollar coin, often called a "toonie"
• bills in $5, $10 and $20 denominations
• larger denominations are of course available

Rather than carry large amounts of cash, however, many Canadians use transaction cards, and almost all stores are equipped with card readers.

Canada is in the process of transitioning to chip & PIN technology - most card readers still support magstripe reading, in addition to chip reading.

For a debit card, some stores, commonly large pharmacies and grocery stores, also offer "cash back", which is the equivalent of a bank withdrawal - the maximum is usually $50 to $100.

There is a slight tendency to use debit cards for smaller purchases and credit cards for larger ones, however most stores won't be surprised to see you use a card for a purchase of any amount from tiny to large; many Canadians, including myself, carry little or no cash and use cards for almost all transactions. 

All of Canada's major banks provide ATMs (bank machines) throughout Ottawa.  Do be aware that within stores you may also find so called "white label" third-party bank machines.  While these are safe to use, they charge even higher withdrawal fees than bank ATMs. 

There are TD Bank machines on the ground floor of the Rideau Centre shopping mall, if you enter from Rideau Street, underneath the skyway to the Bay, the machines will be on your left, just past the Shoppers Drug Mart. 

Both debit and credit card networks are interlinked with major international networks. 

The use of cheques to pay in stores is virtually non-existent; I don't think I have ever seen someone pay by cheque in a store in my entire life.  Stored-value card use is also minimal.

There is Calforex Currency Exchange / Bureau de change on the 3rd floor of the Rideau Centre shopping mall, there are also other currency exchanges in the downtown core.

conference technology planning - updated for 2011

Most of the items I wrote in 2009 in my post about conference technology planning are still valid.  Nevertheless I have added a substantial amount of revised content, particularly related to Twitter and mobile devices.

Online

• Identify and promote a tag e.g. example2009
  
  • Make sure your tag is unique, avoids 1 vs. l and similar confusion, and is short
  • Short because you're also going to want it to be a Twitter hashtag e.g. #example2009
  • Consider registering your tag with various services (I don't know that this is a high priority - I believe a lot more in search-based tag discovery than search registration)
    - the service that Twitter uses is What the Trend, but there are some issues with your description being replaced by other updates

• Get a URL, ideally with the tag embedded e.g. example2009.exampleorganisation.org
• Consider creating an event blog, if relevant
• Consider creating an event wiki, if relevant
• Consider creating an event Twitter account, if relevant (use of hashtags may cover this better)
  - if Twitter is an important part of your communications and event, make sure to embed Twitter content (e.g. using a JavaScript widget) on the front page of your site
  - remember people may be joining the Twitter conversation at any time, so don't forget to periodically link to your actual event from your tweets - particularly at the start of each conference day
• Provide sharing buttons (perhaps with pre-written messages including the hashtag) on all pages of your site.

• Provide live video/webcast, live audio, or later podcasts of audio and video recordings
• The more rapidly you can get content online during and shortly after the event, the higher the impact it will have.

Think about lifespan of your online presence.  Do you have a plan for maintenance of the website, blog, wiki and Twitter account?  Ideally these should be part of an integrated comms presence, not just standalones.  For example, it's much better to have the blog on a main site e.g. blog.exampleorganisation.org than on a custom eventexample2011.org site.  If you create a custom domain for your site, someone has to keep renewing that domain... basically forever, unless you want the domain to expire and be taken over by someone else (usually it either turns into a placeholder page or an adult site, since domains are cheap to buy in bulk).

For whatever pages or sites or accounts you create, define the expectations up front: This page will be archived in a year, comments on this blog will close a month after the conference and it will go idle, etc.

Similarly, it's much better to be tweeting from @exampleorg with a hashtag, than to create a special @example2011 account that tweets for a while and then goes silent.  Not only are you losing all the followers associated with that account, at some point if the account is idle you may lose it entirely, and then you have the same problem of someone else taking it over.  (See Twitter Help Center - Inactive Account Policy for more information.)

Remember you are not the centre of the universe.  It's a web.  Find out what social media tools and sites the attendees use.  Be (respectfully) present in those environments and use those tools.  You may find e.g. a particular scientific site is the best place to share most of your information about an upcoming event, rather than creating your own elaborate site.

To reiterate: depending on your community, use the full arsenal of networks available to reach your desired audience.  This may be Facebook, but don't forget LinkedIn, Nature Network, and other sites that may be more aligned with your particular target demographic.  NOTE: This requires considerable care.  There is nothing more disliked in an existing community than an outsider "parachuting in" to promote a particular event / topic / agenda.  Make sure you know the etiquette (yes, there is such a thing online) and conventions of any site you use.

Be aware that post-event engagement is really hard.  I advise against investing heavily in your own custom event social networking site, or even a white-label event social networking site. Make it easy for people to connect to you, and make it easy (through hashtags and aggregation) for people to discover one another. They can do the rest on their own.  A mailing list and a hashtag can be a more effective way of keeping people in contact than a standalone social network site.

• Set up your event in Lanyrd, particularly if you anticipate a lot of Twitter use - this will let people connect with speakers, attendees, and content.
  - There are similar services, please feel free to comment if you have others you've found useful.  Lanyrd is the one I've seen the most recent Twitter buzz about.
• Create an Upcoming event
  • This will also give you a machine code that Flickr users can embed to get a nice "This photo taken at Example event" notice.
  • There is some risk that Upcoming will be shut down by Yahoo, so make sure it is only a secondary part of your online presence.
• Create a SlideShare event to store the presentations

• Use an aggregator to pull in all the tagged and hashtagged activity
  - I'd be interested in recommendations for easy aggregation solutions.  This is a key way to expose content to people who are comfortable with the web, but may not necessarily use Twitter or other tools.
• Consider appropriate tools for shared conference liveblogging.
  - Wikis are usually not a good choice due to edit conflicts.
  - Google Docs can support multiple simultaneous editors.
  - Etherpad  is no longer supported by Google but you can run your own server or use various online versions, which can support multiple simultaneous edits.
  - There are also dedicated tools such as CoverItLive and ScribbleLive that allow liveblogging with moderated questions and Twitter integration.  These work best I think when there is a single reporter in charge of the liveblog, writing notes and fielding questions.  They're primarily Flash-based, so there can be some complexity when used with mobile devices - I also don't know how well the resulting content is indexed by Google (if at all).
• Another part of recording the event is of course the hashtagged tweets themselves that are generated - but this is tricky as tweets very quickly no longer show up in Twitter search (unlike Google, in Twitter search old material simply doesn't show up after a while) and Twitter has changed its rules for online archiving sites.  I think the best you can do is either run local archive software (using e.g. the Twapperkeeper codebase, or run the desktop version of Archivist).  Be aware that you still may not capture all the tweets, but you should get most of them.

• Do some very basic usability for your site: Highlight the dates and location.  Put your contact information (email, phone number, Twitter) up front in a prominent location.  Highlight submission deadlines, registration information (including costs), accomodations. 
• In particular often conference websites have terrible maps.  This is easy to fix.  Use Google Maps and Google Earth integration to highlight your venue and surrounding attractions
  • Since it may he hard for people to use a satellite map to recognise your venue, also consider photos of the exterior of your venue (geotagged in Flickr or PhotoSynth panorama are both good ways to show off the venue) as well as Google Street View and Microsoft Virtual Earth Birds Eye view (if they are available for your location).
• Make it easy for people to get website information into their mobile devices - that means online calendars that can be imported into Google Calendar, Outlook, and iPhone calendar - there's actually a standard format you can use, called iCalendar.  Importable contact info, maps, directions etc. are also very useful.
• Make sure your site is usable on small mobile devices (e.g. iPhones).  You may want to provide a more traditional stripped-down mobile site as well, depending on audience and location (many people in many countries don't have smart phones, but can still view basic mobile sites on their phones).

There's a great list of tools that can help you capture and analyse your event available from the Event Amplifier blog - Curating and Re-Using Amplified Conference Discussions.

We Grow Media also has useful thoughts on How to Extend the Value of In-Person Events with Social Media.

UPDATE 2011-03-16: Lorcan Dempsey wrote on March 14, 2011 about the Amplified Event with a specific focus on remote participation in events.  ENDUPDATE

A note: there can be confusion between a tag and a hashtag.  Usually for a blog you will have a tag that goes in the metadata, e.g. example2011.  Usually on Twitter for various reasons of searching and convention, it will be a hashtag instead #example2011.  Sometimes people forget the hash on Twitter, and sometimes people add it when tagging their blogs.

Offline

• State the event tag and your expectations of audience technology use at the start of each day (something like "be respectful" will probably cover it)
• Prepare presenters who may not be used to live coverage by their audience, for example see How to Present While People are Twittering
  • Also consider having the presenters suggest a single unified location for live coverage - see FriendFeed thread on this topic
• If you plan to record audio or video, check out well in advance what the venue can provide
  • And make sure you get permission from presenters in advance
• Consider using QR Code on badges, either for contact information or to connect to people's websites/blogs/twitter.  Consider adding Twitter accounts to badges (they're short).  Remember to have a small amount of information on badges, in LARGE FONT.  No one wants to lean in and squint to read someone's name.

• If you can set up the venue so that presenters have a screen in front of them where they can see what slide is up, that helps a lot (otherwise various things happen, including presenters are looking over their shoulders, or they forget to advance the slides) - it's also particularly helpful if you have a panel presenting, as otherwise the panel has to basically turn their backs on the audience in order to see the slides
  - it's true that presenters can usually see their laptop but this creates other problems - they point at the laptop screen instead of the actual big screen, they look down at the laptop rather than out at the audience, and they tend to be constrained to stand right in front of the laptop - it's much better if you have a large display screen positioned at the front of the audience
• Be prepared for laptop swaps and last minute presentations on memory keys (or ask everyone to use a standard laptop and send their presentations in advance, in which case, good luck).
• When there are laptop swaps be prepared for some delay as people figure out how to get the laptop display output and the projector in sync.
• If there are going to be people using Mac laptops to present (and there often are), make sure you have one of each of the many many different Mac laptop display connectors available (people always forget their display adapters).
• Be aware many presenters are not great at using PowerPoint and don't necessarily know either how to start it into presentation mode or how to easily advance slides (the spacebar, seriously, just hit the spacebar).  Have someone available to help if they accidentally exit or end up trying to use the mouse menu to advance slides or something.
• Even better, get a little handheld slide advancer, I really like the Kensington 33374.
• If you have a wireless mike, show them how to turn it on, and show them where to put the controller (an inside suit pocket works well for men, or clipped to their belt).  I once did an entire presentation holding the wireless mike controller in my hand since I didn't know where to put it.
• Provide a laser pointer and show them how to use it (the aforementioned Kensington has a built-in one).
• Have extra batteries for everything - mikes, pointers, mice etc.
• Provide a water pitcher and glasses on a table where they're unlikely to spill.  Amongst other reasons, plastic water bottles suck environmentally.
• Provide a space for paper notes (yes, people do sometimes still like to have notes, even if just as a crutch).
• In general, try to either do speaker prep in advance, or set the expectation that the speaker to speaker transition will take a minute or two, even if things are (inevitably) running late.  There's nothing more unnerving as a speaker than being rushed to start your presentation, fiddling with display settings, your wireless mike, etc. all while worrying the clock is ticking.
• Also, when the speaker leaves the stage, make sure they take everything with them that is theirs, and nothing that isn't (I have a tendency to forget my wireless clicker, while walking back into the audience still wearing my live wireless mike).

• Stable WiFi (a somewhat mythical creature I have yet to see) with all procedures in place (e.g. passwords or accounts if the venue requires them).  Make the official SSID (the network identifier) very clear to everyone.  You may also want to mention good wifi security practices - at least mention to people that anything they send that is not encrypted can be read by anyone else on the network.
  - I don't know if new 3G hotspot devices (including the iPhone 4) will make for a better WiFi conference experience, or will just generate interference and confusion.
• Lots and lots of power outlets
• Consider having device charging stations (perhaps sponsored, if you're having a sponsored event) - the three main types of charger cables to have available are USB mini, USB micro, and iPhone/iPad.
• Big LCD or plasma screens are now available at many venues and, paired with e.g. a netbook, can make great places to display timely notices, event photos, and Twitter walls.
• I'm of the opinion that running the Twitter wall e.g. on the main projector(s) between speakers is good (it gives people something to look at while you're getting set up, for one thing, making it less of a rushed experience) but I recommend against Twitter walls during a presentation - particularly if the speaker can't see the screen, but even if they can.  It's just too distracting, and it's a bit unnerving for the speaker not knowing what may come up.
• All of the Twitter walls I've used are problematic - some use tiny fonts, or low contrast, and almost all the Flash-based ones eventually crash.  Also remember to turn off screensaver mode or the Twitterwall will disappear after a while.
  - The one I like best so far is Visible Tweets but there are many options.  Twitterfall and Twitterfountain also provide interesting tweet displays.
• Be aware that anything that is a pure unmoderated hashtag/tag pull, whether a twitterwall or a photowall or whatever, presents the opportunity for inappropriate or awkward material - either from people at the event, or from outside hashtag spammers or tag collisions with other topics.

Other guides:

* Walt Crawford has some fantastic information about conferences in http://citesandinsights.info/civ7i7.pdf
* Some thoughts on the "amplified conference" on Wikipedia, based on ideas from from Lorcan Dempsey, Brian Kelly and others

Thanks to @macjudith for asking the questions that prompted this updated post.

Previously:
My July 8, 2006 posting conference tag goodness with HitchHikr has links at the bottom to my examination of this topic spanning back to 2004.  (This blog was started as a place to put conference notes, so thinking about conference support is in some sense part of its DNA.)

Collab Culture Camp - as seen by TrendsMap

Trendsmap is a service that extracts and displays geo-located Twitter trends.  You can follow Ottawa trends at @TrendsOttawa or view them online at http://trendsmap.com/ca/ottawa

Here's what Collaborative Culture Camp looked like to them

#goc3 is now a #TT in #Ottawa http://trendsmap.com/ca/ottawaless than a minute ago via Trendsmap AlertingTrendsmap Ottawa
TrendsOttawa

Martha McLean, @mjmclean is now trending in #Ottawa http://trendsmap.com/ca/ottawaless than a minute ago via Trendsmap AlertingTrendsmap Ottawa
TrendsOttawa

Wayne Wouters, @waynewouters is now trending in #Ottawa http://trendsmap.com/ca/ottawaless than a minute ago via Trendsmap AlertingTrendsmap Ottawa
TrendsOttawa

(Tweet embeds done using @twittermedia Blackbird Pie.)

Collaborative Culture Camp - overview

On Friday October 15, 2010 I attended an event at Library and Archives Canada called Collaborative Culture Camp.  I had provided a tiny initial spark of an idea that thanks to an exceptional group of public servants (and some not even currently employed in the public service) turned into a roaring fire.  I think it really demonstrated "the art of the possible" when it comes to putting a government event together.

Right now in the Government of Canada we're in an interesting situation where we're using a mix of purely internal tools (such as our government-wide wiki, GCPEDIA) as well as public tools (like Twitter and Google Docs) for various types of collaboration and sharing.  The event was extensively tweeted (an "amplified conference" to use the terminology originated by Lorcan Dempsey and favoured by Brian Kelly).

I know of three Twitter archives for the event.  There were roughly 1600 tweets during the daylong event, which had about 200 attendees.

• http://archivist.visitmix.com/jesgood/14 set up by Jesse Good (@jesgood), who also ran the Twitter wall
• http://girlwiththesuper8.tumblr.com/post/1320430371/c3-archived-twitter-stream
• http://www.twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/goc3 (analytics available at http://summarizr.labs.eduserv.org.uk/?hashtag=goc3 )

Overall it was an inspiring event, further enhanced by the keynote from Wayne Wouters, the Clerk of the Privy Council, who in his role as head of the public service spoke about the need for increased collaboration across government and the use of modern tools to support our work.  (He even tweets, in part just to demonstrate to the rest of government that it's ok to do so: @WayneWouters - although he did warn that he mainly uses it to draw attention to the accomplishments of the public service or individual public servants.)

I will have more to say in future postings about the event and the panel I was on.

Other postings related to this event:

• Working horizontally in a vertical world by metrics guru and overall results-oriented achiever of amazing things Laura Wesley (@ResultsJunkie on Twitter)
• Kewl App Alert: Conference Notetaking with Google Docs by technology adopter Tanya Snook (@spydergrrl on Twitter) - whose conference-ending pitch for Movember I will forgive as it is for a good cause

UPDATE: Here's some background information on the event, including the poster that was made for it and a link to the (Government of Canada internal only) GCPEDIA page about it - Event: Collaborative Culture Camp by Nick Charney (@nickcharney)

ChangeCamp Ottawa 2010

ChangeCamp Ottawa 2010 will be Saturday July 17 at (airconditioned) City Hall.

You can sign up at

http://changecampottawa2010.eventbrite.com/

ChangeCamp is a hybrid unconference - the day will start with some brief presentations including a showcase of Ottawa "apps" (websites and applications for mobile devices) that use City of Ottawa open data.

There will be regular unconference sessions (that is, self-organised topics for discussion) after the presentations.  The specific theme is open data.  The general theme is how the engagement between government and citizens can be transformed by new ways of thinking and new technologies.

The city's open data is available at

http://ottawa.ca/opendata

Quantum to Cosmos at Perimeter Institute - October 2009

For 10 exciting days this October, Perimeter Institute’s Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future (Q2C) will take a global audience from the strange world of subatomic particles to the outer frontiers of the universe. All events will occur on-site in Waterloo, Ontario and online at q2cfestival.com

http://www.q2cfestival.com/

October 15-25, 2009  Waterloo, Ontario

They have usual blog, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed.

You can attend in person, but I think all events will also be streamed live online.

There's a good list of speakers already.

ChangeCamp Ottawa 2009 - from circle to grid to circle

Just a quick post to capture a sense of ChangeCamp Ottawa yesterday.  This a deliberate echo of my SciFoo 2007 posting, as SciFoo is where I learned about unconferences.

The basic format is you all gather around a common interest, but there is no set agenda - the participants at the event draw up the schedule (in ChangeCamp terminology "The Grid") of sessions and then facilitate and participate in them.

Opening Circle

CC-BY-NC-ND http://www.flickr.com/photos/crangulabford/3536145033/

Opening Circle (the community gathers)

CC-BY-NC-SA Richard Akerman

The Grid

CC-BY-NC-ND http://www.flickr.com/photos/crangulabford/3536168537/

The Grid (live action version)

CC-BY-NC-ND http://www.flickr.com/photos/crangulabford/3536997430/

The Closing Circle - at the end of the day, we came back into the circle again

CC-BY-SA http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlq/3538191922/

Together - apart - together.  A constant dynamic.  This is the nature of the new communities we are forming online and offline.

There was also lots of video captured - there are over 50 videos up on YouTube and as well Gwen captured a lot of video on Ustream.  There was a fair amount of audio coverage too, there are a few "audioboo" interviews from Ian, as well Apartment613 was going around with a mike and Robin Browne was there with his cool microphone/recorder thingy.  There are over 300 photos up on Flickr.  The tag to look for is cco09

The "virtual grid" of sessions is up on the wiki, but there is still a fair amount of work to get all the notes integrated.  (We had some technical challenges with the particular wiki software.)

We had some good discussions about open government and open data.

Overall very successful for a first event in Ottawa.  And yes, we're already talking about next year...

Previously:
May 13, 2009  ChangeCamp Ottawa - May 16, 2009 - sold out

ChangeCamp Ottawa - May 16, 2009 - sold out

ChangeCamp Ottawa is sold out.  This unconference about citizens re-engaging with government and with each other, enabled by technology, will be this Saturday May 16 (2009).

Here's a kind of bookend from my perspective (I'm sure it's different for all the organisers):

http://friendfeed.com/scilib/f3bdb183/some-changecamp-ottawa-history

this tweet I sent was actually a question, but somehow turned into the plan - from @scilib (me): @thornley So that's #changecampottawa planning at say 6 PM at http://www.clocktower.ca/ on Bank on Monday February 16? http://twitter.com/scilib/status/1203041472

from @scilib (me): last big ChangeCamp Ottawa planning meeting tonight May 11. Event itself will be this Saturday May 16. #cco09  http://twitter.com/scilib/status/1762070027

In case you're wondering what the point of Twitter is, it was a key enabler that helped to make possible all of the connections between people who had never met.  From tweets in February, to a sold-out event in May.

You can find us on the web:
* the (closed but public) social network for the event, courtesy of one of our sponsors, Pathable
* the main changecamp.ca site
* Twitter hashtag #cco09
* tag cco09 anywhere else
* I've also made a FriendFeed aggregator which should be a good place to track live reporting / uploads during the event.  (Unfortunately due to the FF redesign, it kind of looks like all the items come "from" ChangeCamp Ottawa - they're actually just being pulled in from various sources on the web.)

Apartment613 has an interview with Mark Faul, and CHUO Around the Block interviewed Morgen Peers.  (To some extent Morgen and I helped to sustain the event through its initial growing pains - we were the only two people in common between the first and second organising meetings.)

UPDATE: I see Mark Faul has written a post (rather more thoughtful and insightful than my just-the-facts approach above) - and he has also made a NetVibes aggregator for the event.

UPDATE 2: I should mention that ChangeCamp is also in Facebook, if you like that sort of thing.

Acfas - La science en français

L’Université d’Ottawa est heureuse d’accueillir, du 11 au 15 mai 2009, le 77e Congrès de l’Acfas, et fière de contribuer ainsi plus que jamais à l’avancement et à la mise en valeur du français dans tous les champs de la connaissance. Notre institution bilingue fait sa part en se classant 5e au Canada en termes d’intensité de la recherche scientifique. Aux portes du Québec et au cœur de la capitale canadienne, l’Université d’Ottawa vous invite à explorer un campus où se vit tous les jours la dualité linguistique de notre pays. Cliquez ici pour en savoir plus: http://www.acfas.ca/ ou http://www.acfas.ca/congres/a_propos.html ou http://www.acfas.ca/congres/2009/pages/grilles.html

via email from / par courriel de Jacynthe de Saint-Hilaire

building a conference social network: Pathable

After, shall we say, considerable deliberation, ChangeCamp Ottawa went with Pathable as our provider for a conference social network.  What I found compelling is that they have EventBrite integration, which means once we were ready to go, it was able to pull current registrations across (with names, emails, and affiliations) and send out Pathable invites, and as new users register it will automatically pick up the EventBrite registration and send out an invite.

While this still means a bit of extra effort on the part of users, it does reduce a bit the usual approach which is that you have to actually notice there is a separate conference socialnet and then go register separately and re-enter all your info.

It's not a free service, but we're getting great tech support.

(I should note that Pathable is a sponsor of ChangeCamp Ottawa.)

The event registration itself is at 

http://changecampottawa2009.eventbrite.com/

Once you register there it will do the automagic described above and send you an invite for

http://changecamp-ca.pathable.com/

I think it will be a good way to get people to engage before the unconference (but I'm being realistic about the amount of conversation that may go on - getting discussions going is HARD) and also just as importantly, I think it will be useful for the "oh I should connect to that guy I met, what was his name..." activity after the unconference.

What have your experiences been with conference socialnets?  Any suggestions?

going to ChangeCamp Ottawa

There has been a lot of behind-the-scenes work on ChangeCamp Ottawa, and registration is now open (it's free, but there are a limited number of tickets).

ChangeCamp Ottawa is being organized by the Ottawa community to bring together citizens, technologists, designers, academics, policy makers, political players, change-makers and government employees to discuss participatory governance in a web-enabled world.

The event will be an unconference; the schedule will be put together by the attendees in the morning.

Thanks to great support from Mark Faul and the city, we have a fantastic venue at City Hall, I took some photos.  This will be a great opportunity for Ottawa area citizens to connect with their local government and with one another.

The event will be May 16, 2009.

Get your free ticket at http://changecampottawa2009.eventbrite.com/  (As there are a limited number, please only get a ticket if you are fairly sure you will be attending.)
I think there's supposed to be Pathable integration with EventBrite, but I don't know if it's working yet.

I've also created an Upcoming event.  I'm using tag/hashtag cco09.

If you want some ideas about the topics we might cover at the event, you can have a look at the discussion grid from ChangeCamp Toronto.

On a related note, I guess the ALI's February conference was popular enough that they are having another one, right before ChangeCamp Ottawa.  Their (very not-free) Social Media for Government event will be May 12-13 in Ottawa, with preconference May 11 and postconference May 14.  You may want to continue the energy and ideas from the ALI event right on into ChangeCamp.

If you're interested in the organising side, there's still lots of work to do, you can connect to us at

http://wiki.changecamp.ca/ChangeCamp_Ottawa

We are meeting Mondays at City Hall at 6 PM.

UPDATE 2009-04-22:

There is a Facebook group for ChangeCamp in general.

We are working on the Pathable integration but not quite ready to switch it on.  When we do, anyone who has registered on EventBrite will get an invitation to the Pathable social network that is part of our event - please don't be surprised, or worry that we sold your address - this is just a way for us to all meet and discuss online before the event.

UPDATE 2009-04-24: Pathable is go.  If you registered on EventBrite and didn't receive an automatic Pathable invite, please let me know.  ENDUPDATE

UPDATE 2009-05-17:  The event took place successfully, see my blog posting ChangeCamp Ottawa 2009 - from circle to grid to circle.  ENDUPDATE

Previously:
February 11, 2009  Making government data visible - and is Change coming to Ottawa?

CLA preconferences: Democracy and Emerging Technology

Just highlighting a couple of the many Canadian Library Association preconferences, before the main event in Montreal.

* Democracy & Technology (DemTech) - May 29, 2009 - Off-site: J.A. de Seve Cinema, J. W. McConnell Library Building, Concordia University (note this is NOT at the main event site)

DemTech 2009 will showcase cutting edge projects that use information technology to encourage citizen access and foster democratic participation. DemTech is a pre-conference of the 2009 Annual Conference and Trade Show of the Canadian Library Association, sponsored by Apathy is Boring, VisibleGovernment.ca and members of the CivicAccess.ca community.

You can see the DemTech.ca site, as well as some information on the CLA site.
I have been gathering some information related to this topic in my FriendFeed Open Government Canada room, and there will also be a local event, ChangeCamp Ottawa, on May 16, 2009.

* Emerging Technologies Interest Group (ETIG) Library Camp - May 29, 2009 - Palais des congrès

The morning sessions will include presentations by John Fink (McMaster University), Jason Hammond (Regina Public Library), and Jessamyn West (yes THE Jessamyn West of librarian.net) The afternoon will be an "unconference", where participants will share and learn on a variety of topics pre-determined by the group. (Note: this is not a "sage on the stage" afternoon – come armed with a curious nature and a will to participate.)

There is a FriendFeed room, a wiki, and a blog in addition to the CLA site.

Registration deadline for both these events is Friday, April 17, 2009.  You can register by faxing in the form, or by signing up on the CLA site and submitting your info online.

I will be attending DemTech.

ideas for book publishing innovation in Canada & an unconference

I have to admit, when I was scanning through Boing Boing and saw "Six good technological ideas for improving publishing", that word "publishing" started me off with the tyranny of low expectations.  However (and those of you who know me will know I don't go in for false praise) I was pleasantly surprised to encounter Michael Tamblyn's entertaining presentation which has six great ideas, some of which are relevant outside the specific world of book publishing.

(Sorry, initially published as a blocked link - have to unflashblock this content - hazard of browser-editor interaction.)

I have to admit, this is my first time hearing of (or at least my first time paying attention to hearing about) BookNet Canada and this particular event, BookNet Canada TechForum '09.

To be honest, I think it starts a bit slow - Michael Tamblyn starts off talking about the recession - I recommend you skip ahead to about the 3 minute mark where he gets into the meat of his talk.

He calls for a number of things, and I don't want to steal his thunder, but some highlights include:

* publishers getting smarter about how they share their data online - BookNet has an initiative called BiblioShare - "BiblioShare is a service that allows Publishers to store their most recent ONIX files at a central server that can then be picked up by any aggregator that needs them."

* publishers getting better at XML workflows - he indicates O'Reilly's Start with XML as one place to begin

* publishers opening their organisations up to innovation, and embracing ideas from creative technologists (I like this terminology of "creative technologist" a lot)

* publishers experimenting and connecting - BookNet is supporting an unconference called BookCampToronto on June 6, 2009

The one area of mobilizing data he didn't really talk about was connecting publishers to libraries (he focused on the connection to booksellers).  I think there are lots of opportunties in the library space, particularly for sharing data.

I know we often give publishers a hard time for being resistant to innovation - this is a great example of an individual and an organisation that are leading with their ideas.

I have to say I found their site a bit confusing.  There is a blog which doesn't seem to have an RSS feed.  There is an RSS feed, but it appears to be for news items.  There are supposed to be slides at There are slides from the TechForum at

http://slides.booknetcanada.ca/

but I could never get it to load.  You can also see Michael Tamblyn's slides directly on SlideShare.  There's also the blip.tv channel, which has a few other talks on it so far.  The blog slice that is about the TechForum is also useful.  The tag was bnc09 if you want to dig around further.

ICSTI 2009 - Managing Data for Science

The ICSTI 2009 conference has a great lineup of speakers on its programme.  (I can't claim any responsibility for this, since while my organisation has helped with planning the conference, my small personal contribution has just been a few suggestions about the web presence.)

Many of the names you may recognize from enthusiastic blog postings of mine, so as you can imagine, I'm looking forward to going.  Speakers mentioned in this blog (with a link to the relevant posting) include

• Francine Berman (ARL library escience theme presentations - October 9, 2006)
• Richard Boulderstone (BioMed Central OA event presentations, BMC blog - March 7, 2007)
• Jan Brase (system for easy access to sci info using DOIs - Jan Brase - June 11 - IATUL 2007 - June 11, 2007)
• Lee Dirks (data-driven science - Lee Dirks - June 22 - ICSTI 2007 Nancy - June 22, 2007)
• Liz Lyon (presentations on e-Science and e-Biz workflow, and research data preservation - March 31, 2006)
• Paul Uhlir (the concepts of open science and information commons - September 8, 2006)

The event will be June 9-10, 2009 at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa.  Early registration ends March 31.  I think it will be a great opportunity to discuss science data, e-science, and the roles that our libraries can play.  I am using tag icsti2009.  I hope to see many of you there.

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Libraries in Computers - March 31, 2009

I was thinking about the post title and it occurs to me - no offense to InfoToday - that "Computers in Libraries" is kind of an old way of thinking about things.  The reality today is Libraries in Computers.
This is not a new idea - Mark Weiser was writing about ubiquitous computing in Scientific American in 1991.

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.

Is your library becoming a part of your patrons' everyday life?  All this to introduce CIL 2009 session

D203: Embedding Services: Go Where the Client Is

coming up on March 31, featuring my colleague Natalie Collins.  She'll talk about the process that got us to "allowing discovery to happen in the user’s regular work environment".  If you want more details, a previous post about a thousand words may give a hint.

conference technology planning

This list is incomplete, but I thought there was value in getting it out even in draft state, as it is related to some current discussion on FriendFeed.

An updated list of things to do when planning a conference where you would like to have a lot of online and offline interaction before, during and after the event.

Online

• Identify and promote a tag e.g. example2009
  
  • Make sure your tag is unique, avoids 1 vs. l and similar confusion, and is short
  • Short because you're also going to want it to be a Twitter hashtag e.g. #example2009
  • Consider registering your tag with various services (I don't know that this is a high priority - I believe a lot more in search-based tag discovery than search registration)
  • • one example is hitchhikr
• Get a URL, ideally with the tag embedded e.g. example2009.exampleorganisation.org
• Create an Upcoming event
  • This will also give you a machine code that Flickr users can embed to get a nice "This photo taken at Example event" notice.
• Create a SlideShare event to store the presentations
• Consider creating an event blog, if relevant
• Consider creating an event wiki, if relevant
• Consider creating an event Twitter account, if relevant (use of hashtags may cover this better)
• Use an aggregator to pull in all the tagged and hashtagged activity
• Create a FriendFeed room for shared conference liveblogging (this can also perform some of the functions of an event blog)
  • CoverItLive with Twitter integration is another option
• Use Google Maps and Google Earth integration to highlight your venue and surrounding attractions
  • UPDATE 2009-03-03: Since it may he hard for people to use a satellite map to recognise your venue, also consider photos of the exterior of your venue (geotagged in Flickr or PhotoSynth panorama are both good ways to show off the venue) as well as Google Street View and Microsoft Virtual Earth Birds Eye view (if they are available for your location).  ENDUPDATE
• Provide live video/webcast, live audio, or later podcasts of audio and video recordings
• You can consider creating a CrowdVine site for the conference, but I'm not convinced how useful these one-off social networking sites are.
• Depending on your community, use the full arsenal of networks available to reach your desired audience.  This may be Facebook, but don't forget LinkedIn, Nature Network, and other sites that may be more aligned with your particular target demographic.  NOTE: This requires considerable care.  There is nothing more disliked in an existing community than an outsider "parachuting in" to promote a particular event / topic / agenda.  Make sure you know the etiquette (yes, there is such a thing online) and conventions of any site you use.

Offline

• Stable WiFi (a somewhat mythical creature I have yet to see) with all procedures in place (e.g. passwords or accounts if the venue requires them)
• Lots and lots of power outlets
• State the event tag and your expectations of audience technology use at the start of each day (something like "be respectful" will probably cover it)
• Prepare presenters who may not be used to live coverage by their audience, for example see How to Present While People are Twittering
  • Also consider having the presenters suggest a single unified location for live coverage - see FriendFeed thread on this topic
• If you plan to record audio or video, check out well in advance what the venue can provide
  • And make sure you get permission from presenters in advance
• Consider using QR Code on badges, either for contact information or to connect to people's websites/blogs

Other guides:

* Walt Crawford has some fantastic information about conferences in http://citesandinsights.info/civ7i7.pdf
* Some thoughts on the "amplified conference" on Wikipedia, based on thoughts from from Lorcan Dempsey, Brian Kelly and others

Previously:
My July 8, 2006 posting conference tag goodness with HitchHikr has links at the bottom to my examination of this topic spanning back to 2004.  (This blog was started as a place to put conference notes, so thinking about conference support is in some sense part of its DNA.)