Mark Drapeau

The most important thing I learned in grad school was very simple: "Draw the picture." (Thanks Tony.) By that my advisor meant that it's often hard or impossible to describe a complex system in words alone. And consequently, if you can't draw a picture of what you're trying to explain, you probably don't understand it. Drawing pictures of complex systems...

As the program co-chair for the upcoming Gov 2.0 Expo, I've had a lot of time to learn about what's happening at the edges of the space. And through my experience working on the topic with the Department of Defense, and now through a different lens at Microsoft's public sector division, I've had a lot of time to think about where it's been, and where it is now. I've seen three phases in what most people would agree is "Government 2.0" -- a phase of surprise, a phase of experimentation, and a phase of solutions.

A New York Times article by David Carr rehashing common knowledge on "why Twitter will endure" got me thinking about the ways in which it will not endure, or the ways in which it may endure via which no one will really care about it. So, what does it mean to "endure"? To stay in business? So what - Lord and Taylor is still in business, but there are so many better stores if you ask me. RC Cola has endured. We always think of Coke and Pepsi when we think of soft drinks, and maybe now we even think of carbonated things like Perrier or some sports drinks. But, still, RC Cola endures. Classmates.com is still enduring - but when was the last time anyone cared? So what does it mean to say that Twitter will endure?

Recently, I wrote a post about Government 2.0 predictions for 2010-12, and one of them was that government would "always be on-the-record." By that I meant that the combination of (1) the proliferation of tech-savvy citizens with mobile camera/video devices, (2) the prevalence of wi-fi or other Web connections, (3) the massive number of people using social networks like MySpace,...

Under no pressure from anyone, I’ve forced this obligatory “end of year predictions” post upon myself. People always ask me where I think Government 2.0 is going anyway, I may as well get some writing mileage out of it, right? So, here are some non-exhaustive, somewhat creative, and entirely debatable trends and ideas that I foresee taking shape in the next three years or so:

When Twitter decided to slowly roll out a new, official retweeting feature, people waited in anticipation. When it actually became available, people almost universally disliked it. But my post is about why I love the new Twitter retweet feature, without ever having to think about it. The reason is that official retweeting represents the new-new arms race for authority among power users.