I wrote this with John Kerry and Michele Flourney in mind, but regardless of who is eventually made Secretary of Defense, the core concept remains: the center of gravity for massive change in the US Government and in the nature of how the US Government ineracts with the rest of the world, lies within the Department of Defense, not the Department of State.
John Kerry, Global Engagement, and National Integrity
It troubles me that John Kerry is resisting going to Defense when he can do a thousand times more good there instead of sitting at State being, as Madeline Albright so famously put it, a “gerbil on a wheel.” Defense is the center of gravity for the second Obama Administration, and the one place where John Kerry can truly make a difference. Appoint Michele Flournoy as Deputy and his obvious replacement down the road, and you have an almost instant substantive make-over of Defense. Regardless of who ends up being confirmed, what follows is a gameplan for moving DoD away from decades of doing the wrong things righter, and toward a future of doing the right things affordably, scalably, and admirably.
Registration is live for the 2012 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, at www.ncddseattle.eventbrite.com. Be sure to register soon to take advantage of the $350 early bird rate.
We’re so excited about NCDD Seattle! We’re coming together October 12-14 (Fri through Sun) at the beautiful Hyatt at Olive 8 in downtown Seattle for a great event that will bring together hundreds of the most active, thoughtful, and influential people involved in public engagement and group process work across the U.S. and Canada.
After organizing 5 regional events in 2010, we’re going back to holding our biennial national gathering. Spending three days with some of the most amazing people in our field and exploring together how we can shape the future of this important movement… there’s really nothing like it. I hope you plan to join us.
Check out our FAQs page for lots of details about registration fees, conference venue, and much more.
Complete our Interest Form for NCDD Seattle to let us know if you’re interested in getting involved in the planning process, helping out at the event, sponsoring, publicizing the conference, presenting a workshop, etc.
Joe Justice is the ideator of Team Wikspeed: a team of volunteers distributed around the world who recently created a prototype car that is open source, modular and ultra-efficient in just three mo… …YES, in just three months compared with the years it takes traditional car manufacturers to bring out a new model.
See Also:
This is an extremely interesting interview with Joe Justice … it gives the gist of where the manufacturing revolution is going.
Phi Beta Iota: Achieving an Open Source Everything world is a three part process:
1. Creation of Open Source Alternatives.
2. Creation of Integrated infrastructure–pieces need to intersect.
3. Abolishment of political parties and governments that try to micro-impose safety standards (e.g. air bags) and other onorous measures whose sole real purpose is to make competition unaffordable for the Open Source Everything movement, while blackmailing commerce into contributing to Political Action Campaigns.
Next week I will be attending my official graduation from The Fletcher School to receive my PhD diploma. It is—in a word—surreal. I’ve been working on my PhD for almost as long as I’ve known my good friend and colleague Chris Albon, which is to say, a long time. Chris is also a newly minted political science PhD and recently joined the FrontlineSMS team as the director of their Governance Project. Needless to say, our paths have crossed on many occasions over the years and we’ve had many long conversations about the scholar-practitioner path that we’ve taken. With graduation just a few days away, we thought we’d write-up this joint post to share our pearls of wisdom with future PhDs.
First: blog, blog, blog! The blog is the new CV. If you don’t exist dynamically online, then you’re not indexable on the web. And if you’re not indexable, then you’re not searchable or discoverable. You don’t exist! Blog-ergo-sum, simple as that. Chris and I have been blogging for years and this has enabled us to further our knowledge and credibility, not to mention our of network of contacts. The blog allows you to build your own independent brand, not your advisor’s and not your program’s. This is critical. We’ve received consulting gigs and keynote invitations based on blog posts that we’ve published over the years. Do not underestimate the power of blogging for your professional (and yes, academic) career. In many ways, blogging is about getting credit for your ideas and to signal to others what you know and what your interests are.
Second: get on Twitter! Malcolm Gladwell is wrong: social media can build strong-tie bonds. Heck, social media is how I originally met Chris. If the blog is the new CV, then consider your Twitter account the new business card. Use Twitter to meet everyone, everywhere. Let people know you’ll be in London for a conference and don’t underestimate the synergies and serendipity that is the twittersphere. Chris currently follows around 1,200 people on Twitter, and he estimates that over the years he has met around half of them in person. That is a lot of contacts and, frankly, potential employers. Moreover, like blogging, tweeting enables you to connect to others and stay abreast of interesting new developments. Once upon a time, people used to email you interesting articles, conferences, etc. I personally got on Twitter several years ago when I realized that said emails were no longer making it to my inbox. This information was now being shared via Twitter instead. Like the blog, Twitter allows you to create and manage your own personal brand.
6 months ago at Mozilla Festival 2011, the Data Journalism Handbook was born. Thanks for your interest in the book – I have great pleasure in announcing that the Handbook is now live!
The Handbook features contributions from over 70 leading practitioners of data journalism from every corner of the globe, from Japan to Finland, Nigeria to the US and from leading news outlets such the New York Times, Zeit Online, the BBC and the Guardian. The Handbook is an open educational resource, under a creative commons licence (CC-BY-SA) so please share it with your friends and remix it. We hope that it will encourage many budding data journalists to look at data as a source and give them courage to tackle it, as well as showcasing some great examples of journalism using data as inspiration for future stories.
Also available for pre-order is the e- and print version from O’Reilly Media – http://oreil.ly/ddj-e-print – so if you are interested in a version to read offline, take a look!
We will soon have the facility to submit feedback via the website if you spot any errors or have any improvements for the next version,
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Lucy Chambers
Infographic impresario Lulu Pinney created this superb poster, which gives an overview of the contents of the Data Journalism Handbook.
