Independence Year is the year between the next two Independence Days. The fireworks began on July 4th, 2008 at iYear.US. Independence Year (iYear) is a new way to interact with your government at every level. It's where you can gather or join a crowd around your concerns. Britt Blaser, Doc Searls, and Jon Udell, join Phil and Scott to discuss the project. In addition to reviewing its purpose, the group also talk about the technical aspects of the venture.
Britt Blaser founded and serves as CEO of Open Resource Group, LLC, a developer of a comprehensive content management system for spontaneous community-forming. The architecture and user orientation is based on lessons learned from the Howard Dean campaign and the Spirit of America project. ORG's clients are communities that want to grow and organizations seeking to inspire and support a dynamic community around their efforts.
Doc Searls is senior editor for Linux Journal and a leading figure in the Linux and Open Source software movements. He is co-author of the business best-seller The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual. In the book, the authors suggest that the Internet has done two things that fundamentally change our way of doing business. First, it radically shifts the balance of power between supply and demand, giving the demand side (customers) far more power. Second, it turns markets into conversations, where supply and demand is only a handshake apart, emulating pre-industrial marketplaces. Companies that remain disengaged from their markets, and continue to assault them with unwanted "messages," are in trouble.
Jon Udell is an author, information architect, software developer, and new media innovator. His 1999 book, Practical Internet Groupware, helped lay the foundation for what we now call social software. Udell has been a software developer at Lotus, was BYTE Magazine's executive editor and Web maven, and has worked as an independent consultant. A hands-on thinker, Udell's analysis of industry trends has always been informed by his own ongoing experiments with software, information architecture, and new media. He also hosts a weekly podcast on IT Conversations.
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This free podcast is from our Technometria with Phil Windley series.
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