{"id":4961,"date":"2012-04-29T20:45:47","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T00:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=4961"},"modified":"2012-04-29T20:45:47","modified_gmt":"2012-04-30T00:45:47","slug":"transparency-camp-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2012\/04\/29\/transparency-camp-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Transparency Camp 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just finished a weekend at Transparency Camp 2012<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0As with lots of these types of conferences (PrivacyCamp<\/a> and Freedom2Connect<\/a> come to mind), I approach these as something of an outsider – I’m tech-curious, but by no means experienced. \u00c2\u00a0In the end, I’m just a lawyer, and my expertise in methods often feels a world away from from the folks focused on APIs, datasets, and the latest visualisation tools. \u00c2\u00a0They say API, and I’m all\u00c2\u00a0APA<\/a>!\u00c2\u00a0 One of the big to-dos I came away with was to come to next year’s event prepared for a “I am not your lawyer, BUT . . . ” session.<\/p>\n

Still, I felt it an incredibly worthwhile expenditure of my time. \u00c2\u00a0I feel like we’re hitting the hook on the hockey stick graph, with progress shooting up as we get more people that “get it” in government* and as we simply get more quality work out of those working with the datasets. \u00c2\u00a0 CivicCommons.org<\/a>? \u00c2\u00a0Sweet. \u00c2\u00a0OpenPlans<\/a>? \u00c2\u00a0Yes, please. \u00c2\u00a0MapBox<\/a>? \u00c2\u00a0Wow.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest things? \u00c2\u00a0I was blown away by the amount of personal time and effort put into making tools for better government. \u00c2\u00a0All sectors benefit, to some extent, from the personal contributions of people involved with them. \u00c2\u00a0But there were people who had flown from the other side of the planet, on their own dime, to participate in a conference so they could invest yet *more* personal time in something that would ultimately benefit more people than would ever be able to thank them. \u00c2\u00a0I’m not sure that’s sustainable, but damn<\/em> is it encouraging.<\/p>\n

Finally, I want to give some shouts to some local gov’t folks that showed up to this. \u00c2\u00a0Montgomery County’s Hans Reimer<\/a> led a great session on day one. \u00c2\u00a0Alexandria’s Craig Fifer not only killed it with chicken<\/a>, but did a great job in presenting on the myths and truths of pushing for transparency in local government<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0There were also some DC .gov folks there, but I sadly didn’t get too much of a chance to interact with them. \u00c2\u00a0And really, I regret not roping any Arlington County folks into this, but you can be sure I won’t make that same mistake twice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*I don’t have enough experience that I could honestly defend challenges to this premise that went more than a few rounds, but . . . man, the gov’t folks I see attending this conference now? \u00c2\u00a0Exponentially<\/em> more with it than the folks I encountered in my municipal broadband<\/a> days (’03-05).<\/p>\n

#tcamp12<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just finished a weekend at Transparency Camp 2012. \u00c2\u00a0As with lots of these types of conferences (PrivacyCamp and Freedom2Connect come to mind), I approach these as something of an outsider – I’m tech-curious, but by no means experienced. \u00c2\u00a0In the end, I’m just a lawyer, and my expertise in methods often feels a world away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-policy","category-society","category-tech"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4963,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4961\/revisions\/4963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}