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Global Conference to Explore Ways to Strengthen Democratic Institutions Through Technology Technology is having a profound effect on interactions between democratic governments and the citizens they represent, making it easier for citizens to amplify their voices, organize themselves and hold governments to account. However, democratic institutions – governments, parliaments, and political parties – have often been slower to take advantage of the possibilities for engaging with citizens in new ways. Many are using outmoded tools to listen and even older processes to respond. To explore how technology is changing the ways democracies function and to help them bring their responses into the digital age, senior tech leaders, innovators, policymakers and scholars from around the world will convene in Silicon Valley today for a two-day conference, "Governing Democratically in a Tech-Empowered World."
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina has a solution to ease a lot of the world’s problems, whether it’s poverty, food shortages, war or deficiencies in public education: Get more women involved. Allow more women to address youth violence, teach them how to plant food and give them businesses to run, she said, and “things will get better.” “Women are the most underutilized resource in the world.
Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO, says women leaders heavily scrutinized
Elon Musk's mission to Mars
This article was taken from the December 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online . When a man tells you about the time he planned to put a vegetable garden on Mars, you worry about his mental state. But if that same man has since launched multiple rockets that are actually capable of reaching Mars -- sending them into orbit, Bond-style, from a tiny island in the Pacific -- you need to find another diagnosis. That's the thing about extreme entrepreneurialism: there's a fine line between madness and genius, and you need a little bit of both to really change the world.Where are the women in e-government, tech policy and politics?
The question has again been asked, where are the women leaders and innovators in e-government, digital diplomacy, online politics, tech policy and related? Answer: we’re everywhere, from local government to global NGOs, although it’s not always easy for journalists and other researchers to find this information. I’ve twice undertaken the task of listing women and it looks like it’s that time again. This time, we want to crowd source our results beforehand to make sure we include as many women as possible. In 2010, we published the “ 100+ Women in Government & Technology ” list here at GovFresh and previously in 2008, I made a similar list at The Political Voices of Women, “ Women Leading in Technology and Politics or Policy .”
Kansas City: In Flyover Country, Startups Fly Under the Radar
In a city of under half a million, just south of Iowa, the Kansas City startup community is quietly gaining momentum. The local Think Big Accelerator is now mentoring its first class of six startups, zapping them with a shot of funding. The city just kicked off Launch KC , a private-public initiative to offer mentorship, office space, and resources to startups. And Google Fiber is starting to roll out its warp-speed fiber-optic broadband network in the city, which was selected from over a thousand applicant cities last year.Why it's hot: One square mile of boutiques and condos, Hoboken is just across the Hudson River from New York City and boasts a 2,221 member-strong N.J. Tech Meetup that gets together monthly. The Hoboken Business Center offers shared workspace through Mission Fifty , while the city's Stevens Institute of Technology is opening an entrepreneurship office for students and is seeking investors for a tech accelerator. Startups to watch: The scene is dominated by marketing, media, design and finance ventures such as Parse.ly , which provides page view insight for online publishers, and Xtify , a mobile customer engagement provider.
9 Cities You Wouldn't Think Are Hubs for Tech Startups | Slideshow
Today, we’re excited to share a new report and a new set of investments - both centered on how technology can help communities shape their own futures. First, as part of Knight’s Tech for Engagement Initiative, we’re announcing $1.3 million in support for four projects that are helping to empower people and communities. They are: Change By Us : Now in New York and Philadelphia, the CEOs for Cities ’ platform lets people propose grassroots projects, seek supporters and even mini-grants to make them a reality . The next iteration will make the platform Facebook compatible and more affordable to implement in new communities.
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Twitter Bets On Girls Who Code
In 1967, 25-year-old Damyanti Gupta immigrated to Detroit with one goal—to be an Engineer at Ford Motor Company. Only there was one problem: there were no female engineers at the company. When a hiring executive flatly told her that “we don’t have any women on staff”, she mustered her confidence and replied “if you don’t hire me, then you won’t have that benefit.” A few weeks later, Damyanti was hired as Ford’s first-ever female engineer. Gupta (pictured) and her story are just one of many that inspired Reshma Saujani to found Girls Who Code, a new, New York-based initiative designed to help teach girls how to code so that they can pursue careers in technology and engineering. And what’s especially awesome about Saujani’s organization is that it has the steadfast support of a number of companies, including Google, GE eBay and Twitter.More transparency into government requests
About two years ago, we launched our interactive Transparency Report . We started by disclosing data about government requests. Since then, we’ve been steadily adding new features, like graphs showing traffic patterns and disruptions to Google services from different countries. And just a couple weeks ago, we launched a new section showing the requests we get from copyright holders to remove search results. The traffic and copyright sections of the Transparency Report are refreshed in near-real-time , but government request data is updated in six-month increments because it’s a people-driven, manual process.
NASA Opens Space Data To Take On The World\\'s Toughest Problems
Space, the Final Frontier, the place no man had boldly gone to until 1961 , is still a mystery to society in many ways. However, the information that's been gathered from space has enabled scientists to understand world climate change, and now data from the outer galaxy can even help the blind learn math . This has all been made possible through the sharing of open space data. NASA is shedding more light on how space exploration can advance the way we live on earth with the organization's updated version 2.0 Open Government Plan, which was just released this month.Spring reading list: geeks, wonks, innovation and inspiration | City Brights: Sarah Granger
April’s here already and I don’t know where the first quarter of the year went, but I wanted to share some of the books I’ve been reading lately because as spring is a theme of change, many of them relate back to that theme. These are all nonfiction, mostly related to the work I do, and written by people I admire and/or have had the opportunity to meet. Also, most of the authors live or have lived in the Bay Area. I enjoyed reading each of these, and recommend them all. Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky , by Sarah Lacy After working as an editor for TechCrunch , interviewing countless high-tech entrepreneurs over the years, and writing a first book about Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Lacy knows a thing or two about brilliant, crazy and cocky minds.California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson Saturday announced the creation of a 48-member state Education Technology Task Force that will have among its goals the alignment of its own state ed-tech plan , published in 2005, with the National Education Technology Plan put out by the U.S. Department of Education in 2010. While the creation of such organizations is "not super unusual," according to State Educational Technology Directors Association Executive Director Douglas Levin, it is notable because of California's size and its unique position as the home of Silicon Valley, he said in an email. And while California's state budget is particularly crunched, Torlakson in a press release said that the task force's work now would be crucial to allow schools to better implement technology when more funding becomes available in the future. "Many schools have been all but left out of the technology revolution," Torlakson said in the release.
California Launches Ed-Tech Task Force - Digital Education
Taylor Wilson, teenage nuclear physicist, at TED 2012 in Long Beach. Photograph: James Duncan Davidson Donald Sadoway. Photograph: James Duncan Davidson Bill Gates is putting massive investment into a technology that Donald Sadoway, professor of materials chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is developing.