Can we get over the MSM’s preoccupation with attacking Craigslist?

Posted on April 24, 2009 by Sanford

Again, I am amazed at the mainstream media’s preoccupation of the “Craigslist Killer” – as if the website itself was the birth of this psychopath’s actions. I loved Craig’s response to the ABC Nightline report:

“My first reaction is sympathy, I mean I feel pretty bad for the victims and their families. I don’t like it at all. Beyond that, well, how would you feel if … the bad guy watched what you do on TV and started calling [you] the ‘ABC Killer?’ That’s pretty much how I’m reacting,” Newmark said. “It just feels bad. You know, remember, I’m spending a great deal of time here fighting bad guys.”

Creating the name for this killer using the media source that the victim may have come from is almost as silly as it is stupid.

I can only wonder what will happen if someone swindles the members of a high-end dating site – and we will then hear about the “JDate Swindler” or the “A Small World Con Man” or whatever. Or what if someone uses a GM car to go to the commissioning of a crime? Will we be calling the bank robber “The Buick BadGuys”?

Can the MSM get over the anger it has for Craigslist and focus on building its own business model? I know that Criagslist is encroaching on the tried and true model (Newspapers Brace for Ad Battle as Craigslist Grows, NPR) Focusing on what is essentially a very simple, community-managed web site that has grown from a simple email list to a trusted, community managed source of content is nothing to be attacking. The newspapers ALWAYS had a chance to be here – and could still be here as other magazines and newspapers are doing (like The Village Voice BackPage and the New York Times).

Stop being fearful and be aggressive. Focus on building – not on bemoaning about the “death of newspapers”. We will always need newspapers – an editorial voice with the money to have the best reporters and researchers protecting our rights – and we, the people, will pay for that to happen. Especially when we need an aggregator of all of the events in out world to resolve what is “important” and what is “noise”.

Be the leaders, not the whiners. Please.

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Congrats on Obama’s CTO choice!

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Sanford

Reading the articles these past 12 hours and wanted to say, I have to agree with many of the people’s opinions extolling the selection of Aneesh Chopra as the new CTO of the Obama Administration including Tim O’Reilly and Alan Davidson. To quote Tim:

“Aneesh Chopra is a rock star. He’s a brilliant, thoughtful change-maker. He knows technology, he knows government, and he knows how to put the two together to solve real problems. We couldn’t do better. “

I, myself, have also been knee-deep in various Government 2.0 projects in recent weeks, and must admit in the wisdom of having someone who understands both technology and government bureaucracy.

In one of my engagements, I met with a number of CIOs, deputy CIOs and other members of the technology community of a large Northeastern state, and I was encouraged by the restrained frustration they felt in wanting to do new things, but were concerned about the bureaucracy that they all felt might hamstring their progress. My most poignant story came from one of the project managers who described their outreach program for helping citizens with insurance issues, and when we discussed the idea of “crowdsourcing“, he rightly introduced me to the legal issues that a state government might face with information coming from a government source that may or may not be correct.

In the Government 2.0 Camp event in DC last month, there were some incredible people from the IRS that have really stretched the horizon working on building a community that will expand the reach of services, but always have to be cognizant of the constraints of the law and mission of their organization.

And at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this month, Andrew McLaughlin described the issues that the government faces when attempting to address the need for transparency while maintaining the safety and security of the nation.

In all cases, the need for an understanding of the bureaucratic lay-of-the-land is paramount in the largest business organization on the planet. While he may not have a technical background (his degrees are in public policy), I wish him nothing but the best in resolving the many issues he has to face.

Chief Performance Officer

One thing that may be overlooked in most stories is the announcement of Jeffrey Zients as Chief Performance Officer – a role which I have become intimately familiar with over the past five years. When you place a CIO with a CTO, the CIO’s role is often to deal with the budgetary issues of the organization, changing policies that govern the business practices within an organization. The CTO (in a startup) usually focuses on new technologies and is supposed to be familiar with the issues that can make or break a product direction – in the case of government, the goal is to understand the issues that will shape the public policies that can affect the infrastructure of the nation as a whole.

But the role of CTO and CIO rarely has any performance metrics on them – aside from revenue and costs – how to make money (grow the GDP) or to save money (reduce the costs within the organization). In the case of a CIO of such a large organization, someone must take the lead in understanding other secondary and tertiary benefits for optimization in the long run. TO this, I am happy to see someone had the forethought to consider this role.

Best of luck to the team.

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Listening in on the Open Government Meetup at NWC

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Sanford
Credit: Marquina Iliev

I have been enjoying feeling a bit of déjà vu watching a bunch of people at New Work City discussing the issues of Open Government in NYC (four years ago, a similar group gathered at an office to discuss Andrew’s run for Public Advocate at the time). Convened by Matthew Cooperrider, a group of people including Noel Hidalgo (part of the State Senate office of the CIO), Andrew Rasiej (from PDF), Nancy Scola (from PersonalDemocracy.com), Britt Blaser (from iYear), Lou Klepner, Alex Linsker and many others.

After a brief introduction to everyone’s background and interests – the group began to discuss various ideas about what they think Open Government is about.

Thoughts about what the purpose of this was:

  • working groups
  • needs/resources
  • specific causes
  • project-based meetups
  • a support network
  • education
  • PAC
  • give voice to collaborators on the inside
  • develop a manifesto

We adjourned with a discussion on connecting in a couple of weeks with a “manifesto” and begin to better focus some of the groups efforts.

Signup for the google group at :http://groups.google.com/group/open-government-nyc

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Mayor Bloomberg announces NYC friendly to Financial (and tech) Startups

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Sanford

Mayor-Bloomberg-at-160-Varick-StThis morning, I got down to New Work City (a coworking space I am a co-founder of) and met with the Mayor of New Work City, Tony Bacigalupo and headed to 160 Varick Street – home of a new incubator that was being spearheaded by NYU-Poly, the NYC Economic Development Corporation and other interested parties (including the real estate developer Trinity, which is one of the oldest real estate developers in the City).

I joined Tony at the space because we were part of the effort that helped bring together a bunch of other space providers (think Regus but different) that had come together to offer the City an alternative to building incubators, without first considering what some entrepreneurial space developers had already formed for small businesses in NYC. The coalition (known as Coalition of Space Providers) came together and is currently made up of providers from:

Check out the press releases and articles on the efforts:

You will see more about the COSP and their efforts at http://www.bootupnyc.com.

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“Let’s not obviate democracy” – Rep Frank to Eric Schmidt

Posted on February 1, 2009 by Sanford

This morning I watched This Week on ABC as I always do on Sunday mornings, and while I was getting annoyed at the standard back-and-forth about the Repug point-of-view (“We love tax cuts, let the free market sort it out. And Dems never saw a program they did not like.”) and the Democratic point-of-view (“Tax cuts do not fund roads. Tax cuts do not put firemen to work. Tax cuts are bad.”), what really blew my mind was what seemed to be a complete lack of understanding of what the world of technology actually is. And then, Rep. Barney Frank did something that blew my mind, as if transparency being requested was going to hurt the bedrock of democracy.

In the last few minutes of the segment, Eric begins to discuss placing information about the spending “on websites” – and that, if the government was able to track where the money was spent, that the arguments of who was right or wrong would be clarified by seeing what happens with the spending.

In the midst of Eric making this remark, Sen. Jim DeMint, [R-SC] says “You’re assuming we can track this money…” and Rep. Barney Frank [D-MA] suggested that Congress was going to put all of the spending on the web (I assume by the fact that the HR-1 requires these actions to be visible through their Transparency provisions at www.recovery.gov and the Inspector General appointment). But what stuck in my craw was this exchange (transcript from ABCNews):
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