This last week, an independently organized TEDX-style convention was held in Washington, DC. TEDxOilSpill began on Monday with the sole purpose to bring to focus possible solutions for the 40,000 barrel-a-day problem in the Gulf of Mexico.

Bringing together expert opinion and broadcasting globally, the conference was the product of the crowd trying to do what a government, tied down with bureaucracy, and a private company, clearly stretched beyond capacity, could not.

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I tuned in to the Gov 2.0 online conference put on by O’Reilly last Thursday. There were some great speakers, including David Eaves. David shared some of his 2.0 experiences and it really got me thinking about the impact of open innovation initiatives on different aspects of society – including those that focus on the environment. Being a bit of a granola myself, this got me researching and reflecting on other environmental initiatives that have been made possible because of open innovation and the support of an invested crowd.

The main environmental initiative that David spoke of at the Gov 2.0 conference is an upcoming Apps for Climate Change Contest in British Columbia. “The Apps for Climate Action Contest is intended to inspire youth and the public in British Columbia to take action on climate change. The Province is developing a Contest for computer programmers to create dynamic internet and mobile applications using government and publicly available climate change and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions data. The Contest is expected to award cash prizes based on the creativity, interactivity and effectiveness of the applications as outreach tools…To support the Contest, the Province has created a Climate Change Open Data Catalogue for programmers to use in their applications.”

Even though A Million Acts of Green is not a true representation of open innovation, it sure did succeed at using the ideas of the Canadian public to benefit the environment. And this isn’t the only example. Here are some others that I found interesting:

1.)    Your Country Your Call – Ireland Government. The Your Country Your Call initiative has several different categories for participants to contribute ideas. There is an entire category on energy and the environment. Ideas submitted in this section include everything from hydro electric power solutions to the recommendation to stop selling high energy light bulbs.

2.)    Refresh Everything – Pepsi Project: I know I mentioned this campaign in my previous blog but it really is a great example of an initiative that allows the public to contribute great ideas to encourage sustainability in the environment – through a grant program. There are several different types of contributions (from art to mental health), but some of the environmental focused submissions included: Producing an eco-friendly play in NYC with the Greener Theater, recycling bikes to be used as alternative form of Transportation, and many others.

3.)    The GreenXchange – The GreenXchange (beta) is an innovative revolutionary partnership with the goal of bringing together companies, people, and ideas to create sustainable change.

Above are just a few of the environmental open innovation initiatives that I have encountered. I’m looking forward to discovering others. If using open innovation can’t help better the environment, then I’m not sure what will!

photo by: vfowler

A broadly influential thought leader, Dr. Mark Drapeau’s ideas carry weight in numerous communities. He is a sought-after speaker for events whose topics encompass everything from local and state government operations, to science and technology advances, to public relations and marketing innovation, to federal government, international relations, and military issues. The captivating and witty Drapeau is currently Program Co-chair of the O’Reilly Media / TechWeb Gov 2.0 Expo, held May in Washinton DC and is available for speaking engagements, collaborations, and advice. His unique way of looking at problems and explaining complex topics using stories and metaphors is a breath of fresh air in a world of boring consultants and cookie-cutter public speaking. If you are interested in anything gov2.0, he’s the guy you’ll want to keep an eye on.

Citizens are Conversations – Mark Drapeau

Post-inauguration Washington, D.C has been very interesting from the standpoint of the technology community.  From the top down, all indications are that within their limitations, leadership in the new administration is moving forward on a platform of more transparent and collaborative government.  And from the bottom up, a group of people dubbed the “Goverati” are using their knowledge of government and social technologies to influence the overall Government 2.0 movement.

Social technologies like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter used to be collectively termed “new media” – but that adjective isn’t accurate any longer.  Rapid, online, multimedia information flow about conflicts in Mumbai and Gaza, a dramatic plane crash in the Hudson river, the presidential inauguration and more have made it clear that new media is now more aptly called “now media,” as I remarked on January 20th.

But it would be misleading to suggest that social technologies are simple merely because they are prevalent – they’re anything but. Social media is a rapidly evolving ecosystem.  The experts debate constantly at conferences and in the blogosphere.  There’s no rule book.  Social media is a giant, chaotic experiment.

So, for a newcomer to using these tools, everything can seem overwhelming.  Many people ask me how to use social software to communicate what their office or agency is doing.  There is no one, simple answer, but perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind is that social media is social – it is about the conversation that people are having now, about you or your interests, whether or not you’re a part of it.

Here, I want to advance the notion that citizens are not mere receiving vessels for press releases and whatever you put on your government website.  They’re not a captive audience.  They are groups of individuals having conversations with their families, at the proverbial water cooler, and on popular social media sites like the blog ReadWriteWeb, the microsharing site Twitter, and the video conversation platform Seesmic.  Social networks people form online are becoming an increasingly important and powerful force in their lives and one need only look to the election of President Obama to see the effects that they can have.

Once you acknowledge that citizens are conversations, what do you do next? Generally, you want to find people talking about your topic of interest, listen to what they’re saying, participate in the conversation, and then start new topics of conversation.  Tip-toe into the chaos in the order outlined above.  As a DC-based communications consultant once wrote:blog last.  Below, I briefly outline some other tips to guide you into the world of citizen social media.

It’s good to be a RAT: Unless you’re a computer programmer, social media isn’t really about technology.  It’s about people talking to people. Social interactions have a lot to do with personality and trust.  As wine entrepreneur and social media maven Gary Vaynerchuk suggests, try as much as possible to be a social RAT: real, authentic, and transparent.

Street smarts count more than book smarts: A lot of social media is learned by doing, and more importantly through trial-and-error experimentation.  Speaking in a transparent manner with a human voice can’t be taught easily in a book or at a conference.  The same is true for building and maintaining trusted relationships with people.  Useful metaphors can be found in organizations as diverse as old-school journalists and the mafia or other crime organizations.

Citizens are talking about your brand: Traditional public relations unidirectional, and has been called things like “outbox only” and “fire and forget.”  Government entities need to pay more attention to their brands, and who is talking about them.  Organizations should talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships, because word of mouth is still the most powerful force for spreading trusted information.  If you don’t know who’s out there talking about your brand, how to you know who to influence when the time comes?

Deploy ambassadors on a lethal generosity mission: Organizations should belong to a community and allow some employees to be individually empowerful.  By being the most generous member of a community, they may become the most trusted. Ambassadors should have knowledge but also great personalities, exhibiting openness, transparency, accuracy, honesty, and respect.  They can build valuable new relationships, cheaply.

Engage minds with indirect, intimate influence: Return-on-investment (ROI) is quickly becoming return-on-engagement, or ROE, because personal engagements with people and their word-of-mouth are the new ‘reach” of messages.  Use indirect, intimate influence to get that ROE.  Influence people through being a valuable member of their community.

Seek out government role models: Colleen Graffy from the State Department successfully used Twitter to connect with overseas journalists as part of her public diplomacy mission.  The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) uses a public blog called Evolution of Security to listen to travelers and their complaints – and overtly discuss policies and problems with them.  Representative John Culberson from Texas uses live-video service Qik to better communicate with his constituents.  What these three people, and others, have in common is that each one of them is a RAT (in a good way) and that they have learned, through trial and error and experimentation, the lessons above.

As top-down decisions trickle throughout government and grassroots efforts propagate upward, are you prepared to join the conversation? It’s happening with or without you.

I attended the Gov2.0 online conference this morning and listened to 5 success stories on open government. I was really impressed with the quality of speakers and feel pretty inspired by all of the initiatives around web2.0, social media and the government. Jeff Nigbur, summarized this shift in thinking well during his presentation of the Utah.gov site, “Rather than having the media be our enemy, the social media portal has allowed them to be our friend.”

Here are 3 things we enjoyed from O’Reilly online gov2.0 conference this morning:

1. Unicef’s Merrick Schaeffer talked about the Malawi SMS campaign to fight malnutrition some of his tips were: always work with Open Source, follow agile principals, partner on every project, & develop local capacity. More info about what Unicef is up to can be found at www.unicefinnovation.org

2. Michelle Viotti talked about Nasa’s Be a Martian program around the citizen mapping of Mars. NASA has several crowdsourcing initiatives on the go including one with our friends over at Top Coder – an experimental programming competition to develop algorithms which would help NASA’s flight surgeons make better decisions on what might be included in the medical supplies kit of future long-term human space missions.

3. Melissa Jordan talked about the Bay Area BART and how a small investment led to increased traffic and more fan interactions. bart.gov shares data to let third parties build useful apps for Bart riders. She also taught us that “cupcaking” means constantly kissing and being all over someone in public places in cool-kid speak.

People we now follow on Twitter

I appreciated the comments and tweets from the following people during the conference. I suggest checking out

@unimps –  UNICEF developer focused on mobile phone /SMS development

@GEOpdx –  Geospatial Professional, Community Building Partner, Metro GeoGeek, Government 2.0, Father and Husband

@cheeky_geeky – Co-chair of Gov 2.0 Expo. Voted class pessimist (1993).

@laurelatoreilly –  Editor at O’Reilly Media focusing on various topics, including Microsoft and Gov 2.0. Co-chair of Gov 2.0 Expo 2010.

And @OReillyMedia, of course! By the way, O’Reilly Media tweeted this, “Thank you #gov20 online folks: Get 40% off with the discount code 4cast on print books and 50% off ebooks from oreilly.com” and you should take advantage of the offer. This was a free conference and we hope to see more of the same, but everybody’s gotta make a living, so buy a book.

Tim O’Reilly asked Gov 2.0 Summitters to imagine small govt with big impact

Web 2.0 summits have long been respected for bringing bright minds together to explore what’s working and what’s next in technology. The man behind the summits, Tim O’Reilly, hosted the first Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC Sept 9-10. Two of us from team Chaordix went to check it out. O’Reilly framed the conference around the idea of government as a platform – not just a body that pushes policy at people.

O’Reilly talked about meeting government leaders that surprised him in terms of their intellect, passion and desire to truly do the right thing. I’ve had that same experience. O’Reilly challenged presenters and attendees to think of the move to “transparency in government” not just as enabling watchdogging of government activity but as a new opportunity for government and the private sector to better exchange services and data.

Clay Shirky summed it up saying “the government needs to have a wholesale relationship with people, not retail.” Shirky used the Apps for Democracy community initiative as an example of getting it right. DC’s Office of the CTO offered up raw government data and invited residents and software developers to make something of it with apps to improve city service requests with $50,000 prize money up for grabs. The crowd contributed 47 web, iPhone and Facebook apps in 30 days. Contenders included apps like everyblock.com which let citizens see crime, construction and business license information by street address, the always popular pothole and more fix and monitor app FixMyCityDC, and the ultimate winner an Open 311 app that allows users to submit city service requests via iPhone (buy the app on iTunes) or as a Facebook app.

It was an interesting time to be in DC with Obama’s back to school address and speech on the US Healthcare Bill. It felt like people at the Summit, regardless of political stripes, were striving to be hopeful about possibilities for US govt openness. O’Reilly cast out the challenge ‘Could we get government to be smaller with an impact that’s bigger?” It’s an idea worth taking home to Canada.