Government 2.0: The Use of Drupal and Open Source Technologies
Happy Fav Five Friday!
The web and other news sources have been buzzing about the White House site using open source technology, Drupal. Many influential people have shared their thoughts on this subject, but I like this post by Tim O’Reilly the best. He makes a good point about how the Government has been using open source, but it’s adoption by http://whitehouse.gov should improve the government adoption rate. The New York Times also published an article titled “Drupal Moves into the White House”, which you can find here. I recommend you review these two articles, because they are packed with related resources.
Calling a Friend with a Coconut
The right tool for the job is important! Can you make a phone from a coconut? You probably could, if you were a professor stranded on a desert island with the Skipper and crew. Would you hang a picture with a shovel? Would you cook a meal in the dishwasher? These ideas may seem silly, but most jobs are easier with the right strategy and correct tools. The mission is better served when more options are available. Drupal is not going to be the “magic bullet” that kills all overspending in Government IT, but it is good to see more tools available in the Government 2.0 toolbox.
What is this “Drupal, Open Source PHP CMS” Thing?
Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites for Enterprise 2.0 solutions, Government 2.0 platforms, Social Networking portals, and much more.
The built-in functionality, combined with dozens of freely available add-on modules, will enable features such as: Collaborative authoring environments, Collaborative authoring environments, Blogs, Discussion Forms, Podcasts, and much more.
Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL (”GNU General Public License”) and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. Please visit http://drupal.org for additional information.
Drupal (#OpenSource CMS): Tutorials & Webinars for Beginners
5+2 Webcasts About Drupal
These “how to” Drupal webcasts are part of my favorite Drupal collection. You will find five presentations to help you quickly understand what Drupal is and what it can do. I have also included the important “Drupal Security” presentation, a quick overview before you buy the book. I added the “Drupal Garden” video, because it allows you to see how simple & cool content management can be. You should also listen to the “JackBe” video “Developer Community Ignites Customer Engagement, Reduces Costs and Delivers Measurable ROI with Drupal”, he uses some very interesting words to describe Drupal. You can review other Drupal presentations here.
The Future Gov 2.0 Toolbox Will Hopefully Also Contain Tools Like Zend Framework
Extending the art & spirit of PHP, Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications & web services, and consuming widely available APIs from leading vendors like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr, as well as API providers and cataloguers like StrikeIron and ProgrammableWeb. Learn more at http://framework.zend.com
Social Media, Widgets, & Gadgets with OpenSocial?
How about Government web sites with customizable widgets, like the iGoogle dashboard? Apache Shindig is an OpenSocial container and helps you to start hosting OpenSocial apps quickly by providing the code to render gadgets, proxy requests, and handle REST and RPC requests. Apache Shindig’s goal is to allow new sites to start hosting social apps in under an hour’s worth of work. Learn more here http://incubator.apache.org/shindig/
What about Open Source Training and Education?
Drupal does not offer any type of “Developer Certification” at this time. It just does not seem to be part of their business model. You can become “Third Party Drupal Certified”. Will Government 2.0 Developers really need certification? There are a few places you can get an “open source” type of certificaiton. Zend offers Training and Certification Programs. You may want to take a look at O’Reilly Technology School. O’Reilly has been spreading the knowledge of innovators for close to 30 years. With an academic approach to publishing, trend spotting, research, and conferences, O’Reilly has gathered and distributed the information needed for innovation, helping to drive the development of the Internet as seen today.
Moving Forward with Government 2.0
Discover, Participate, & Engage with Data.gov
The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Learn more at http://data.gov
The Amazing Web 2.0 Summit 2009 – O’Reilly Media #w2s
Happy Fav Five Friday!
The Web 2.0 Summit conversation is no longer just about the Web. Now is the time to put the power of the Web to work—its technologies, its business models, and perhaps most importantly, its philosophies of openness, collective intelligence, and transparency. http://www.web2summit.com/web2009
The Web 2.0 Event of the Year – Web 2.0 Summit – Web Squared #w2s
There were so many great events in the past few days. The big events that caught my eye were: Web 2.0 Summit 2009 #w2s , Blog World – New Media Expo 2009 #bwe09, and TWTRCON DC 09 #twtrcon. The Summit was outstanding and easy to follow online. John Battelle, Tim O’Reilly, and all the people supporting this event did an outstanding job! There was an avalanche of news released about all levels of technology, including Twitter, Google, Bing, Facebook, and so much more. This event was like an intellectual amusement park with thrill after thrill. Thanks to @JohnBattelle, @timoreilly, and the crew at @web2summit for another thrilling event. Thanks to all the guests, attendees, and fans for sharing #w2s
5 Web 2.0 Summit Resources to Help Plan Your 2010 Strategy
Economy + Internet Trends Presentation by Mary Meeker
You can get Mary Meeker’s Economy + Internet Trends Presentation here.
Web 2.0 Summit Videos on blip.tv
Web 2.0 Summit 2009 Videos on YouTube
Web 2.0 Summit (formerly named Web 2.0 Conference) brings the intelligence, innovation, and leadership of the Internet industry together in one place at one time. Through incisive plenary sessions, frank onstage conversations, rapid-fire “high order bits,” and Launch Pad, visionaries and executives from Internet businesses present their unique perspective on the Web’s future-in-flux. Web 2.0 Summit is brought to you in partnership with O’Reilly Media, Inc. and TechWeb and moderated by John Battelle, Program Chair, and O’Reilly CEO and founder, Tim O’Reilly.
How to Use Social Media & Web 2.0 for Collaboration
Happy Fav Five Friday!
Social Media & Web 2.0 Tools for Collaboration
You may be aware of the trends about “doing more with less”, especially during these tough economic times. We are also becoming more involved with keeping our planet healthy. More people and organizations are adopting “green technology”. More people are working from home and more organizations are moving towards dispersed work environments. This is a “Win Win Win” trend that supports healthy lifestyles, lower costs, and a greener planet. More meetings can be done in virtual environments, which leads to less travel, saves time, and reduces our ecological footprint. More productivity can take place in these virtual environments for the same reasons. Most work-product and communications can be captured in a centralized location other than our inboxes. Processes and Products will improve through Collective Intelligence and Crowd Sourcing.
The Business Value of Web 2.0 for Governments & Organizations
Organizations and individuals are involved with Web 2.0 and Social Media for different reasons at different times. These tools can be used as communication channels to support brand awareness, customer communications, collaboration, staying in touch with mom, and countless other needs. Web 2.0 is not just for collaboration or marketing, it’s a part of our culture.
5 Web 2.0 Tools for Social Media Collaboration
Google provides what seems to be an infinite amount of tools and services. You can sign up with Google absolutely free. Take a look at some of these tools and services Google provides http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/
Upload and share your PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Adobe PDF Portfolios on SlideShare. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to make a webinar. http://www.slideshare.net/
Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world. http://twitter.com/
More than 48,000 independently produced Web shows use blip.tv to reach more than 22,000,000 people. They distribute more than 2.4 million episodes from these shows across the entire video Internet and onto television screens across the country. http://blip.tv
bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier. bit.ly can be accessed through their website, bookmarklets and a robust and open API. http://bit.ly/
I love social media, but I work on Enterprise 2.0 solutions. I have worked with government and commercial clients developing collaboration and knowledge management tools long before the cool “Enterprise 2.0” term was coined. The Enterprise 1.0 approach was a small team making decisions on tools with a rigid taxonomy that had little or no regard to workflows and existing business processes. Have you been around long enough to remember the early push for repeatable processes in government agencies? You may remember the big push for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and then Six Sigma to help improve business processes in government agencies. Fun times right? A lot of people were pushing tools down the chain and it felt we had a process for our process .
Enterprise 2.0
Enterprise 2.0 is more than blogs, wikis, forums, bookmarking and other web-based technologies. Read the rest of this entry »
