They work to open up government, to build new, creative tools, push for transparency and make life easier for people - I call them the eGov geeks, and they are scattered throughout Europe.

Whether you call them politechnorati, eGov geeks or political hackers, they are giving new meaning to the word participatory democracy, which can be much more than “just” voting in an election every forth year. Most of them are working in the outskirts of political institutions, but influencing them by building tools that are vastly better than what the institutions can come up with themselves.

Here's an updated guide to the breakout sessions in the works for Personal Democracy Forum 2009. This year's theme is "We.gov"--in other words, all the ways that people are using the internet and interactive communications technologies to transform politics, campaigns, media, governance and civic action.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we're envisioning four main thematic tracks to the breakout sessions, which will run in the afternoon of both days of the conference: 1) State-of-the-art online politics; 2) Exploring government 2.0; 3) New organizing opportunities, tools and challenges; and 4) The future of political journalism, blogging and networked media. There's also a couple of sessions that bridge several of these categories that we think will be pretty interesting as well.

Here's how things are shaping up. We're still tweaking these sessions, adding speakers and moderators, but what you see here now is pretty close to solid, and we're about to put them on a clear timeline as well. If you haven't registered yet, click here: now's the time.

In November, I wrote that the new administration might call upon the tech community to help improve government, and that if they gave us the opportunity, we would have to make good on it. That opportunity is here.

OFA launched a new email and petition drive on Tuesday afternoon, ratcheting up pressure on Congress to pass the President's health care plan. Huffington Post's Nico Pitney reports on the move's political significance:

A first shot, of sorts, is being fired in the Obama-era battle for health care reform. Organizing for America, President Obama's political arm, is blasting out an email to its massive list of supporters urging them to join an "Organizing for Health Care" campaign.

A DNC official says the message is significant because it is "the first email" that is "going out from the OFA and DNC lists organizing for health care." The declaration drive will culminate, the official added, in a supporter list that organizers "can deliver to members of Congress." But there are some problems here.

It is early, but so far, these OFA legislative "organizing" efforts run the risk of being boring, vague and redundant.