"Tech geeks are tickled that come January, one of their kind will be in the White House."

Very true. But what are we gonna do about it?

We came, we saw, we ate slightly frightening amounts of Pizza Boli. Transparency Camp '09 happened in Washington DC this weekend. At any given moment, you could step out in the hallway of GW's Media and Public Affairs Building and see a Library of Congress web dude chatting up an advocate for persistent legislative tagging...who's standing next to GSA's web director...who's chatting with Tim O'Reilly...who just finished a conversation with a DHS procurement guru...who spent the morning session brainstorming with the guy who built StimulusWatch...who spent breakfast kibitzing with Recovery.gov's lead architect...who's sneaking away to whiteboard with an open-source advocate...who will spend the afternoon deliberating with the author of Obama's Open Government Directive...who just shared ideas with the new New York Senate CIO...so on and so forth. Sure, for an open-government event, the un-conference snuck under the radar of many people who might have liked to attend. And there's a good chance that you could have counted on two hands the number of John McCain voters in the 300-plus person crowd.

But after two days of brainstorming and back-and-forth, you might be forgiven for looking upon the scene and indulging in some grand thoughts like Craig Newmark's reflection that you were "watch[ing] actual big history being made in real-time" -- or at least signs that a certain transparency-driven model of governing was getting much closer to critical mass. (You Golden Bough fans out there might get a particular kick out of the fact that Transparency Camp kick-off was held in the very same auditorium where the Carville/Novak/Begala/Carlson show Crossfire was filmed.)

I'll point you to roundups and recaps by attendees as they get written, but for now you might like to dip into the Twitter stream. Or, if time is of the essence, check out this tweet word cloud. A Google Group has been established to keep conversations going. And most importantly, here's where you can order commemorative stickers. Next up, in slightly different fashion, is Government 2.0 Camp later this month. Video after the jump.

(Photo credit: kenyaoa)

Is the Federal Advisory Committee Act going to prove to be a big ol' obstacle between the federal government and all those eager Google Maps developers chomping at the bit to help Uncle Sam? Perhaps more importantly, should it be an impediment? You hear again and again at places like this weekend's Transparency Camp: the law passed when leisure suits were the height of fashion might actually make it exceedingly difficult for modern citizen engagement to actually take place in the 21st century.

But there's fascinating tension here, because, FACA was enacted to bring about the sort of good, transparent government that participatory democracy advocates are hungry for. It was even juiced a bit in the Bush era to add more layers of documentation about who was whispering in the ear of the President, Vice President, and other officials. But it might also prohibit the sort of informal, ad hoc work that technologists are eager to do for their country...

Over in the Open Government Google Group (which you might want to consider joining) Alexis Madrigal admits that the Wired story on open government he's been working on wasn't working: "The actual mode of journalism with its traditional endgoal of a 'finished product' article that tells people how it is wasn't up to the task." So, he figured, hey, what's good for the government is good for the writer, and went open source with the project. Be sure to check out Wired's new How-To Open Government Data wiki, built on MediaWiki. The goal is pick a wide assortment of brains on specific areas where data sets the government produces should be put to better use for lay citizens and government employees alike, like turning USDA spreadsheets on crops and cattle into far more user-friendly XML feeds.

Madrigal's wiki joins a suddenly more crowded field of folks working to help incoming CIO Vivek Kundra figure out to marshall the information the government has at its fingertips. The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) eGovernment Interest Group is holding a meeting in DC March 12th and 12th aimed at "develop[ing] a road map for developing Web standards to realize open and interoperable solutions."

Nearly two years ago, I helped pen a posting here, suggesting that politicians should embrace a new town hall format. The idea was that the Internet and user-ranked questions would help leverage a community's voice and provide real insight into the minds of constituents. Not only that, the Internet promised to grow the size of the town hall, putting more people "in the room" than ever before. This morning I watched the President's Internet Town Hall, comprised primarily of user-ranked questions, and I'm glad to see how far we've come. In fact, yesterday the General Services Administration announced agreements allowing the use of Flickr, YouTube, and Blip.tv by federal agencies, a large step in the right direction towrds meeting people where they're at on the Internet. However, these are only the first steps.

Craig Newmark committed what he termed a "crime against nature" at last week's Government Web Managers Conference when responding to a web manager who asked if he could use the free section of Craigslist to advertise his agency's free government information and services.

Welcome to PdF Chat Time, a new feature here at Personal Democracy Forum. PdF Chat Time gives you a behind the scenes glimpse into the lives of the politechnorati. Hear what inspires them, what keep them up at night, and who throws the wildest parties. Get informed by the most knowledgeable players in the world of politics and technology. First up: Hear what Jon Henke has to say about blogging, Twitter, and the future of the Republican Party.