During the campaign, presidential hopeful Barack Obama put volunteerism front and center -- quite literally, dedicating valuable home page real estate to, for example, calls for help during Hurricane Gustav. The practice helped to define him as a compassionate "brother's keeper" candidate, and President-elect Obama seems intent on taking with him to the White House; when it comes to the first national CTO, are we not actually talking about a Chief Information Officer -- that is, less a nuts-and-bolts technologist-in-chief and more an executive-minded leader with a vision of how government handles its IT duties; and a good deal more.

The morning plenary at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) just concluded. About half way through the opening session it became clear to me that what CGI is all about is, well, personal democracy.