Road-trippin' (aka Welcome to Wild, Wonderful World Wide Web2.0!)

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- 
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Greetings fellow gov types! Welcome to my own little piece of the web that GovTech was kind enough to spin up for me.

I figured that this first post should be the obligatory intro piece. It'll be short since my Web2.0 "expertise" only goes back a few months anyway. Earlier this year, I read an article about the use of Web2.0 in government. Sure, I'd heard of it before, but being the cynic my wife says I am, I didn't see much value in it. Previously I had given it about as much value as a grade-school romance and the odds on its longevity were long. Little did I know this romance would have Yoda-like durability in the long run.

Something in that article caught my eye and kept me reading. I saw how my peers were looking at 2.0 in a new light. The article is a fairly straightforward set of case studies on how our peers were using some specific 2.0 technology to accomplish a business goal within their organization. A simple premise, but that story was enough to turn on the light bulb above my head. Okay, with my "vast" intellect it was probably only a 3-watt bulb, but it got the wheels turning for me!

So I followed up that article with some binge surfing on 2.0. What was it? Where did it come from? Where was it going? Who else had some and how could I score some for us? It wasn't easy to find a lot of good examples of use for our local government area, but there was enough out there to tell me we were on the edge of something big! I was hooked and convinced that it had significant potential value to Roanoke County, even if I still didn't know exactly what "it" was.

The process of trying to find some valid resources specific to local government 2.0 use was painful and uglier than a Chinese Crested Hairless. But fortunately, during my explorations, I met a like-minded individual with similar convictions - Pam Broviak, Director of Public Works and City Engineer for LaSalle, Illinois. After a few skype conversations, it was evident we were on the same path. Since we couldn't find a good place to go to share this stuff, we decided to build our own! So we partnered up and launched MuniGov2.0 - a volunteer organization designed to expand the collective Web2.0 knowledge and collaboration amongst our peers at the local government level. MuniGov2.0 is modeled after the basic tenet of Web2.0 - the more who participate in the evolution of the product, the more effective and valuable it will become.

We put together a group Web site to house documents, establish links to Web2.0 resources and field questions on the topic areas. Today we also hold virtual meetings in Second Life on a weekly basis with a wide-range of topics including technologies in practice today (Microblogs, Wikis, RSS), principles of Web 2.0 (security, achieving the organizational buy-in) and hands-on discovery (collaborative building, noob tutorials, tours of government presence in Second Life). I'll be sure to blog about these topics in more detail in the coming posts.

Thanks to some excellent media interest of late from Gov Tech and the Alliance for Innovation, our ranks have swelled with nearly 150 members representing over 80 organizations in 4 countries, 24 states and all levels of government. MuniGov2.0 is made up of IT folks, HR people, Librarians, PIOs, Engineers, Community Developers and government administrators so we have an excellent melting pot for collaboration and idea exploration from all angles! Sound intriguing? Sign yourself up on the site or stop by one of our Second Life meetings and see what you think! So that brings us up to speed on where I am at, and where MuniGov2.0 is at. I am not proclaiming to be an expert at this stuff. I am more like a rabid fan suffering from a frothing near-obsession with occasional bouts of techno-sermonizing thrust upon anyone unfortunate enough to be in my immediate vicinity. (Someday I may even tell you how I exploited my lovely wife's pregnancy to test drive Twitter).

I intend to take this blog out for a spin on the highways and back roads that make up Web2.0 and along the way we'll do some exploring and some innovating. We'll meet some of our peers who have gone from theory to practice. No rose-colored glass here though! Along with the puppy dogs and "raindrops on roses" we'll see the scars and train wrecks, ensuring that we get the true 411 on Web2.0! Hopefully you'll find the info thought-provoking and perhaps even useful in your own 2.0 explorations! Join me if you're interested and please send me your thoughts and feedback - we're all on the same road!

Virtually yours,

Greever