Great summary by Tim Bonnemann:

­­Unfortunately I won't be able to participate, even though they offer great ways to participate virtually. From their website:

Participation Camp will provide the spark for an explosion of sharing, experimentation, and collaboration around this question.  Participants may attend a wide range of physical and virtual presentations (or deliver one themselves), compete in a conference-wide participation game, or roll up their sleeves in a hands-on workshop.

PCamp will be hosted by ITP@NYU.  There is no cost to attend.  Register now.

The Washington Post recently did a second round of grading WhiteHouse.gov, the White House's online home.

On the positive side, "the White House's new media team earned praise for adding new features. Recently, the White House announced its presence on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. [...] In late March, WhiteHouse.gov hosted an online town hall, where, in less than 48 hours, more than 92,000 people submitted 103,978 questions and cast 3.5 million votes."

But, "on transparency, WhiteHouse.gov has yet to demonstrate any significant implementation other than reiterating that President Obama is committed to it."

The article also points out that simple things, like transcripts of speeches and daily press briefings are unavailable. While the advanced features were praised, the site scored low on providing basic information services started during the Bush administration.

NCDD, IAP2 and the Co-Intelligence Institute have been leading a dynamic, collaborative online process aimed at developing a set of Core Principles for Public Engagement that most people and organizations in this field can support.  Dozens of practitioners and leading organizations have contributed to the creation of the Core Principles:

1. Careful Planning and Preparation
2. Inclusion and Demographic Diversity
3. Collaboration and Shared Purpose
4. Openness and ­Learning
5. Transparency and Trust
6. Impact and Action
7. Sustained Engagement and Participatory Culture

The Core Principles document will soon be officially submitted to the people working on Obama's open government directive­.

Visit the NCDD website for more detail and to see the long list of supporters in the field >>

Social networks will be like air...

Very co­mprehensive list... for folks who have a lot of time on their hand to explore. View full list with links >>

via Nextgov.com:

Agencies can now engage with citizens through popular media technologies such as video-sharing service YouTube, using pre-negotiated service agreements that comply with federal terms and conditions.

After nine months of negotiations, the General Services Administration signed agreements with four video-sharing and social networking sites: Flickr, Vimeo, blip.tv and YouTube. GSA also is negotiating with the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace.[...]

Most agencies will appoint directors of new media to determine how they can use social networking tools to meet mission goals and comply with President Obama's open government directive, said Sheila Campbell, team leader of Web best practices for the government portal USA.gov and co-chair of the Federal Web Managers Council.

Very exciting!

At Public Agenda we are currently brainstorming the idea to create online social networks with a focus on civic life for communities, hosted by a sponsoring coalition of local entities (city agencies, non-governmental institutions, ...), that keep engaged citizens in the loop, allow them to network and enable the sponsors to easily host civic engagement activities.

Please let us know your thoughts and get in touch with us, challer [at] publicagenda [dot] org­