Aproximando cidadãos
Blog Action Day – The subject is getting hot
It’s not to keep remembering “immemorial times”, but haven’t been so long since the countries got together its representatives in a great ecologic conference, the greater of all times, in Rio, in 92, with the city symptomatic taken by the Brazilian army to assure “the safety” and an agreement, from the governor in that time, Leonel Brizola, with the barons of the city to legalize it…
In that time, when we’re talking about global warming we had to face the economic lobby of oil with a whole block of renowned scientists that defended the increase of concentration of greenhouse effect gases by the use of energy after the industrial revolution, the human territorial occupation model and the negligence with the absorption capacity of the environment which would have little to do with the global warming. This is a natural cycle of the earth, irreversible and not related with humans and their way of life.
Well, 17 years after, the Kyoto Protocol in the ways for renovation, many things have changed.
Today is difficult to find someone that doesn’t have an understanding even rough about the greenhouse effect and its causes and it’s already a regular knowledge to know that the environment doesn’t support anymore, that we pay a high price for deforestation, that Brazil is among the 5 great emitters of greenhouse effect gases in the world and is still reluctant to assume a position to cut exemplary emissions, the same fears of the consequences of it for economy already satanized by the United States.
Greenhouse effect and global warming contribute for the melting of the ice caps and ecologic unbalances that are already a reality on our Planet
About my life on it, I’ve passed from a young engineer that talked about a distant and incomprehensible subject (it could look like a crook’s thing) to a professional with experience in this area of current and future climate changes, being asked to talk, write, discuss, inform and educate new professionals and decision makers about the subject.
More… particular things due to advances in solutions, as emissions compensations, neutralizations, and names as Carbon Free (created in the living room of my house), have become world terms that are associated to the most famous brands in the world, the main corporations and have turned into a new economy, the economy of payment of environmental services, the forest economy, not that about deforestation, but about the recovering and preservation of forests!
Well, so it’s alright, we advanced a lot, as human kind, if we think about that the formalization of environmentalism was marked with the book Silent Spring and the governmental structures as ministries and offices of environment are recent not only in Brazil, but in the world…
It’s alright if we are not talking about a goal, to hold the increase of average temperature in the globe in 2 C degrees in 2100, by the idea of a cooperative effort between the countries for that and if we didn’t know that we will reach the very 2 C degrees in 2050, just considering the inertial result of greenhouse effect gases already emitted.
It’s alright if into the sceneries of human behavior in the fight and decrease stipulated by the IPCC (International Panel of Climate Change, Peace Nobel with Al Gore in 2007) we didn’t find ourselves in the worst case scenario, which leads for an increase of temperature even greater or a necessity to extrapolate the solutions…
It’s alright if the geo-economy of the planet didn’t was suffering already meaningful changes, the Islands in the Pacific wasn’t submerging, if the occurrence of cataclysms with great probability to be caused by climate change wasn’t exponentially growing…
And it’s alright if the speed of decision of our governmental representatives didn’t obey anymore the political and diplomatic dynamic rather than the urgent necessity on the weight of the problem and its potential escalate for social exclusion…
Not that bad if the amazing capacity of awareness that the humanity had developed by the availability of information and speed of its medias could mean a coordinated action (or not?) that passes by the asking to elected, to the associations and local, regional and global actions.
Families mobilize and protest on the streets following manifestations all over the world against the global warming
In this year of 2009 we’re living a happy blooming of the action of the society about the subject, and that is a great difference.
We already had the Ecologic March, in São Paulo, we had the movement Global Climate Act, that begun at the World Social Forum and ends in a great event on December 12th, during the Climate Conference in Copenhagen, which the very march and others took part. We had the planet day.
Mobilizations spread out through the Internet and now this beautiful Global Action Day.
This great difference is the notion of that the change isn’t only in the economy, politics and diplomacy.
It’s, before everything else, a cultural change that we’re all involved and interested, because it results in a change in the way of life and perception of things that compose this very life, dreams and expectations.
And this time isn’t possible to pretend that we are not seeing and to wait for ready solutions.
We’ve to notice that if the world doesn’t fit us, we’re not fitting on this world.
We’ve to discuss the essential, to qualify again the luxury and to review the beauty.
We’ll get through, because our capacity to surprise is huge.
But it’s right there, with the willing to do, the necessity to express and the mobilization.
Let’s keep moving!
Francisco Maciel, chairman of the Iniciativa Verde ou Txai Brasil, musician and poet
Blog Action Day – October 15, 2009
Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day, October 15, 2009. Our aim is to raise awareness about the relevance of the subject in particular and and trigger a global participative discussion.
By doing so on the same day, in all the languages of the four corners of the world, the international blogging community bring their multiple audiences together to the same point, use their platforms, gather their voices and open a space for a discussion about the very future of our planet.
Out of this discussion naturally flow new ideas, advice, action plans, ways.
In 2007 on the theme of the Environment, bloggers disseminated environmental experiments, sustainable practices, and focused their audience’s attention on organizations and companies promoting green agendas.
In 2008 the theme of Poverty,was covered and gained global repercussion and similarly focused the blogging community’s energies around discussing the wide breadth of the issue from many perspectives and identifying innovative and unexpected solutions.
This year we aim to do the same for Climate Change, an issue that threatens us all. In December of 2009 the United Nations will sponsor a major summit on climate change in Copenhagen where world leaders will gather and try to reach an international agreement on avoiding the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
How can you help?
Blog Action Day is about mass participation. Anyone is free to join in on Blog Action Day and there is no limit on the number of posts, the type of posts or the direction of thoughts and opinions.
The goal of Blog Action Day 2009 is to be the greatest event of social change and awareness on the Web. On October 15, 2009, post the video on your blog, follow the official Twitter and read the official blog for information about the issue, more ideas about how you can participate. Get involved, get your readers involved, help us change the world, and save our planet!
And the winner is…
One of the most interesting digital initiatives on Obama’s government was the site data.gov. Basically, the federal government has taken a wide range of data that already existed inside the government and make them public. What before was followed only by administration employees suddenly was opened to the entire world, for anyone who wants to snoop in, in the hope that smart people go look into and go help to improve the government. Based on it, a non-governmental organization pro-transparency called Sunlight Foundation has made a very interesting contest called Apps for America. The idea is simple: to award the developers that made the best applications for Internet based on data from the data.gov
The award delivery was made in Washington at September 8th, during the Gov 2.0 Summit. We were there and we had the chance to interview the great winner, Joe Pringle who earned a prize of 10,000 dollars for the help to make the excellent DataMasher. The DataMasher allows you to take two series of data from data.gov to make relations. For example, you can find if there’s correlation between the number of fast-food stores per capita and the diabetes index in a state (answer: there is. The state with more diners, Louisiana, is also the second one with the great percentage of diabetic adults. And the disease lower indexes are all in the states from the American northeast and west where there are few fast-foods). Or it’s possible to compare expenses with education and school performance. Violent crime and poverty rate. Organic food availability and obesity rate. Campaign contributions and federal expenses. And so on. With DataMasher any citizen can become a researcher with new information about public administration.
In this interview, Joe talks about the Apps for America, discusses the future of the government and philosophizes about the viability of a direct democracy.
Denis Russo Burgierman
Brazil has to grow social programmers
Last week I’ve attended, in Washington, to the Gov 2.0 Summit, a first attempt to articulate the discussion about how to use the huge potential of Internet to strengthen the citizenship and democracy, by applications produced by the civil society to improve the world. During a break, I managed to get near to the organizer of the event, Tim O’Reilly, and I asked him how this idea, that decentralizes the production of Web tools placing the responsibility on the citizens’ hands, could be applied in a country like Brazil, in which the number of Web-entrepreneurs is low.
“Well, you must nourish this community.” In short: it’s our problem.
The answer has bothered me. I thought O’Reilly was washing his hands of the subject. I was thinking about it since then and I reach a tough conclusion: what have bothered me wasn’t the O’Reilly’s smile. Was the fact that he was right. It’s really our problem. Although this discussion about Gov 2.0 is new even in the United States, is clear the Brazil’s situation regarding to development to Web is still very insecure.
As we Brazilians are analyzing if Facebook is good or not, or criticizing the noise produced by Twitter, the Americans are building tools to change the shape that we relate around here. We always had an important role to quickly adopt tools as MSN, Orkut, Blogger. Is calculated there are nearly to 63 million of Brazilians in Internet, which surpass even the number of developed countries as France, Italy and United Kingdom. However, despite all these people online, we still aren’t able to produce not even one application in national relevance, even less international. It’s not about time to show our creativity, to left the place to be only spectators to participate in this conversation?
If it’s up to us, citizens, to produce tools to solve society problems, which part is up to the government? After the conference, I notice that the change of the Brazilian government into an innovation platform to Web has to come in an attempt to solve a triad of basic needs.
1) We need to decrease the time and cost of experimentation. Startups are experiments. As any other experiment, there’s a great chance to go wrong. Well, “if the failure is unavoidable, it has to be quick and cheap” Eric Ries, from the blog LessonsLearned, says. The success formula is to decrease risks and increase agility then we can wrong to learn more. To offer free hosting for applications towards to welfare would be a great help from the government into this direction. The Brazilian government has the chance to make Brazil the first country to offer a public cloud computing service, which would break one of the great locks in the Web programming in the country: the lack of quality servers. No doubt that would be a milestone in the country’s infrastructure. The equivalent of roads and bridges from the last century is this infrastructure of the XXI century. A real Web-construction work.
2) We need to have the raw material to work on. The main raw material for the next Web is data, as told by Tim Bernes Lee. Especially clean and fresh – but if there’s only raw, it’s already a nice nourishment. To avail public data is essential to view more clearly which are the problems and therefore which are the new solutions. Brazil needs a public transparency policy through the availability in real time of government data, as the United States are doing in the site data.gov.
Vivek Kundra, Federal U.S. CIO (Chief Information Officer): “The goal is to democratize data, turn it public available in a readiness form for machines. Today already are 110 thousand databases.”
3) We need people interested to produce citizens’ tools. If wasn’t enough the lack of entrepreneurs in the Brazilian Web, the situation gets worse by the disbelief in public causes. Some think the public sector is too rotten, others don’t believe that is possible to survive doing the good to society. Be whatever the disbelief cause, the government has to gain the interest of this new generation of innovators. We need incentives – be them discounts on taxes, prizes in money or simply opportunities to gain visibility so people can have as goal to help the society through Internet. What they’re doing in the United States is to award the best initiatives with prizes like the Apps for America and the Apps for Democracy. The North-Americans have as tradition to believe the awards can create a valor much greater than the amount distributed. But if you are like those that only believe in what you see (especially seeing numbers), the case of Apps for Democracy is an example. In just 30 days and offering a prize of only 50 thousand dollars, the challenge has created 47 applications, which the market total valor calculated is US$ 2.3 million. Invest 50 thousand to gain 2.3 million – isn’t that good business? The award is a way to stimulate the endeavoring and to recognize collaborations for the welfare (important intellectual achievements for our evolution). What about a Brazilian Prize of Online Public Innovation?
To have the government as a platform means to create an environment to exercise the Webcitzenship. Just in this way we’ll have the critic mass for the society to use the Internet to solve our problems. Only one initiative won’t change Brazil into a digital nation. Nevertheless is required to have commitment with idealization and performance of solutions. It’s required to begin.
Text and pictures by Helder Araujo. WebCitizen’s co-founder.
The first day
Phew. My head is spinning due to so much information. (It could be maybe because of the wine they gave me at the reception offered by Google at the late afternoon.)
It was a busy day here in Washington. It has started at 8 o’clock in the morning and just finish now, after midnight – I wrote it inside the subway, going to the house where I’m lodged. Was the first day of the Gov 2.0 Summit conference, this is an event to discuss ways to change the world through technology.
Today was the “Expo Showcase” – short presentations of innovative small projects from the entire world, 25 projects in total. A city, it has invited the population to discuss in a website, the municipal budget. A state, it has created virtual communication channels. Security agencies that are changing paper sheet reports for wikis. The environmental agency, it has developed a site in which is possible to find the ecological risks in your neighborhood. The transport company which uses twitter to be closer to its users. A lot of entrepreneurs are getting incomprehensible public data and turning it into outstanding sites. We finish the night having dinner with two of the winners of the projects – an attempt to use Second Life to decrease the distance between West and East.
Suddenly, at the end of the day, what looked like a bunch of isolated initiatives is turning in my mind into a huge movement. A movement that is just beginning – for more transparency, for more participation, for more openness, for a government that trusts in the population and avails data for each person to decide what is best for them.
It was a busy day, as I said – and it was only the first of three. But was enough to notice that we’ll back from Washington different than we were when we first arrived here. And I’m looking forward to see this wave of changing bursts on Brazilian shores.
Denis Russo Burgierman
Palestrantes do Gov 2.0 Summit
See here the full list of event lecturers. And follow everything that is talked in real time through twitter @webcitizen_
Susie Adams Federal Civilian Chief Technology Officer: Microsoft Corporation
Carlos Castillo Co-Founder: Warfighter Technologies
Vinton Cerf Co-Inventor of TCP/IP: Google
Aneesh Chopra CTO: Federal Office of Science and Technology Policy
John Clippinger Co-Director, Law Lab: Berkman Center Harvard University
Alan Cohn Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy (Strategic Plans): U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Casey Coleman Chief Information Officer: U.S. General Services Administration
Michael Coppola Winner: United States Cyber Challenge, SANS Netwars
Peter Corbett CEO: iStrategyLabs
John Culberson U.S. Congressman: 7th District of Texas
Jack Dangermond Founder and President: ESRI
Russ Daniels Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, EDS: Hewlett-Packard Company
Chris DiBona Open Source Programs Manager: Google, Inc.
Jack Dorsey Creator, Chairman and co-founder: Twitter
Mark Drapeau Associate Research Fellow: National Defense University
Carol Dumaine Deputy Director of Energy and Environmental Security : Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy
James Fallows National Correspondent: The Atlantic
Elliott Fisher Director, Population Health and Policy: The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice
Alex Fishman Lead Engineer, Regulation and Oversight: Palantir Technologies
Price Floyd Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs: Department of Defense
Julius Genachowski Chairman: Federal Communications Commission
Bev Godwin Director, USA.gov and Web Best Practices, Office of Citizen Services: U.S. General Services Administration
Robert Greenberg CEO: G&H International Services, Inc
Monica Guzman Newsgatherer: SeattlePI.com
Dean Halstead Collaboration Architect: Microsoft
Carleen Hawn Co-founder & CEO: Healthspottr
Scott Heiferman CEO: Meetup
Susan Heystee Vice President, General Manager: Global Strategic Alliances, Novell
James Heywood Co-Founder, Chairman : PatientsLikeMe
Chris Hoenig President and CEO: The State of the USA, Inc.
Allan Holmes Executive Editor: nextgov.com
Adrian Holovaty Founder: EveryBlock
Lloyd Howell Senior Vice President: Booz Allen Hamilton
Eugene Huang Government Operations Director: National Broadband Task Force – Federal Communications Commission
Steven Berlin Johnson Executive Chairman: Outside.in
Clay Johnson Director: Sunlight Labs
Brad Jupp Senior Program Advisor: Office of Secretary of Education
Nickolas Justice Program Executive Officer, Command, Control and Communications-Tactical: US Army
Mitchell Kapor Founder & Chair: Mitchell Kapor Foundation
Bryan Kirschner Vice President for Corporate Strategies: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner
Vivek Kundra U.S. Chief Information Officer: Office of Management and Budget
Paul Lin Co-Founder: Warfighter Technologies
Carl Malamud President & CEO: Public.Resource.Org, Inc.
John Markoff reporter: New York Times
Mikel Maron Human: OpenStreetMap
Bruce McConnell Counselor to the Deputy Under Secretary for NPPD: U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Michael McDonald President: Global Health Initiatives, Inc.
Grant McLaughlin Principal with Organization Change Team: Booz Allen Hamilton
Ellen Miller Co-Founder and Executive Director: Sunlight Foundation
Craig Mundie Chief Research and Strategy Officer: Microsoft Corporation
Kojo Nnamdi Host : “The Kojo Nnamdi Show” & “Evening Exchange”
Beth Noveck Deputy Chief Technology Officer: Executive Office of the President/OSTP
Richard O’Neill Founder & President: The Highlands Group
Tim O’Reilly Founder and CEO: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Alan Paller Director of Research: SANS Institute
Alex “Sandy” Pentland Toshiba Professor of Media, Arts, and Sciences: MIT and Sense Networks
Macon Phillips Director of New Media: The White House
John Podesta President and CEO: Center for American Progress
Eric Rasmussen CEO & Managing Director: InSTEDD
Eric Ries Venture Advisor: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Hal Roberts Fellow: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
Ola Rosling Co-founder of Gapminder Foundation & Product Manager: Google, Inc.
Mary Ruddy Founder: Meristic, Inc.
Laurel Ruma Editor: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Shyam Sankar Director: Palantir Technologies
Andrea Seabrook Congressional Correspondent: NPR
Clay Shirky Writer and Consultant : shirky.com
Walton Smith Senior Associate: Booz Allen Hamilton
Jeffrey A. Sorenson Chief Information Officer/G-6 : U.S. Army
Tim Sparapani Director of Public Policy: Facebook
Judith Spencer Chair, Federal Public Key Infrastructure Steering Committee: General Services Administration
Tom Steinberg Director: mySociety
James Stogdill CTO: Gestalt, now part of Accenture
Michael Tiemann President: Open Source Initiative
Lena Trudeau Vice President: National Academy of Public Administration
Andrew Turner CTO: FortiusOne
Hal Varian Chief Economist: Google
Werner Vogels Chief Technology Officer: Amazon.com
Dave Warner Director of Medical Intelligence: MindTel
Linton Wells, II Force Transformation Chair: National Defense University
David Wennergren Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Information Management and Technology & DoD Deputy Chief Information Officer : Department of Defense
Kevin Werbach Professor of Legal Studies at The Wharton School: University of Pennsylvania
Michele Weslander Quaid Chief Technology Officer, Senior Advisor, Outreach: US Government
Rick Wesson CEO: Support Intelligence
Follow the Gov 2.0 Summit by blog WebCitizen
From September 8th to 10th the WebCitizen will be at Washington D.C. to follow one of the most important conferences about eGov in the world: the Gov 2.0 Summit. The event will get together influent professionals from the public and technological sector – sharing their opinions about the future of governments and discussing how the Internet participation, collaboration and transparency can help nations to evolve. Tim O’Reilly, Adriel Hampton, Hal Varian, Peter Corbett and many other lecturers confirmed already. Know more about the event through the site: http://www.gov2summit.com
You will be able to follow the Gov 2.0 Summit through our blog or following @webcitizen_. Let’s share our experience in real time, through information, videos and ideas.
They want to change the world. As we do.
