Chad Gesser

Today a small group of folks pulled together our existing resources and took on the innovative task of tweeting and blogging a local civic engagement event.  Using our laptops and cellphones, we live tweeted/blogged a local civic engagement event sponsored by AmericaSpeaks and the Public Life Foundation of Owensboro . The event brought together nearly 300 locals to discuss local issues centered around Education and the Economy. (A participant guide from the event can be found here .)  This was the second We the People event held in my hometown of Owensboro, KY, the first one being in 2007. Our local group consisted of four folks (me, Steve Metzger, Jessie Schartung, and Michelle Montalvo).  I set up an event of Cover it Live at the Owensboro Blog .  The interface was free, very easy to use.  After talking with Mary Lauran Hall with AmericaSpeaks the day before, we set everything up and organized ourselves to pull this off late in the afternoon the day before the event.  This

Updated: See this link for a sociological look at the event, the process our team to took, and considerations for qualitative research.   Found here --------- First off a huge thanks goes to Mary Lauran Hall with the AmericaSpeaks project, Steve Metzger, Jessie Schartung, Michelle Montalvo, the Public Life Foundation and the local We the People project. The archived coverage of the We the People event Oct. 23rd event is below. Click "replay" to thumb through all the work we did for the day. An initial draft of the days events has been released, and can be accessed  here and here . Concluding thoughts by our local team can be found here . <p><p><p><a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=1988da510e" &am

Purpose of Groups I'd recommend using groups for a close network of friends, family, or for a trusted network of colleagues or those with similar interests.  There needs to be a dimension of trust and dependability of members to get use out of this function. When Group participation starts to become active it does become apparent that information needs to be better aggregated for easier access.  There still is not much structure for aggregating information via the Group.  This however can be achieved by using outside services such as Google Apps and then linking that content back into the Group. Currently you can add Posts, Links, Photos, Videos, Events, and Docs to Group members.  You can also conduct Group chat. Privacy Multiple administrators can be added to a Group.  The administrator(s) can decide to make the Group one of the following: Open: members and content is public Closed: members public and content is private Secret: members and content are private