“Government should be born open, not born secret.”

Ellen Miller, Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, discusses the potential for political transparency under an Obama Administration and the responsibility of government to implement new technologies to communicate with a very hopeful America.

The old dinosaur bureaucrats and their “traditional” practices and processes are on the way out.

Engaging Americans in the political process using the most up-to-date tech channels (the technologies and devices people are actually using) is not only sensible, but critical to achieving the level of transparency that will satisfy a country that has been so cynical for so long.

Can the new Administration deliver?

Show, don’t tell. Let’s see innovation at work.

From idea to impact.

THE GIFT AND THE PURSE

Head of the Deshpande Center at MIT, Dr. Charles Cooney: Faculty Facilitating Innovation

Faculty Director of the Deshpande Center, Dr. Cooney reveals the power of connecting research teams to the private sector.

• MIT innovations add more than $20 billion and 150,000 jobs to the US economy each year
• DC has funded more than 70 projects with over $8 M in grants

Professor Charles L. Cooney, a professor of chemical and biochemical engineering, is the faculty director of MIT’s new Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation an organization that facilitates collaboration between research teams and an advisor from their local entrepreneurial community.

Of the 75 projects funded through the Deshpande Center, there have been 17 new companies created with $450 million dollars in venture capital.

An initial philanthropic gift of 15 million dollars has been transformed into an influential institution and 4 very successful companies with the potential to change the world.

Website: http://web.mit.edu/deshpandecenter/

Obama Transition Team Talks Technology, Innovation

President Obama’s transition team discusses 21st century solutions to 21st problems– everything from technological innovation to Internet regulation.

Here is an outline of the plan.

The Revolution Won’t Be Televised: Obama Web Innovation

President Obama’s inauguration was the culmination of campaign rich with technological innovation and new ideas on how to connect, collaborate and market.

An “Obama” youtube search produces about 310,000 videos and the number grows by the minute. Most videos have view counts into the thousands, many into the millions.

His website has amassed over 5-million names, email addresses,… phone numbers, home addresses,… age and occupation demographics, and political ids.

They know you. And perhaps more importantly, they know what you want to hear.

It’s a sophisticated marketing strategy that establishes a fresh, interactive model of networking and viewership; a model that has provoked the media at large to keep up and one-up.

Strictly in terms of television viewership, the Obama inauguration was the 4th most-watched inauguration, garnering a ho-hum 29.2 household Neilsen rating. But for the first-time in American history, wall-to-wall broadcast and cable television coverage of the event was, for the moment, a sidebar, a commercial for what was happening on the web.

Shortly after the address, CNN.com announced nearly 21.3 million live streams.

MSNBC.com and Foxnews.com? 9 million and 5 million streaming broadcasts, respectively.

Facebook, who partnered up with CNN, got the conversation going and kept it going. They allowed you to comment on the event live using your status updating tool– about 600,000 of you did. And that doesn’t account for the untold number of chat messages, wall posts, and, of course, bumper stickers exchanged during the webcast.

He got you to connect, talk, and collaborate, and you didn’t even have to leave your house.

His approach sets a most innovative and tech savvy precedent, making his campaign historical in more ways than one.

It’s often said that a brilliant idea that no one talks about is equivalent to a bad idea. What can you as an innovator take from President Obama’s communication strategy?