Jonas Lamis

Today begins Piryxtopia! 5 days of Politics, Technology and Pop Culture Goodness. For those of you without a SXSWi badge, we offer a great opportunity to catch the first panel of the season.

Today at 4:30 pm CT, RealPolitix.com presents the Government 2.0 Panel — Technology for Tomorrow. This panel is an opportunity for State Legislators, staff and the general public to learn how State and local governments can use technology to better serve and communicate with their constituencies. Hear from government, business and technology leaders as they discuss advances in technology, the challenges governments face in adopting new technology, and how technology can positively impact the government’s ability to serve the public today and in the future.

Featuring Panelists: Gregg Burt (President and CEO, Hart InterCivic) Brewster McCracken (Austin Mayor Pro Tem), Tom Serres (CEO, Piryx), Rep. Mark Strama (Chair, Technology, Economic Development & Workforce), Rep. Tan Parker (Vice Chair, Technology, Economic Development & Workforce), Michael Quinn Sullivan (CEO, Empower Texans), and moderated by Elise Hu (Political Reporter, KVUE Austin)

Details: March 12, 2009 4:30pm – 5:30pm @ Texas Capitol Extension. More information is available at http://www.piryx.com/piryxtopia/

For those unable to make it downtown this afternoon, Live Streaming is available through UStream.TV. Tune in at 4:30 CT this afternoon for the feed right here:

Join Piryx and nGenera this afternoon for the Government 2.0 Executive Roundtable with Don Tapscott.  Tapscott – the author of the acclaimed book Wikinomics – will lead a roundtable of Austin and State of Texas government leaders and local business executives as they discuss the future of technology enabled government.

The live stream will be broadcast from 3:30pm – 4:30pm CT on Wednesday, March 11th.

Free video chat by Ustream

This event is part of Piryxtopia:  5 Days or Politics, Technology and Pop Culture Goodness.

Its a brand new bright Obama Day! A star-studded cast turns out for Marc Shaiman’s “Prop 8 – The Musical.” From FunnyOrDie.com.

Now that the presidential election is concluded and the transition is beginning, talk has turned to how Barack Obama will change the face of the technology usage by the government, and by association, the USA.  President Elect Obama has gone on record stating that he intends to create a new position in his administration, that of a Chief Technology Officer.

The New York Times today mentioned Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun as a possible candidate, while The Industry Standard promoted Google CEO Eric Schmidt.  Other sites mention Balmer and Bezos among other candidates.

The President-elect’s agenda is ambitious:

OPEN GOVERNMENT

He wants Cabinet officials, government executives and rulemaking agencies to hold meeting that are open to the public and transmitted with a live feed.

BROADBAND ACCESS

He calls more aggressive government support of broadband access.

OPEN WIRELESS SPECTRUM

Obama’s plan also calls for reviewing the decision by the Federal Communications Commission to open the wireless spectrum for competition.

NETWORK NEUTRALITY

Obama also is supporting network neutrality, a policy that would ensure Google wouldn’t be forced to pay an Internet service provider extra to ensure the speedy transfer of its data over the Internet.

PRIVACY

On privacy, Obama will call for the creation of what he calls “Public Media 2.0.  Details are still to be revealed for this initiative.

As technologists, you have might have broad exposure to the most pressing technology issues facing your company, and our country by association.  I’ve got 2 questions for you:

1)  Who do you think would make a good CTO for the USA?

2)  What would advice would you give President Obama on technology policy?

Over the next few weeks, if you find yourself behind the wheel of a Nakamura Ikusa GT, cruising around town in the hot video game Burnout:Paradise, you might just want to pull over and gaze at the billboard overhead to catch a vision of the future of politics.  Just off the southern expressway, you* may spy an in game advertisement – a virtual billboard ad of Barack Obama staring down at you, asking you to vote early (but not often we would presume).

Team Obama’s march on cyberspace is not limited to Drifters (Cindy McCain’s Drifting team excluded), Obama in-game advertisements can  be found for a limited time in a wide range of EA games including Madden 09, NASCAR 09, NBA Live 08, Need for Speed Carbon, Need for Speed Pro Street, NFL on Tour, NHL 09, and Skate.

The McCain campaign, in an attempt to not be out interneted, released their own own online gaming offering:  Sarah Palin: Guardian of the Northern Frontier. Enjoy shootin’ those ICBMs!

* you = you are playing this video game on the Xbox live platform and are connected to a network POP in one of the swing states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

According to the analysts at FiveThirtyEight.com, Barack Obama has built an enormous 90.5% vs. 9.5% probability of winning the election. While Yogi Berra is credited with popularizing the adage “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings”, in this case she’s already warmed up – and we have the baseball statisticians to thank.

FiveThirtyEight is the brainchild of Nate Silver, a Chicago sports fanatic and University of Chicago economist who runs a company called Baseball Prospectus. He is best known for creating a baseball team and player forecasting system called PECOTA. According to Newsweek, PECOTA is now recognized as the most accurate system for forecasting how athletes and teams will perform in the future.

For the election, PECOTA modeling strategies have been applied to national polling data, and the accumulated depth of analysis is mind blowing. FiveThirtyEight runs 10,000 simulations of polling data each time they update their site in order to provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral outcomes based on a historical analysis a broad set of significant factors. They have tracked the shifting polls since January, and have documented the underlying math to make a very compelling argument that this contest is over.

There is an old adage in the world of business purchasing:  Wait until the end of the quarter to negotiate a purchasing contract.  Companies that haven’t met their revenue goals tend to get “creative” at the end of the financial quarter, trying to land revenue by hook or by crook. Apparently, the same concept is at play in presidential fund raising.  In a “can you top that” world where campaigns claim bragging rights for their monthly donation cache, it makes sense to drive up the take (and the small donor count) by offering an item of value.  I donated $100 to the Obama campaign a couple of weeks ago so I could write about the social experience of my.barackobama.com.  Now they want another $30 in exchange for a t-shirt…

Jonas – Midnight Tuesday, September 30th, is the financial reporting deadline for this month. The resources we have on hand going into October will determine our ability to compete in key battleground states. Your donation today will help fund time-sensitive voter registration and Get Out The Vote operations — which need resources immediately to be effective. Will you make a donation of $30 or more before Tuesday’s deadline? You’ll receive a limited edition Election Day T-shirt. Your shirt will arrive no later than Friday, October 17th, so you’ll have plenty of time to show off your support and remind your friends and neighbors to vote for Barack.

Or you can choose to donate $15 or more and receive an Election Day car magnet. Your support has never been more important than it is right now. You’ll help build the biggest voter mobilization movement in presidential history. Thank you for your support, Obama for America

When the final votes are counted, chads inspected, and lawsuits settled, we may look back on the campaign of 2008 and find that, if he is elected, the secret to Obama’s success was a couple of geeks who have headquartered their tech company – Blue State Digital – in the most unlikely of places: Inside The Beltway.

BSD was founded in 2004 by refugees from the ill-fated Howard Dean presidential bid.  Over the last 4 years, they have been busy building online community and fundraising tools, and have found a customer base craving this expertise – from campaigns to causes to corporations.  In fact, founding partner Joe Rospars is currently leading Obama’s digital strategy.  According to a recent BusinessWeek article BSD could play a strategic advisory role in an Obama administration.

Obama’s online fundraising capability has been the stuff of legend.  BSD claims to have to have raised $300 million from over 1 million donors for Obama.  Their case study is being written in real time here.

I’ve decided to invest a little cash into the Obama online juggernaut so that I can get the full Blue State experience.  This morning, I plunked down $100 on the AMEX at barackobama.com and set the machine in motion.

Of course there was the “Thanks for donating” email in my inbox the minute I clicked the pay button.  But more impressive was the web page note I got from Susan L. of Florida, who apparently “matched” my donation.  I was given the opportunity to drop her a note about why I donated as well as to exchange email addresses (too creepy for me).

From there, it was off to my very own home within the Obama community: my.barackobama.com.  I’m immediately struck by the elegant design.  Clean, modern, soothingly san serif through and through.  The site appears to revolve around “Making A Difference”.  Like Whuffie Points from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, the site rewards obamakins (obamites? obamanators?) with a reputation based score.  (In my case “1 point” thanks for the donation).

But my reputation can rise!  I can sign up to make calls to influence undecided voters in a neighboring state.  Or I can write a letter to the editor of a Michigan newspaper.  I decided to explore making calls for my buddy Barack.  I’m whisked away to the virtual obama call center.  25 names of undecided New Mexicans have been allocated to my call queue.  Each call I make will gain me prestige in the community, all I have to do is push to talk! (At this point, the author gingerly pushes logout – not wanting to actually do anything to influence the election one way or another).

Sure enough, 10 minutes later I get an email from the New Mexico campaign manager.  He thanks me for making the effort but reminds me that those 25 names have been allocated to me – no one else will get to call them :-(

Gosh, I’m starting to feel bad about dumping out of the program.  And getting all those whuffie points sure would be nice…  I wonder how many I need to collect to redeem them for a night in the Lincoln Bedroom?