Mark Drapeau

Dr. Mark Drapeau is Co-Chair of the Gov 2.0 Expo. He is currently Director of Innovative Social Engagement for Microsoft's U.S. Public Sector division in Washington, D.C. He is also an adjunct professor at the School of Media and Public Affairs of The George Washington University, and until recently a research fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy in Washington, DC. Mark is also a contributing writer for Federal Computer Week, where he writes about emerging media technologies and how they are changing government and the balance of power in society. Mark is also a co-founder of Government 2.0 Club, an international platform for sharing knowledge about the intersection between technology and governance. And, in the spirit of openness and transparency, he is an avid mindcaster on Twitter

What does Government 2.0 look like?

Mark Drapeau offers a visual breakdown of the Gov 2.0 components.

The most important thing I learned in grad school was very simple: "Draw the picture." (Thanks Tony.) By that my advisor meant that it's often hard or impossible to describe a complex system in words alone. And consequently, if you can't draw a picture of what you're trying to explain, you probably don't understand it. Drawing pictures of complex systems…

The three phases of Government 2.0

How surprise, experimentation and solutions have defined Gov 2.0.

As the program co-chair for the upcoming Gov 2.0 Expo, I’ve had a lot of time to learn about what’s happening at the edges of the space. And through my experience working on the topic with the Department of Defense, and now through a different lens at Microsoft’s public sector division, I’ve had a lot of time to think about where it’s been, and where it is now. I’ve seen three phases in what most people would agree is “Government 2.0” — a phase of surprise, a phase of experimentation, and a phase of solutions.

What Company Will Be the eHarmony of Microblogging?

A New York Times article by David Carr rehashing common knowledge on "why Twitter will endure" got me thinking about the ways in which it will not endure, or the ways in which it may endure via which no one will really care about it. So, what does it mean to "endure"? To stay in business? So what – Lord and Taylor is still in business, but there are so many better stores if you ask me. RC Cola has endured. We always think of Coke and Pepsi when we think of soft drinks, and maybe now we even think of carbonated things like Perrier or some sports drinks. But, still, RC Cola endures. Classmates.com is still enduring – but when was the last time anyone cared? So what does it mean to say that Twitter will endure?

What Would Always-On-The-Record Government Look Like?

Recently, I wrote a post about Government 2.0 predictions for 2010-12, and one of them was that government would "always be on-the-record." By that I meant that the combination of (1) the proliferation of tech-savvy citizens with mobile camera/video devices, (2) the prevalence of wi-fi or other Web connections, (3) the massive number of people using social networks like MySpace,…

Government 2.0: Five Predictions for 2010-12

Under no pressure from anyone, I’ve forced this obligatory “end of year predictions” post upon myself. People always ask me where I think Government 2.0 is going anyway, I may as well get some writing mileage out of it, right? So, here are some non-exhaustive, somewhat creative, and entirely debatable trends and ideas that I foresee taking shape in the next three years or so:

  • Local governments as experiments
  • The rise of Citizen 2.0
  • Mobile devices as primary devices
  • Ubiquitous crude video content
  • Always on-the-record

Watching the Retweeted Get Retweeted-er: Power User Secret Retweetist Love

When Twitter decided to slowly roll out a new, official retweeting feature, people waited in anticipation. When it actually became available, people almost universally disliked it. But my post is about why I love the new Twitter retweet feature, without ever having to think about it. The reason is that official retweeting represents the new-new arms race for authority among power users.

What Does Innovative Social Engagement Look Like For Businesses and Governments?

I’ve been thinking about the topic of Government 2.0 a lot lately. Part of this topic deals with the multi-directional engagement between government and citizens. It seems to me that everyone can celebrate the fact that government entities merely have a YouTube channel here, a Twitter account there, or a Blogger profile some other place (the so-called “TGIF revolution”), or we can think a little harder about what the goals of citizen engagement really might be, and how to go about achieving them.

Quarantined Conferences: Claustrophobic Technophiles or Attentive Audiences?

Loren Feldman. 1938 Media. Audience Conference. That’s about as much of a summary as you’ll find about the Audience Conference held in New York last Friday. That’s because there were no open laptops allowed during the performances. There was also no Wi-Fi, no video streaming, no tweeting, and no blogging. I disagree with the notion that everything needs to be live streamed, live blogged, and live tweeted merely because we can.

The Emerging Twitter List Arms Race

I use Twitter a lot, but I was not among the very first to see the new Lists feature. I can now, though. And what I find much more interesting than actually using the feature myself is the fact that I woke up this morning to find that I was on dozens of other people's lists. (In fact, while I was writing this, I turned up on four more!)

Even though the irony is that Twitter introduced lists about a year after I stopped wanting such a feature, I do think there is some value in having other people put me on their lists. Braggadocio. Forget about counting your number of followers, or how many retweets you get, those metrics have been blown out for a long time now. The new high fidelity for my vanity is the Twitter list.

Why Posterous Is a Smart Tool For Informal Government Blogging

For a few weeks, I’ve been testing a tool called Posterous, and I’ve come to like it a lot. You can post blogs simply by emailing post@posterous.com or a similar address – you don’t even need an “account” or a “login” or a “password.” Even in the private sector, this is considered a cool feature. But for government employees, it could be a breath of life in an otherwise locked-down state of cybersecurity affairs.