An Exciting Weekend for Transparency’s Posse

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This weekend, Sunlight and iStrategyLabs are holding TransparencyCamp, an un-conference dedicated to sharing knowledge on how to use new technologies to open up our government and catalyze greater transparency to create more accountability. We’re convening a trans-partisan tribe of open government advocates from all walks –government representatives, technologists, developers, NGOs, wonks and activists.

With the new administration pledging to uphold standards to improve government transparency, we thought the timing was perfect to build the community, and bring technologists and advocates together to build the transparency movement.

TransparencyCamp follows the BarCamp model, which uses a decentralized approach that emphasizes open, participatory workshop-events. Attendees will create the agenda each day of the event. (You can see where they’ve been sharing ideas in advance of this weekend on the event’s wiki.)

We expect about 300 people, including: Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, open source maven Brian Behlendorf, Commissioner Walther of the Federal Election Commission, Sheila Campbell who leads the USA.gov team, citizen journalist guru Dan Gillmor, John Udell and several congressional staff members, and more.

We wish we could squeeze in everyone interested in attending, but the event sold out before we even had a chance to blog about it. However, if you can’t make it, do check out the TransparencyCamp Web site where we will aggregate user-generated content about the event. We’ll also post there a video about the event in the coming weeks. We’re also encouraging everyone tweeting, posting, flickring about the event to tag their content #tcamp09 — so use that tag to follow along.

Thanks to Julie Germany and her team at IPDI, who are generously hosting the event at George Washington University, and thanks to all of our wonderful sponsors, without whom TransparencyCamp could not happen.