If you're a developer-type person, and you are involved in some way in making a difference in the way people interact w/Congress, then you may want to check this out...

Recent updates to the Sunlight API data.

Our comrades-in-arms on the Euro side of the Atlantic have their own transparency advocates and meetups. Here's an interesting one, called Berlin In August.

If you are a digg user, please consider helping us get the word out about our latest tool:

http://digg.com/politics/Citizens_Here_is_your_chance_to_investigate_Congress_Find_The_Pork

Our social app to identify and clean up the data around government earmarks - EarmarkWatch is live. Props to Kerry and James for all the hard work they did in getting it ready.

One of our focuses here at Sunlight Labs is to demonstrate how open data enables citizens to be engaged and informed on how Congress works. We do this by creating mashups that make information from a variety of sources easy to manipulate and understand. I recently gave a talk at a CARR Boot Camp on using the web to work with data. While not directly related to Congressional transparency, the following example from the talk is a good demonstration of how an end user can work with open data without the assistance of software developers.

Refresh is a community of web designers, developers, and other new media professionals working together to refresh the creative, technical, and professional aspects of their trades in greater Washington, DC.

I'm John Brothers, and I'm the new CTO of the lab.

Do you want congressional committee schedule information in a standard syndication format? We sure would and this is what we propose.