New Bi-Partisan Commission on U.S. Policy Toward Russia

I'm happy to learn that Senator Hart will be co-chairing a new commission, announced this week, on U.S. policy toward Russia, along with Senator Hagel. The commission will produce a report for the next U.S. presidential administration. I look forward to reading it.

Reports of Terrorists Recruiting Online

American news may be focused primarily on the election and the Olympics these days, but it's important to realize that terrorists are still out there, and there are growing reports that they are heavily recruiting, including online via web sites and video tools like YouTube.

I'm not trying to scare people here - just remind that this is just a real threat. The fact that 9/11 was seven years ago doesn't mean we're safer since there hasn't been an attack; it means we're more likely to have another one soon since these organizations take their time planning.

Soft Launching FutureCampaigns Blog

Yeah, I'm a glutton for punishment. I'm launching another blog. Actually, it's already up. I started it last week on my futurecampaigns.com site, where I've been hosting information about the work I do as an adviser to nonprofits, political organizations, and as a writer/editor about related topics.

One might wonder why on Earth I'd put myself in line to work on what I believe is probably a seventh semi-regular blog, not to mention the places where I'm a guest contributing editor. Sigh. Well, it goes like this: I'm really passionate about technology and its impact on the world. That translates to its use in government and politics as well as the policies about technology. And I've been studying this stuff since I was in high school (to the point that I created my own major: "Technology & Society" in college), so clearly the interest isn't going away. But somehow I haven't been focusing on writing about just that in any one place until recently. It was an accident, actually.

Originally, I planned this blog to stick closer to those topics, but then I realized it was really a place to cover everything I'm interested in, and I played around with it a lot. Eventually I settled on more techie, political and cultural topics for this blog, and that took me away from everything I wanted to say about tech and the world. I'd covered related topics here on this blog (some posts which I republished at the FutureCampaigns blog), I had alluded to my experiences in tech and politics on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, particularly in light of our interactions with Elizabeth Edwards, but I was saving all of my ideas for a big project (in the works for a while now). Finally I realized I own all of what I write in the places I've been writing and it's all stuff I want to get out to people, so why save it when the whole purpose behind what I wanted to do was to get it out there?

So with PDF '08 on the horizon and a renewed energy for focusing on the topic that probably has a lot to do with how proud I am of what the Obama campaign has been doing (i.e. everything right in terms of tech!), here I am with a new blog. I look forward to friends and colleagues visiting it. The other thing I've done with the blog that most other blogs in the space haven't is create an extensive blogroll full of related resources. It's still a work in progress - I have a lot more to add - but due to time constraints, I went ahead and put it up as I build that part.

As to the content - I plan for it to be a mix of stuff that appeals to techies and politicos/activists. Some of it will be written at a more basic level because I want nonprofit directors, for example, to get a better picture of why certain technologies can help them, and the only way to do that is to explain it in general terms that aren't too overly technical - for the most part. Most nonprofits and most political campaigns are still in the dark ages when it comes to tech, so I want to help educate them. Meanwhile, I also plan to tackle some of the geek meat, i.e. the cool gadgets and what they do. Like MAPLight.org - it's an awesome mashup and they have a bunch of apps coming out for different states soon. Not everyone in the world knows what a 'mashup' or an 'app' is, and that's OK, but I plan to blend the content as much as possible. The reality is that the blog will take on its own flavor after a while, but this is where I'm starting.

I'm really looking forward to meeting more people working in this area next week in New York because I hope to write about every single one of them and their projects on the FutureCampaigns blog. It's so important that we all work together, and I find it absolutely fascinating the achievements that have been made in technology, government, politics and policy over the past few years alone.

Security Hole Left Critical Infrastructure Vulnerable for Months

THIS is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night...

That, and of course the general ineptitude of our government in terms of adequately dealing with the environmental crisis. Sigh.

The Internet is Helping Us in Natural Disasters, But Not Enough

I just published a new post on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog about what's now being called the "Summit Fire" in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Watsonville. As a kid who grew-up in tornado country, I was completely clueless about wildfires until yesterday. Now I've been studying everything available online to track the blaze because it's just a few miles from my sister's dream home, her animals, and one of the most beautiful pieces of property I've ever seen in my life. I don't know if I'm at liberty to describe it, but even if I did, still, it's one of those places where you have to see it to believe it.

In any case, what I learned over the past 24 hours is that although we have 2700 firefighters on the scene to battle these fires, we only get semi-accurate updates about once a day about where the fires really are. People are in their homes waiting for calls or knocks on the door to evacuate. The neighbors who may or may not have phones or power communicate to the best of their ability, but they're still not certain how far away it is. They see the smoke or possibly the flames, but it's difficult to discern the distance. I found one live blog site where there was some minimal conversation via locals about what was going on to help sift through the mystery, but that was it.

So what I want to know is where do we go from here? What is the future of emergency response online? It has to be better than a few news sites and links. I'm not saying what we have now isn't good. I'm happy we have the resources we do. But I know from my technology background that we can do better. We've put together phenomenal outreach programs and online activism to raise money and repair devastated areas. Why not create a place where communities can create ad-hoc emergency response sites as they arise? It's possible something like this already exists, but not enough of us know about it.

What I found was one site for firefighters that said how to listen on short range scanners, some articles on the local newspaper site, a few maps that are only updated daily, the state fire site with data updated periodically (like every day or half a day), one satellite image of the fire, brief TV and radio coverage, a state road closures page, one live blog on the local news station web site where people exchanged notes, and a totally overloaded fire detection map at noaa.gov that nobody can use because everybody's trying to get to it. And when watching the news and hearing from locals, it seems that the firefighters and police are keeping things barricaded for safety and not allowing any information transferral during the process.

Fires are dangerous, but if people can use personal weather stations and webcams like linked on the Weather Underground, why not have a system that applies locals as information centers online and includes what's coming across the waves from emergency support services? Anyone out there have an idea of how to do this?

Joi Full ICANN

Joi Ito has written an interesting post about his time on the ICANN board and his views on the process.

"With all of it's tumultuous history and bumps and warts, ICANN, in my opinion, is the best way that we can manage names and numbers on the Internet and any new thing to try to do what it does would be less fair and probably wouldn't work."

Ito is known for doing great work for OSI and as a VC. He has served on boards of the Mozilla Foundation, Technorati, Socialtext, Creative Commons (current chairman), and Six Apart Japan. (See his Wikipedia entry if you want to be impressed.)

Hillary Hopes to Breathe Life Back into Work-Life Balance

I used to think creating work-life balance was a matter of just taking control over your own life. And to a certain extent, it is. But there are factors in our society as Americans that have really gotten out-of-control. In other countries, new mothers have an opportunity to take real time off to spend with their new babies. New fathers can spend a little time at home too. And without fear of losing their jobs or taking pay cuts for doing it. Here, that's hardly ever the case. After I became a parent, I realized work-life balance is actually very hard to come by here, especially in California where so many families need to have both parents working in order to just pay the mortgage.

Hillary Clinton, in a week of initiatives focused entirely on women, released a proposal to provide greater family leave options. The press release listed key components of the plan as creating a new State Family Leave Innovation Fund that will "expand paid leave across the country". She also proposes extending FMLA to 13 Million more Americans and requiring sick leave of at least 7 days a year. (How does this work with lame PTO programs that lump vacation and sick days all into one, I wonder?) She's promoting model workplaces and a federal telecommuting initiative (woo-hoo!), she has an affordable childcare component (no details here), and she's working to prevent discrimination, particularly in the case of pregnant women.

This week, Hillary Clinton has also spoken on a number of women's issues and for women's organizations. This is a key component of her campaign, of course, since she's the first viable woman candidate for president, but I personally believe it is much more than that. Having read a great deal about her now and having talked with and read stories about people who have known her well, it is clear to me that she has a deeply rooted commitment to women and families. This is a big part of why I support her candidacy.

It's not just about Hillary Clinton being pro-choice, a woman, a mother, or particularly vocal on key issues generally identifiable as women's issues like healthcare. Reading accounts from former staffers, she walks her talk. When she was First Lady, she allowed some of the people who worked for her to take long leaves for medical, pregnancy, post partum and childcare purposes, work flexible hours and in one rare case, bring a child to work.

If someone had told me all of that before I became a mother, perhaps I would have thought it was a weak policy or unprofessional. But now I realize how hard it really is to balance work and family in a way that is both satisfactory in allowing children to be properly nurtured and cared for while allowing parents to develop meaningful careers. Work-life balance is not some pie-in-the-sky idea that can only happen for the uber-wealthy or those who make major sacrifices. Look at Europe - it is possible. Hillary's plan is just a first, much needed major step.

I am lucky to be able to attend a lunch this Monday in California that will be hosted by former California State Senator Jackie Speier, a woman who has been a long-time champion of women and families. I won't go into too much detail here because I've blogged about this before, but Jackie Speier herself is admirable in many respects through all she's been through personally. I worked for her briefly before I had to go on bed rest in my pregnancy and she was so understanding; I never would've expected that, but she knew I made the right choice in resigning my post so I could make sure my pregnancy was sustainable and that my daughter would be born healthy. I think it's very fitting that she is hosting this event for Senator Clinton after a week of women's initiatives. It shows the real commitment that Hillary has to these new proposals and I have no doubt we will make tons of progress in this area if she becomes president.

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Also posted at BlogHer.

Connecting With Elizabeth Edwards

The Silicon Valley Moms Blog and sister sites (via conference call) Chicago Moms Blog and DC Metro Moms Blog had a unique opportunity to meet with Elizabeth Edwards in San Jose yesterday. As I've been contributing to the blog now for over a year, this was my second chance to meet with this remarkable woman, with whom many of us feel a connection. Except this time was different - she's no longer on a book tour; she's the wife of a presidential candidate. And while the discussion shifted to more specific policy issues than personal, it was still intimate and inviting.

As you can see from my liveblogging, we covered topics from tax brackets to math education to healthcare translators. And Elizabeth Edwards still loves us. (After one of my fellow contributors challenged her parenting choices a few weeks ago, there was some heated exchange that got picked-up by "Good Morning America" and taught our blogger and many others a lesson in taking care of what they post. Eventually Elizabeth and Rebecca made up, but it was an interesting few days for the blog.) And we still love her. Even if some of us won't be voting for her husband.

In my case, as much as I really like Elizabeth and John Edwards, Hillary Clinton's experience and her deep grasp of the issues is holding me strongly in her support. When it comes to national security, our place in the world, healthcare and the economy, I believe Hillary Clinton is our best choice. I like John Edward's proposals and I especially like the fact he's willing to talk about the environment and poverty more than most of the other candidates, but at the end of the day, with terrorists striking, hurricanes flooding and children dying all over the world, I'll sleep better at night knowing Hillary and Bill Clinton are in the White House than John and Elizabeth Edwards. That said, I would still sleep very well knowing John and Elizabeth Edwards were in the White House, and if John Edwards wins the nomination, I will work extremely hard to make sure he wins the election next November.

So what is it about Elizabeth Edwards that makes us all like her so much? As we noticed when we met with her last year during her book tour, she has this down-to-earth quality that shows both her intelligence and her kindness, without any superficial attitude or put-on interest. She genuinely likes to meet new people, she has a wonderfully light way about her, and she sat down with us like we were all old friends. She's also a little bit of a geek, hanging out on the blogs late at night in hotel rooms while traversing the campaign trail, which I find endearing. And she has dealt with major life challenges with the death of her son and her breast cancer, both of which have only added more depth to her persona and more commitment to the causes meaningful to her. I find her both incredibly inspiring and acutely insightful.

Where do we go now? Well, she's promised to meet with the DC Metro Moms Blog and the Chicago Moms Blog as well, so hopefully that will transpire. The SVMoms still seek to meet with other candidates and their spouses, regardless of party, and I hope to help facilitate that. Although I realize it is a long shot because Elizabeth Edwards is unique in her connection to mommybloggers, I think the other candidates could benefit greatly from the discussion with the women in our network - all of whom are highly educated, qualified people in their own right, not just moms, and all of whom represent a key group of women voters.

Some of us from the SVMoms Blog spoke today with various members of the press about our meeting, and one of the points brought up was that this event really has no precedent. The reporter in one case couldn't recall another time where a group of bloggers was given such intimate access to a candidate or candidate's wife. I think this holds great promise for blogs to provide another vehicle for kitchen table and New Hampshire-style living room meet-and-greet democracy. If we can take these small conversations taking place in person and somehow transmit that feeling through the web, we might all feel a little closer to the national political process after all. Thank you Elizabeth.

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Also posted here on the BlogHer site.

Bloggers First Today at UN for Leadership Meeting on Climate Change

The U.N. Foundation and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences are now allowing "leading bloggers" into U.N. proceedings. Eleven bloggers were to be live blogging "The Future In Our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change" today in NYC. The event included major figures Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

According to the press release, "Together these bloggers reach an audience of more than 6 million people a month, all over the world. Participants in the “blog day” hosted by the UN Foundation at the UN are: Brian Beutler, Gristmill.grist.com; Jasmin Chua, Treehugger.com; Mark Goldberg, UN Dispatch.com; Blake Hounshell, ForeignPolicy.com; Joel Johnson, gadgets.boingboing.net; Ezra Klein, www.prospect.org/weblog; Sameer Lalwani, The Washington Note.com; Juliana Rotich, Global Voices Online.com; Kate Sheppard, stopglobalwarming.msn.com; Kay Steiger, Campus Progress.org; and Matthew Yglesias, matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com." Proceedings can be found on their blogs and at the UN Dispatch site.

All I can say is it's about time a) the UN is taking on this serious discussion in this manner and b) they invited bloggers to cover it.

Wiretapping Insecurity - New Law's Loopholes

I don't understand it - one would really like to think our lawmakers would have security in mind, on all levels and from all angles, when devising new policies about security. One would (ok at least I would) especially like to think that recommendations for policies provided by the NSA would be even more concerned with all levels of security. Well, it looks like that's not necessarily the case. See Susan Landau's Washington Post article about our new wiretapping law for the story. Is the NSA the new CIA?

$100 Will Soon Buy A Laptop & $200 Will Send a Second To a Child in Rwanda...

Or Haiti, Cambodia or Afghanistan. Pretty cool, huh? According to BBC News, the laptops will be green or white and will work in the sun and with a variety of power options. The program is called G1G1 or "give one, get one". It's developed by OLPC (One Laptop Per Child).

They supposedly run on 10% or less energy than most laptops. Right now, according to the New York Times, prices are closer to $400 for 2 laptops, but that's still super cheap by American standards. I'm all over this. My daughter could use a computer of her own to learn on, and I love the idea of providing a computer for a child who probably won't have another opportunity to get one.