Gov 2.0 Expo Program Committee

Laurel Ruma is the Gov 2.0 Evangelist at O'Reilly Media. She joined the company in 2005 after working for five years at various IT analyst firms in the Boston area. Laurel is also co-chair for the Gov 2.0 Expo and co-editor of Open Government, published by O'Reilly in February 2010.

Mark Drapeau is Co-Chair of the Gov 2.0 Expo. He is currently the Director of Innovative Social Engagement for Microsoft’s U.S. Public Sector division in Washington, D.C. He was until recently an adjunct professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, and an Associate Research Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University. Some of his NDU research on Government 2.0 was published in a report titled Social Software and National Security: An Initial Net Assessment. He is a frequent guest speaker and blogger on topics related to government, marketing, social media, and science & technology.

Mark is a contributing columnist for O’Reilly Radar and Federal Computer Week, where he writes about emerging media technologies and the government. Mark is also a co-founder of Government 2.0 Club, an international platform for sharing knowledge about the intersection between technology and governance. Mark has a B.S. in evolutionary biology, a Ph.D. in animal behavior, conducted NIH- funded postdoctoral training in neuroscience, studied social behavior as part of the International Honeybee Genome Project, was a 2006-08 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow in National Defense and Global Security, and is an avid mindcaster on Twitter.

Alexi Aldrich is the Advocacy Officer responsible for the Connect2Canada initiative at the Embassy of Canada in Washington, DC. The program serves to promote Canadian government interests in the United States through social networking, reaching people who have a connection with Canada, such as Americans doing business with Canada or whose work otherwise involves Canada, and the Canadian expatriate community.

Born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Ms. Aldrich moved to the U.S. to attend the University of Virginia where she received her BA in Foreign Affairs. She joined the Public Affairs team of the Embassy as Media Analyst in 2004. In her current position, Ms. Aldrich manages Embassy and Consulate outreach to a network of 45,000 friends of Canada throughout the U.S.

Matt Armstrong is a strategist addressing the landscape of US public diplomacy and strategic communication. He advises Congress, the Departments of State and Defense, consulting firms, think tanks, and other organizations in the US and abroad on the policies, practice, structure, institutions, and purpose of public diplomacy, strategic communication, public affairs, or whatever your organization calls global engagement. Mr. Armstrong is publically known as the publisher of MountainRunner.us, a leading blog on public diplomacy and strategic communication.

Mr. Armstrong is a principal with Armstrong Strategic Insights Group, LLC, executive director of the MountainRunner Institute (501c3 status pending), adjunct staff with RAND, a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a member of the Senior Information Operations Advisory Council, a member of the National Press Club, a Senior Advisor to Business for Diplomatic Action, a member of The Public Diplomacy Council, and a part-time lecturer at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Dominic is a digital government and social innovation entrepreneur with a background in government policy, communications and engagement.

Having spent 5 years in local government, Dominic established FutureGov Consultancy in early 2008. FutureGov supports central and local government in the UK to better understand and draw on social technology in the areas of digital democracy and public service innovation.

Dominic is also co-founder of social web start-ups Enabled by Design, a dot org social start up and winners of the inaugural Social Innovation Camp, and TweetyHall, helping people to find and connect with their local politicians on social network site Twitter.

Peter Corbett is the founder and CEO of iStrategyLabs — an interactive agency that develops creative solutions to clients’ challenges and brings them to life in the digital and physical world. Peter has won multiple industry awards, including 2 Addys in 2010, the Great Washington DC Board of Trade's "One To Watch" award for being "A rising entrepreneur who has a bright and sustainable future in Greater Washington", has been named one of the most influential Washingtonians under 40 by WashingtonLife Magazine and is a "Top 25 Most Fascinating Communicator in Government IT" according to GovFresh. Washingtonian Magazine included him in their Tech Titan list of the top 100 people shaping technology innovation in the greater capital area and Government Technology magazine included him in their prestigious "25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers" for 2010.

In Government 2.0 circles, Peter is widely known for co-creating Apps for Democracy with Vivek Kundra and DC's Office of the CTO, as well his co-founding of Government 2.0 Club, Government 2.0 Camp, and Transparency Camp. His focus on creating —rather than just talking about—smarter, better, faster, and cheaper ways of doing things has inspired similar initiatives around the world like Apps for Democracy Finland, INCA 09 (aka Apps for DemocracyBelgium), Apps for America, NYC Big Apps, SF Data Challenge and more. He is currently working on the Apps for the Army program.

Yasmin Fodil is a second year Master of Public Policy student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, focusing on Democracy, Politics, and Institutions. While at the Kennedy School she co-founded the Government 2.0 Professional Interest Council, and works to encourage the integration of Government 2.0 principles into the curricula and events at the Kennedy School. Prior to attending the Kennedy School Yasmin was the Information Officer for the Office of the Arts and Special Projects at the NYC Department of Education. She received her bachelor’s degree in Government from Cornell University in 2005, and regularly blogs at http://wethegoverati.wordpress.com.

Susannah Fox is an associate director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and a contributor to e-patients.net, a blog about health and health care.

Prior to joining the Pew Research Center, Fox was the editor of the website for _U.S. News & World Report_ and a researcher during the start-up phase of RealNetworks.

Sarah Granger has 20 years of experience in the intersection of technology and government, including policy, politics, new media and open democracy projects. An award-winning writer and new media strategist, she is a contributing editor at techPresident, The Huffington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle at SFGate.com. She was a contributing author of Ethical Hacking and she has edited four books on government 2.0, mobile security, cryptography and biometrics.

Sarah is the former Project Director for the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and she served as a senior strategist for Project One Page, a smart crowdsourcing platform. Previously, Sarah directed the first blog launched by a national politician, and she worked in cybersecurity for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and California Maritime Academy after finishing a degree in "Technology & Society" at the University of Michigan. She advises public sector organizations on new media and technology through PublicEdge.

Last year, Sarah led a Core Conversation at South by Southwest Interactive on "Whitehouse.gov 2.0: Upgrading to Open Source Government." She has been a speaker or organizer for Gov 2.0 Camp LA, Netroots Nation, 140 Twitter, Cybersalon, ACM Policy, U.S. Policies for the Information Society, CA Data Camp and the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference. She served as a delegate to the World Summit on the Information Society at the U.N. in Geneva in 2003 and she is a council member of the U.S. Association for Computing Machinery (USACM) public policy committee and digital government working group.

Sarah can be found at SarahGranger.com and on Twitter as @sairy.

Patricia is a serial media and entertainment entrepreneur who founded a pioneering social media site in 2004, which she sold in 2007. She is currently the CEO of 9, a transmedia production and consulting company that builds and consults on franchise projects for traditional and digital media, entertainment and internet business. Her startups and business insight has been heard at events including South by Southwest, the Writer's Guild of America, Blogher, Women 2.0, Girls in Tech, and in mainstream business media/blogs including Mashable, Paid Content, TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, TV Week, and others. As founder of Stylediary, her fashion advice has appeared in more than 250 media outlets. She's the co-creator of the popular Huffington Post series The New Power Girls and Thenewpowergirls.com blog, which covers news and profiles of women startups and existing companies in multiple markets. Prior to entrepreneurship, Patricia worked in internet telecom at the engineering level and all facets of consumer sites. She's a social entrepreneur using business for change in empowerment, the elderly and childrens causes.

In the land of the Internets, he is known as "noneck." For the last six years, he has focused on exploring community organizing, innovative technologies and the creative space between the two. For the past ten years, he has worked to understand the complex digital tools that enable our modern society and the communities that embrace them. Most notably, he's journeyed around the world to six contents documenting the communities that live off of the Internet, he lifecasted the process of becoming a New York City Yellow Cab driver, helped expose the China's broken Olympic promises, helped crystalize political remix culture at RemixAmerica.org, helped create an election monitoring system built on Twitter, helped foster the NYC technology community by running Williamsburg Coworking and helped empower the New York State Senate and it's constituents understand the power of an open, transparent and efficient legislature. Currently, he's the Director of Technology Innovation at the New York State Senate.

Clay is Director of Sunlight Labs. Prior joining Sunlight, Clay was one of the four founders of Blue State Digital, the progressive left's premier technology and online strategy firm. This firm, which was born out of the Howard Dean campaign, was also responsible for Barack Obama's Web presence. At Blue State Digital, Clay was responsible for developing the organization's brand and building its initial client roster. He also had a hand at building some of the company's early technical tools. Before joining Blue State, Johnson was the lead programmer for Dean for America in 2004, overseeing the development of grassroots tools like GetLocal, DeanLink and Project Commons. Prior to entering politics, Johnson was a technologist at Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com) where he helped to develop the company's Web syndication product. He also started the first Internet Knowledge Exchange, KnowPost.com, and worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a Venture Capital firm, but still claims that he learned the most from his first job — as a waiter at Waffle House in Atlanta, Georgia.

Goldy Kamali is Founder and President of FedScoop. She is a corporate sales and management leader with over 12 years of significant achievements within the high-tech industry.

Most recently, Kamali served as Executive Director of AeA’s Government and Commercial Markets Group, heading up AeA’s GCMG, the business development arm of the association. While overseeing the GCMG operations and setting the vision and standard for AeA’s national government business development initiatives and programs, Kamali developed a thriving and lucrative practice for the association.

During her tenure at AeA, Kamali grew her department’s revenue by over 500%, successfully developed strategic business alliances and skillfully negotiated member discounts for B2G business tools and resources. She also developed key relationships with leaders from AeA’s top member companies that resulted in a significant growth of AeA’s national sponsorship. She also established significant friendships with top government executives, and under her management and guidance, AeA’s GCMG became a major retention tool for the association as well as a key selling point for many new and prospective members.

Ms. Kamali was also responsible for leading and managing all aspects of AeA’s largest annual event, AeA’s Annual Technology for Government Dinner with over 700 Federal CIOs, CTOs, Chief Procurement Executives, Members of Congress and top industry leaders.

One of her many notable accomplishments at AeA was her ability to secure two of the biggest keynote speakers in the history of AeA’s Annual Dinner- Jonathan Schwartz CEO of Sun Microsystems in 2007 and Steve Ballmer CEO of Microsoft in 2008.

Prior to joining AeA, Goldy Kamali was Regional Director of Strategic Business Development at Onvia, Inc., a leading source for government business intelligence. While at Onvia, Goldy won several distinguished awards and was promoted to Regional Director of the Central and Eastern Regions and was sent to DC to open a new market for the company and head up Onvia’s DC office.

Prior to Onvia, Ms. Kamali spent 8 years in various senior-level strategic business development and leadership roles within the telecommunications industry holding VP and GM leadership roles.

Most recently, while at XO Communications, she successfully negotiated enterprise contracts and developed lasting relationships with senior executives of Fortune 500 companies. During her tenure at XO, she was given numerous awards for her exceptional achievements and consistently ranked #1 performer out of 1200 business development executives. While at XO, Ms. Kamali closed the largest multi-million dollar contract in the history of the organization at the time, for $10.8 million dollars.

Allyson Kapin is the Founder of Women Who Tech where she champions talented and renowned women breaking new ground in technology who use their tech savvy skills to transform the world and inspire change. Kapin is also the Founding Partner of the award-winning online communications firm Rad Campaign that provides web development and online strategy to nonprofit organizations and political campaigns. She has been named one of the "Top Tech Titans7quot; for her leadership roles in Washington’s tech world by the Washingtonian as well as one of the top entrepreneurial women to follow on Twitter by Forbes.

Outside of running Women Who Tech and Rad Campaign, Kapin writes Radical Tech, a blog column for Fast Company and serves as Blogger-In-Chief for Frogloop, the leading nonprofit communications focusing on technology, advocacy, and social media. She also blogs periodically at Huffington Post.

Rita J. King is Innovator-in-Residence at IBM's Analytics Virtual Center, a Senior Fellow at two think-tanks: The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York City, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress in Washington DC. She is the Creative Director of the Imagination Age and CEO of Dancing Ink Productions. Her essays, various writings and works of art have been commissioned, published and exhibited globally. She thinks of technology as a prism held up to the bright beam of the imagination to create a new global culture and economy. @RitaJKing can be followed on Twitter.

Mr. Kralik is Chief Marketing Officer with CitySourced, a mobile app company focused on real time, civic engagement.

Prior to this experience, David was manager of the Silicon Valley office & director of Internet strategy at American Solutions, founded by former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. In that role, he was responsible for the online product roadmap and chief scout for Gingrich, exploring and reporting back about new technology and finding ways technology can migrate government and politics into the 21st century.

In 2008, Kralik was honored as one of the “Top Ten Changing the World of Internet and Politics,” for his work on the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” campaign which garnered 1.5 million online signatures to a petition. His work on the campaign also led platinum-award winning country music star Aaron Tippin to record a song, "Drill Here, Drill Now."

From 2003-2007, he was manager of Internet programs at the National Association of Manufacturers where he led the association to adopt blogging, podcasting, the widely popular CoolStuffBeingMade.com web site and a variety of other Web 2.0 initiatives before it was called “Web 2.0” that resulted in the association being widely recognized as a leader in e-communication.

He is often sought after as an authority in online advocacy, blogging, and traffic building and has offered strategic counsel to organizations and corporations of all sizes, having worked in online political advocacy since its infancy in 1997.

David’s work has been profiled by The Washington Post, Investor’s Business Daily, Playboy magazine, as well as in an episode of The Simpsons.

In his spare time, he travels around the world (having been to all 7 continents), plays the saxophone, volunteers with Junior Achievement and resides in San Francisco.

LShireen Mitchell is an award winning technological woman of color, author, social entrepreneur, nonprofit leader, advocate and a social media strategist.

As a self-proclaimed "geekette," Shireen has always embraced her inner techie. You could always catch her playing pong or "chatting" on her computer on the bulletin board systems (BBS) before we had the World Wide Web. She managed the Politically Black.com website prior to its sale and public offering during the 90's as one of the only women of color web entrepreneurs. All of these achievements were accomplished before Shireen founded Digital Sisters, Inc., an organization that focuses on using digital media and technology to access tools for women and children and consulting through Women Wired In.

Shireen helps to organize various tech events around the country, including the Digital Community, Techno Rodeo,She's Geeky D.C.,Feminism 2.0, Tech Adventure DC, Nonprofit 2.0, Computers, Freedom and Privacy and others. Did you know that she created the game TechnoDemic? A multimedia competition to help youth learn technology and programming terms for the Techno Rodeo?

As an author she has written "Gaining Daily Access to Science and Technology" in the book 50 Ways to Improve Women's Lives and Access to Technology: Race, Gender, Class Bias. Shireen covers various areas of tech, media, policy and diversity in articles and blogs.

Shireen has spoken on topics that include the impact of technology, social media and mobile apps on communities across the country. She has appeared on media shows like WETA, KPFA, NPR and Women's Radio and presented on various topics including "Tweet This Change", "Social Media ROI", "Social Media Women of Color", "Google Apps for Nonprofits", and "Technology Savvy Secures Economic Stability".

As Chair of the Media and Technology Task Force of the National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO), Ms. Mitchell works to increase participation in technology and media by women. She also sits as the Vice Chair of the parent organization. In addition, she is a member of various women's media groups.

Shireen has been awarded Top 100 DC Tech Titans, Social Citizen Award: Apps for Democracy DC, Rising Star: Woman of Color in Technology, Heroine in Technology, Community Technology Leader, The Root 100, Black Twitterati and nominated for Shorty Awards & Young Woman of Achievement.

Ms. Mitchell was born and raised in the projects of New York City. She currently resides with her family in Washington DC, a city engrossed in government 2.0, and politics.

Karen Myers directs global member outreach for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with particular focus on eGovernment and application areas of Semantic Web technologies including health care and life sciences, financial services, and energy. She advises W3C's Director and leadership team on liaison opportunities and communications strategies.

I’m currently an Associate with Booz Allen Hamilton, a global strategy and technology consulting firm. I’m one of the leads for our social media/Government 2.0 practice, working with clients across the public sector to integrate social media strategies and tactics into their organizational strategies.

My background in change management, strategic communications, and stakeholder engagement strategy and implementation means that I focus not only on the technology and infrastructure aspects of social media, but perhaps more importantly, on the people and processes that really determine the success of social media and Government 2.0. One of my favorite sayings is that "it's not about the technology, but what the technology enables."

I was recently named one of PRNews’ 15 to Watch for in 2009 and was a contributing author to the recently released Gov 2.0 book, “State of the eUnion, Government 2.0 and Onwards.“ I also serve on the Advisory Boards for the SmartBrief on Social Media and Governingpeople.com, as well as the Program Committee for the Government 2.0 Expo Showcase that was held last year.

Rich Robbins is an innovator with a long track record of developing corporate partnerships with the entertainment, political and non-profit worlds. As Director, Social Innovation at AT&T, the world's leading telecommunications company, Robbins is working to develop programs with non-profit and political groups to use AT&T technologies to enable citizens to be more informed and engaged in their communities. Robbins led AT&T's entry into the mobile politics arena with a groundbreaking partnership with Rock the Vote, the leading non-profit, non-partisan youth political organization. AT&T helped RTV achieve its mission of engaging 18-29 year olds in the political process by reaching them where they spend their lives - their mobile phones. This effort resulted in a new level of engagement for Rock the Vote with over 200k potential voters connecting with the organization on their mobile phones. Robbins developed a partnership for AT&T with the nation's leading premium TV network to create HBO Mobile, a mobile program encompassing video, ringtones, games, answer tones, graphics and mobile Internet content. Robbins' other experiences at Cingular and AT&T Wireless include Marketing / Brand Management, Distribution Strategy and Sponsorship. Prior to joining AT&T, Robbins worked for leading entertainment marketing / sponsorship agencies Festival Marketing and EMCI for clients such as American Express, Guinness and HBO. At Festival, he led the American Express Gold Card Events program, providing American Express with a unique, differentiating consumer benefit while providing new audiences for live arts and entertainment events. Robbins received his undergraduate degree in Political Science from Tufts University and his MBA in Marketing from Columbia Business School. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.

Steve Ressler is an accomplished innovator, presenter, and author on matters related to Gov 2.0 and recruiting/retaining young government employees. Mr. Ressler is the founder of GovLoop.com, a "Facebook for Government" which connects and foster collaboration among over 11,000 members of the government community including federal, state, local, and international government innovators. Steve is also the co-founder of Young Government Leaders, a professional organization of over 2,000 government employees across the U.S. Mr. Ressler received the 2007 and 2009 Federal 100 Award for his service in the government IT community. He is a 2004 master's graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a past recipient of the DHS Graduate Fellowship.

Brian Solis is globally recognized as one of the original and most prominent thought leaders in social media. A digital analyst and visionary, Solis has influenced the effects of new media on the convergence of marketing, communications, and traditional media. He is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning New Media agency in Silicon Valley, and has led interactive and social programs for Fortune 500 companies, notable celebrities, and Web 2.0 startups. Brian’s blog is ranked among the world’s business and marketing elite. For more information, visit briansolis.com.

Dr. Christopher K. Tucker has played a prominent role in the rise of Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) as President/CEO of a geospatial high-tech firm that he managed from its start-up through its acquisition by ERDAS. Tucker sits on the Board of the Open Geospatial Consortium, the Department of Interior’s National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC), the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, and several other corporate and not-for profit Boards that function at the intersection of geospatial, sensor, cyber-security, open source, and social media technologies, including OpenGeo, the MapStor Foundation. Tucker served on the National Research Council’s Committee on NGA’s GEOINT Research Priorities, helping to define the R&D investment strategy that NGA must undertake in order to transform to its future concept of operations. Dr. Tucker is the Open Geospatial Consortium’s delegate to the GEO STC.

Tucker was the founding Chief Strategic Officer of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital fund, focusing his efforts on developing In-Q-Tel's overall strategy for tackling the Agency’s priority IT problems. As such, Tucker was responsible for managing the technical portfolio, issues of organizational design, and relations with the intelligence community, industry and media.

Prior to this, Tucker was Special Advisor to the Executive Vice Provost of Columbia University, Tucker was responsible for a range of issues having to do with R&D portfolio management, federal science and technology policy, and the organization of interdisciplinary research. While at Columbia, Tucker co-founded the Center for Science, Policy and Outcomes, and taught several courses at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.

Tucker has a BA, MA and PhD in Political Science from Columbia.