Event timeIt’s been a busy time for us here at Collabforge HQ and we’re gearing up for some more exciting activities over the next few weeks that we want to share with you.

Web 2.0 in Government – Sydney

Mark Elliott & I are heading to Sydney to speak at the Web 2.0 in Government Conference 2009 on Wednesday 24 June. It’s the first commercial conference on Government 2.0 being held in Australia and we’re really excited to be on the program.

Mark will be part of a panel session on the challenges of Gov 2.0 and will also be presenting on “Public consultation, wikis & internal collaboration” using
FutureMelbourne and wePlan Alpine as case studies. I’ll be speaking about “Citizen Innovation” and how government and public sector organisations can harness collaboration for service delivery, legislation and policy development by leveraging the participation of their stakeholders in the interest of co-creating pubic resources.

Participation Camp – NYU

From there Mark is jetting back to the USA to be a featured speaker at Participation Camp ’09, an un-conference organised by Matt Cooperidder which aims to “use our collective knowledge to solve the problems of participation [and calls] on all government representatives, technologists, developers, NGOs, wonks and activists to join us as we share knowledge about new technologies and new methods for public participation.”

It’s being held on the weekend of 27-28 June at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program @ the Tisch School of the Arts 721 Broadway, New York. For those of us unable to be there in person they’ll be holding a simultaneous virtual un-conference and participants should register for a “Virtual PCamper” ticket here and use the chat service Skype which is available for free download here.

Personal Democracy Forum – Lincoln Center, New York

It’s then over to the Personal Democracy Forum “the world’s largest and best known conference on the intersection of technology and politics” where Mark has been invited to speak on a panel titled “Imagining White House 2.0: Making Open Collaboration Platforms Work”, which will be chaired by Ellen Miller co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation. PdF (as it’s affectionately known) is the premiere conference on politics, democracy and the Web and this year’s stellar line up includes danah boyd, Craig Newmark, David Weinberger, Mark Pesce and Vivek Kundra.

We’ll be live tweeting, blogging and updating our involvement in these fantastic events so please join the conversation.

Photo courtesy of freeparking – thanks!