Eric Odom talks to us about how the Sam Adams Alliance is using open source software to bring transparency to the corners of American democracy that often go overlooked.

 

Jed Sundwall: What is the stated mission of the Sam Adams Alliance?

 

Eric Odom: The Sam Adams Alliance has existed for a year and a half. It's a 501(c)3 that focuses and education and information and it also has 501(c)4 because of our work across the country with activists and leadership training.

You vote, right? But do you use Congresspedia, Wiki The Vote, the SuperDelegate Transparency Project, OpenSecrets.org, FedSpending.org, or PublicMarkup.org to be an informed voter? They are all projects whose creation was facilitated by the Sunlight Foundation to educate citizens and increase transparency in politics.

On March 28th, I talked on the phone with Ellen Miller, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, about their work. Ellen is also a NetSquared Advocate. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. You can also listen to it on the little player below, or on the NetSquared Podcast.

Ellen Miller: The Sunlight Foundation is a two-year-old organization that is a combination of a grant-making, and operational institution that focuses on creating greater transparency for the work of Congress.

 

I would like to thank all the people that commented on my previous post titled "Another Social Network for Development Cooperation?". For me, the contributions confirmed the need for (and non-existence of) the open social platform for development cooperation organisations that I am proposing.

I will need two blog post to explain why and respond to all the comments and questions that I received:

On the Worldbank's Private Sector Development Blog, I found "an imaginary wish list of start-ups in a Development 2.0 world" (a post by Giulio Quaggiotto). One of the ideas on the wishlist is:  

One of the interesting things about social networks is that you get an insight in how people are connected with others and organized into subgroups of the total social network. Social networks make it very transparent how users are (or could be) linked to other users. These links can be made directly by the users (e.g. friends or contacts) or they can be established by the internet application based on the user generated data (e.g. people that share the same interest, location, organization, etc.). When these links and subgroups are established, the social networking application is then used to share and discuss information.