Road Trip

I may be off-line for a while as I head to Delft for the ISCRAM (Intelligent Human Computer Systems for Crisis Response and Management), where I will be talking about government-funded videogames designed for training first responders that simulate terrorism-related urban crises.

En route from the Amsterdam airport I chanced to take the train with Craig T. Fifer, who is the e-government manager for the City of Alexandria, Virginia, whose interest in digital governance goes back to the early PEN experiments in the late eighties and early nineties. I spend a lot of time criticizing bad government websites, so it's nice to see a site that takes participatory democracy seriously, albeit on the local level. And since I've certainly slammed some bad podcasts, it's nice to hear some good audio content on the city's site, even if I can't imagine listening to city council meetings on my iPod while jogging.