[Yr7-10it] How Obama Will Use Web Technology

Roland Gesthuizen rgesthuizen at gmail.com
Mon Feb 2 00:14:27 EST 2009 

We had an air conditioner fail in our server room many years ago
during a similar heat wave. The tech got a fan to blow in the cool air
from the classroom next door. He was later asked to turn off his noisy
solution by a less-than-helpful classroom teacher.

I dropped past at 6 pm to see how things were going and was surprised
to see him sweating it out in his swimming trunks whilst he worked on
some mission critical application or other. After a good laugh (and
his redress) we jointly collected a cool can of lemonade in the fridge
of the empty, but decidedly cooler school administration office.

Our air-conditioners are now annually serviced and cleaned each winter
as part of our rolling maintenance schedule.

Regards Roland

On 31/01/2009, Kent Beveridge <kbeveridge at stbc.vic.edu.au> wrote:
> Hey Ro..
>  It probably crashed due to the cold...heck, ours up here is protesting wildly in  this heat!  Our poor old server is just about melting and the email server has been taken home by the techie just to keep it cool!  How's that for dedication!  Got to admit, he's been goin flat chat since we got back, reckon he'll sink a few coldies this weekend...he's certainly earned it this week!
>  Here's a chuckle for ya too..
>  The boss(principal)..owed up to accidentally switching off the air cons to the servers...do ya reckon he copped a bit of ribbing from the staff (we all had a bit of a laugh at his expense, he's just that sort of bloke)...hehehe...
>  Did that put a grin on your dial, it did for us up here at our first staff briefing.
>
>  Seeyall,
>  Kent.
>
>  Kent Beveridge,
>  I.C.T. co-ordinator
>  St. Brigids Catholic Sec. College
>   http://www.stbc.vic.edu.au/ <http://www.stbc.vic.edu.au/>
>  Horsham Ph (03) 5382 3545
>  kbeveridge at stbc.vic.edu.au
>  "This email and any attachments may be confidential.  You must not disclose or use the information in this email if you are not the intended recipient.  If you have received this email in error, please notify us immediately and delete the email and all copies.  The School does not guarantee that this email is virus or error free.  The attached files are provided and my only be used on the basis that the user assumes all responsibility for any loss, damage or consequence resulting directly or indirectly from the use of the attached files, whether caused by the negligence of the sender or not.  The content and opinions in this email are not necessarily those of the School."
>
>  ________________________________
>
>  From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of Roland Gesthuizen
>  Sent: Tue 1/27/2009 9:20 PM
>
> To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
>
> Subject: Re: [Yr7-10it] How Obama Will Use Web Technology
>
>
>
>
>  The Whitehouse e-mail system crashed (again) .. we probably should not
>  blame the Obama administration for the woes he is having with their
>  Outlook exchange system (ala Edumail) but I reckon that it must be a
>  pretty frustrating technology hand over. As it was .. pencil and paper
>  managed to come to the rescue.
>       http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/01/26/white_house_e-mail_system_goes.html
>       http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/web/tech-glitch-hits-obama-white-house/2009/01/27/1232818396845.html
>
>  Regards Roland
>
>  2009/1/25  <stephen at melbpc.org.au>:
>
> > How Obama Will Use Web Technology
>  >
>  > Saturday, January 24, 2009; 2:54 AM  <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
>  > dyn/content/article/2009/01/24/AR2009012400646.html>
>  >
>  >
>  > President Barack Obama was sworn into office this week as our nation's
>  > 44th president. Despite running into a few technical challenges in the
>  > first few days at the White House, the Obama Administration will embrace
>  > technology in unprecedented ways.
>  >
>  > Led by forward thinking, web savvy technologists, President Obama's new
>  > media team looks poised and ready to fulfill President Obama's vision of
>  > open-source democracy.
>  >
>  > Coincident with Mr. Obama being sworn in, the Obama Administration's new
>  > media team assumed control of www.WhiteHouse.gov at 12:01 PM EST on
>  > Tuesday. This is the official website of the sitting administration.
>  >
>  > The new media team has identified three top priorities of the new
>  > administration, communication, transparency and participation.
>  >
>  > http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/change_has_come_to_whitehouse-gov/>
>  >
>  > Let's examine how the new administration has been leveraging web
>  > technologies to meet these priorities.
>  >
>  > Communication:
>  >
>  > This administration's use of Google's YouTube during both the campaign
>  > and after winning the election leverages Internet video to reach a
>  > generation of Americans and global citizens who no longer tune in to AM
>  > radio on a regular basis. President Obama has vowed to continue video
>  > recording his fireside chats and publishing them via YouTube and other
>  > video sites. With the transition of www.WhiteHouse.gov to the new
>  > administration, for the first time ever an official White House blog came
>  > online. You can sign up for email updates from the president. Through the
>  > blog, Mr. Obama is the first U.S. president to have an RSS feed!
>  >
>  >
>  > During the campaign President Obama relied heavily on Facebook, Myspace
>  > and Twitter to build support, communicate with constituents and develop a
>  > core audience. By far, Mr. Obama has more followers on Twitter than
>  > anyone else (168,000). His fan page on Facebook has more than 4 million
>  > fans. <http://twitter.com/BarackObama>
>  >
>  > Transparency:
>  >
>  > Mr. Obama promises to run the most open, honest and transparent
>  > administration to date. Through the Your Seat at The Table section on the
>  > CHANGE.GOV transition site, the Obama transition team posted the minutes
>  > of hundreds of private meetings with then President-Elect Obama.
>  >
>  > <http://change.gov/open_government/yourseatatthetable>
>  >
>  > Even all of the content on the www.CHANGE.GOV site, unless otherwise
>  > noted, is licensed to the public at large via a Creative Commons
>  > Attribution 3.0 License.
>  >
>  > The Obama-Biden Transition Team used blist to disclose the names of all
>  > donors to the transition project. Two key points of note are that the
>  > disclosure was entirely voluntary and the tool they chose to use made the
>  > data itself much more consumable by the mainstream public. Compared to a
>  > plain HTML table, which is bulky, cumbersome and hard to work with, by
>  > publishing the data via a blist widget the data can easily be sorted,
>  > searched, filtered, downloaded, printed, emailed and even republished.
>  >
>  > Obama Administration has been conducting bold experiments in interactive
>  > government. The Citizen's Briefing Book, powered by Salesforce.com, has
>  > allowed citizens to suggest topics Mr. Obama should consider upon taking
>  > office.
>  >
>  > Once a topic was submitted, other visitors to the Citizen's Briefing Book
>  > could vote the topic up or down and comment on it. Voting, ranking and
>  > commenting are hallmark features of web social media applications.
>  > <http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/>
>  >
>  >
>  > The new Administration has brought forth a new era of honest, open,
>  > participatory and transparent government by creatively employing web-
>  > based software from innovative companies like Google, Facebook,
>  > Salesforce.com and blist. We're eager to see the use of these
>  > technologies extended to www.WhiteHouse.gov initially and from there we'd
>  > love to see more government agencies quickly embrace web technologies to
>  > promote communication, transparency and participation.
>  >
>  > --
>  > Cheers people
>  > Stephen Loosley
>  > Victoria, Australia
>  > _______________________________________________
>
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>
>  --
>
> Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College
>
> http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au <http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au/>
>
>
>  "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
>  change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
>  --Margaret Mead
>
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> Year 7 - 10 IT Mailing List kindly supported by
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>  Year 7 - 10 IT Mailing List kindly supported by
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-- 
Roland Gesthuizen - ICT Coordinator - Westall Secondary College
http://www.westallsc.vic.edu.au

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world; indeed it is the only thing that ever has."
--Margaret Mead

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