Recap of a busy week - politics, new media, gov 2.0 and more

Last week was a whirlwind on the local level... after Newsom dropped out of the CA governors' race, I wrote a piece about it that had a pretty good reception at The Huffington Post but was maimed by trolls at SFGate. Having seen this happen before for other writers, I reluctantly decided to remove all comments. I reviewed the problem with other blogger friends who confirmed it's a common problem for newspapers-turned-online publications.

I put up a detailed response at SFGate explaining the problem to readers and the community there and received a lot of letters via e-mail in support. The SFGate staff also were responsive as well, looking into what they can do with the system that will help solve their comment moderation problem. (IMO it shouldn't be that hard technically - they're using Moveable Type - it's more a matter of budgeting the staff time and having a smart plan in place.)

After spending way more time on that last week, I was able to shift gears back to tech, I finished an article about Twitter Lists for Digital Landing. I've been researching Twitter Lists since they first launched, and one of my lists of the Women in Politics & Tech group (WIPT) was put on the Change.org list of Ten Feminist Twitter Lists.

Saturday, I headed to CA Data Camp where I caught up with local government, non-profit and media people who are passionate about open government. We talked about data specifics, data transfer, local applications, data and media and the related national scope. I'll be putting up at least one post at the Personal Democracy Forum about that. Here's a great summary at Spot.Us. Meanwhile, I was invited this week to be on two more conference program committees. More on that when they're official.

Meanwhile, as we were finishing up with the data apps in SF, the House voted on their final version of the healthcare reform bill. It was interesting to follow that on Twitter while in a room full of government software developers. Finally, I was surprised this morning to be on a list of Top 20 Women Political Bloggers (I think the list is a subset of liberal bloggers who are also moms).

This week, I'm working on an article about Google Wave and editing a book on confidential information. I'm also working on a couple new gov 2.0 related projects that I hope to write more about soon.