One of the outcomes of BarCamp Oxford has been the organisation of a new BarCamp about transparency and ethics – a mix of social media, open government and cyber-activism.
It’s in its early planning stages, but it’ll take place sometime over the summer here in Oxford. If you’re interested, I suggest you take a look at the BarCamp Transparency wiki and throw your name into the ring. I was asked if I’d help organise, and while I can’t provide as much time as I’d like to due to prior commitments, I’ve volunteered to discuss openness in social media, provide web resources and help out with the event itself.
Transparency is hugely important, and becoming more so. As citizens we have more and more demands upon us to surrender our privacy and aspects of our civil liberties, but the government and politicians on all sides have been reluctant to provide more oversight into their activities. Meanwhile, social technologies have the power to enable us to find and share public information, organise ourselves into groups, and have more say in how our country is run.
This is a vital event that already sounds very promising indeed.
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