Development Seed

It’s a busy week for techies here in Washington, DC, and not surprisingly many of this week’s events focus on what will happen in the world of tech policy next week – when President-elect Obama officially takes the reigns. But, that’s not all that’s going on this week. There are also several events scheduled that delve into semantic data and data visualizations – and how new technologies combined with a president who’s a bigger fan of transparency than we’re used will lead to big strides in this area.

For a full listing of the week’s tech events, go here. For our picks, keep reading.

Monday, January 12

7:00 – 9:00 pm

DC Drupal Meetup: This meetup will focus just on good old fashioned open source software – Drupal. If you’re a Drupal developer or user, or if you want to become one, come out tonight to talk shop and meet others using Drupal in DC. The Development Seed will be there and we’re all excited to catch up with friends and meet new Drupalers.

Tuesday, January 13

12:15 – 1:45 pm

Next Media Future Now: Government Data, the Public Interest… and Private Profit?: Government-published information has always been mostly in the public domain, but it’s never been all that easy to access. Technology though, along with a push by some governments (and hopefully the federal one) to open up data, is starting to change this. This discussion, which Eric will be speaking at, will look at the challenges and possibilities of working with this government data and getting it into usable and useful forms.

7:00 pm

NetSquared and the Future of Internet Policy: There’s no doubt that in just over a week we’ll have a more tech savvy leader in the White House, and many in the tech community are hoping this translates into more progressive internet policies as well – ones that foster innovation and collaboration. This meetup will look at some of the expected hot topics to come up in tech policy – such as net neutrality, security, and the digital divide – and how we all can support progressive tech policies.

Thursday, January 15

3:00 – 5:00 pm

Internet Advocacy Roundtable: What’s It Worth?: How do all those hits your blog post or YouTube video translate into dollars and cents, and how can you leverage this exposure with donors and advertisers? Come to this discussion to hear how you can measuring this.

6:30 – 9:00 pm

Symposium on Information Policy in the New Administration: Want to hear a few more takes on what the Obama administration will do regarding information policy? Come out to this dinner and discussion at Catholic University ($20/ticket).

7:00 pm

Geospatial Semantics: This month’s meetup of the Washington Semantic Web Group will focus on geospatial semantics and what can be done with this technology and data. Jeff, Tom, and Eric will all be at this event to learn what others are up to and share what we’re doing with geodata and data visualizations.

Hope to see you out this week!