Gov 2.0 Hero: Lovisa Williams

  • June 15th, 2010

Sometimes it’s hard to believe Lovisa Williams is just one person. From appearances at Web 2.0 conferences and events throughout the world, to outreach in Second Life and an active presence on Twitter and in the DC scene, Lovisa is the centrifugal force of the Government 2.0 movement.

Lovisa is one of the most accomplished, yet most humble Gov 2.0 advocates. She was key in making February’s Gov 2.0 Camp LA a success, and when I was in DC last fall she set up a brunch where I got to meet the Alex “Digiphile” Howard and the EPA’s Jeffrey Levy in person for the first time. She’s ubiquitous, generous and totally awesome. Lovisa’s expertise and trainings have made the U.S. State Department a world leader in deploying social media for diplomacy.

Lovisa Williams is one of my Gov 2.0 Heroes.

Listen to Lovisa on Gov 2.0 Radio.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Sarah Bourne

  • June 15th, 2010

Sarah Bourne is a technology strategist and accessibility expert with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She’s a pioneer in aggressive government social media use well-rooted in policy. In early 2009, when I needed a model for bringing the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office onto Twitter, I looked at policy docs by Sarah and her colleagues, and got on the phone with her to discuss doing it right.

Sarah’s focus on ensuring that all citizens have equal access to government Web services is incredibly important to the Gov 2.0 movement, as is her practice of creating clear road maps for other agencies to follow. She’s easy to reach on Twitter and offers online tool kits for replicating Mass.gov’s bleeding edge social media offerings.

Sarah Bourne is one of my Gov 2.0 Heroes.

Listen to Sarah on Gov 2.0 Radio.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Mike Rupert

  • June 15th, 2010

Michael Rupert, a communications manager with the District of Columbia, is a stellar recent addition to the global Gov 2.0 community. He’s a seasons professional but sort of burst onto the scene over the past several months, first on Twitter and GovLoop, then with his major contribution, LocalGovChat, a weekly Twitter chat and blog series uniting government communicators around the globe.

Like me, Mike is a family guy and struggles to balance raising kids and loving his spouse with being the best darn public servant he can. His frank honesty about the challenges, and surfacing of those challenges in public, is one of the things I value about Mike. Part of Government 2.0 is showing that the bureaucracy is made up of everyday folks, and Mike does that well, regularly sharing winning insights that help all of us do better.

Michael Rupert is one of my Gov 2.0 Heroes.

Check out Mike’s LocalGovChat.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Jeffrey ‘Iron Man’ Levy

  • June 15th, 2010

When my second son was two, he took a look at EPA Web manager Jeffrey Levy’s bearded and bespectacled Twitter avatar and said, “Iron Man!” Where the resemblance is, I’m really not sure. However, Jeffrey will always be the Iron Man of Gov 2.0 to me.

I first met “levyj413” late one night back in 2008 as he was working Twitter to bring folks to the EPA’s Greenversations blog. Over the past couple years, I’ve followed his incredible efforts to integrate on and off-line communications channels for Earth Day and other events and to sway people’s thinking in favor of our environment. A month doesn’t go by that Jeffrey isn’t creating new resources for the Gov 2.0 community, from wikis to charts to free webinars.

Jeffrey Levy is one of my Gov 2.0 Heroes.

Listen to Jeffrey Levy on Gov 2.0 Radio.