Open gov communities, hackathons, and Google Plus

...I've found myself hanging out more and more on GovLoop lately. It's a social network for the government community focused on connecting people and sharing information. It boasts more than 45,000 members, and I'm happy to be a part of the community. I first learned about GovLoop at a CityCamp event earlier this year. Now that I've become more active in the community, I wanted to share a few topics from GovLoop that you might find interesting.

First, there's 10 Reasons Why City Governments Should Embrace Hackathons by Carl Webb. This reminds me of CityCamp, where citizens, techies, and govies come together and solve problems, but focused on a particular issue. New York City hosted a hackathon to reinvent NYC.gov. The event aimed to pit the government and technology communities against a shared challenge: a new website for the city. It also served as an initial step for a more transparent design process to recreate the website together....