We note that the remarks we made on the need for technology and science education for children in public schools, through high school did not receive placement in the final letter. We implore you to add some stronger wording on this issue in particular. We are not still at the Conference but we were there for the tutorials and the first conference day, so we were at the kickoff dinner. We wrote our comments but were not there to defend their inclusion in the final draft. (This should be an interesting lesson in the problem of electronic participation.) CoyoteOldStyle 13:33, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
We can't tell from our vantage point, away from the conference working remotely, why this specific list of topics was picked or what the advantage is of having omitted various other topics rather than creating overarching topic areas that would have embraced them. To our knowledge, a sample list of topics was not posted for comment online for us to comment on before being finalized. For example, a category which is spanned these topics:
- Improving the teaching of math/science/technology in primary and secondary education
- Improving economic assistance for students pursuing technology careers
- Cost reduction in public schools through better use of technology
It doesn't seem obvious to us where these issues would get discussed in the letter you've proposed. It seems that part of the issue of online discussion is the issue of exclusion, and that every attempt should be made to create places that these things would be discussed. In my personal case, I wrote an essay (which was admittedly not accepted) for YJoLT saying I thought that environmental impact of technology was really the only issue of relevance in the discussion at all, since if we don't solve the environmental crisis, all of the rest of these issues won't matter. And yet there is no place allocated in your list of topics for a public discussion of
- Use of networking to collaborate on climate change
- Government role in assuring access to correct public information about climate change
- Issues relating to use of computer technology to reduce resource use such as email instead of postal mail, use of telecommuting to avoid having to drive to work, etc.
It's understandable that the form of your letter, authored by a group, is not the same form as a letter I would write myself. But it would be nice if the form of your letter proposed a place in which discussion of these critical issues would occur. --Netsettler 13:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Indeed! I edited slightly ...[]
We did have education as a bullet under "access to technlogy and knowledge"; I expanded it to include "technology education in and outside schools".
JonPincus 13:55, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
And in terms of the specific topics[]
Thanks much for the feedback.
There were a huge number of excellent topics covered in the Wednesday evening session. We decided to focus initially on those we covered at the conference, rather than a general "technology policy" discussion. We hope that others will take similar approaches for the other equally-important areas around technology policy, including climate change, space exploration, visa and immigration policy, etc.
As I said in my previous reply, we intended education issues to be covered under "access to technology and knowledge". It's certainly possible that we'll decide to add another letter specifically focused on this -- which is why we said "the topics we'll be discussing include ..."
I do agree that we didn't manage to have much online discussion between Wednesday and now. As I said Wednesday night, it's the first time we've done this, and so it's a good learning experience. For the letters on specific topics, we'll have a noticeably longer time frame, and will be getting much broader involvement.
JonPincus 14:10, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Jon. Maybe in the future an event can be specifically planned to more substantively include remote participation, actively planning in points in time allocated to publishing ideas for comment and receiving ideas in a timely way for inclusion. It's easy to think that the technology will just automatically work, but even just synchronization events like two people updating a wiki at the same time and getting conflicts can be quite frustrating. A blog scales better, but it isn't as textually organized. A report on the open issues and how they affected us might be useful as a list of open problems requiring research work. I have to go to work now, so this will be my last post until you're probably packed up there at the conference yourself. Have a good day. Best wishes to all at the conference. --Netsettler 14:21, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Better remote participation is very definitely a goal for CFP '09 - and agreed that the technology doesn't "just work". We'll encounter a lot of similar challenges in the DearPotus08 project ... more chances for learning experiences!
JonPincus 14:34, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Is there a Status Report?[]
Thanks for your hard work, Jon. What's the status of the letter? I don't see a plethora of signatures either here or on the Blogspot page. Did you end up just circulating paper copies? Take care! CoyoteOldStyle 02:28, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
We circulated for signatures on paper at the final session; I then fell to sleep and didn't add them until today :-) (There were also a few that I can't read and we're going to try to disambiguate.) We'll be sending mail out to all CFP attendees and encouraging them to sign as well. I updated the main Dear Potus 08 page with more on the next steps as well ... JonPincus 13:37, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Database Locked?[]
I went to edit it and wanted to add my signature
- Jocelyn Pitman, CFP attendee
but the database was locked. --Geekchic17 17:09, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Fixed now. --Geekchic17 17:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)