Breaking News: There’s Bad News and then there’s Good News…

The Breaking News….

First there’s the bad news

As some of you might already know, I was due to fly to Washington DC on April the 20th and 21st after winning FutureGov’s contest to attend the Politics Online Conference. However some last minute personal complications has presented itself and I am now no longer able to attend this conference. Though its great to know that FutureGov’s Michelle Lyons is still attending the POL conference to report back all those important juicy details.  And of course through the beauty of Twitter’s backchannel on #POL09, I will also be reporting on the event from the UK through a special post on my blog based on Michelle‘s tweets and other #POL09 conference attendees in Washington DC. So please look out for it!

Hopefully I will also be able to conduct an online interview either before, during or after the conference with Julie Germany, the Director of IPDI and Director of Marketing and Communications at the GSPM who is also organizing the event. Julie has been an absolute *STAR* to me and FutureGov in helping to line up the interviews with key individuals at the conference. It saddens me that things have turned out the way they have but I’m sure Michelle and Julie will keep us updated on what will be going on at the #POL09 conference. A ‘Big Thank You’ to Julie for being such a great host. I really hope to catch Julie sometime in the near future!

Then comes the good news!

The Great Recovery…

FutureGov has however been so kind to offer me another opportunity that is equally rewarding in New York City. This event is the Personal Democracy Forum Conference which will be taking place on the 29th and 30th of June.

So even though I’m really gutted that I could not make it to the Politics Online Conference, I am optimistic, excited and looking forward to the Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York City. Thank you Dominic Campbell, Michelle Lyons, Carrie Bishop and Justin Kerr-Stevens (the brilliant people at FutureGov Consultancy)! So hope everyone will stay tuned and look out for my tweets from the PDF Conference at the end of June 2009.

Speakers of the PDF Conferernce will include: David Almacy, former White House internet director under President Bush; Gina Bianchini, co-founder of Ning.com; danah boyd, Microsoft Research; Bev Godwin, director, USA.gov and web best practices at U.S. General Services Administration; Jeff Jarvis, blogger and author of What Would Google Do?; Vivek Kundra, White House CIO; Cyrus Krohn, former e-campaign director of the Republican National Committee; Craig Newmark, founder and customer service representative of Craigslist; Beth Noveck, author of the forthcoming book Wiki Government; Mark Pesce, digital futurist; Maria Teresa Peterson, executive director of Voto Latino; Frank Rich, New York Times Columnist; Joe Rospars, Obama ’08 new media director; Nate Silver, founder of fivethirtyeight.com; David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous; Michael Wesch, assistant professor of cultural anthropology, Kansas State University; and Randi Zuckerberg, director of market development at Facebook, plus many more to come.