Chris Messina talks about the Open, Social Web

Hello, innovators and collaborators! I am am the newest member of the HASTAC staff (as Cathy wrote on Monday). I have spent much of my first week getting to know the people and tools that will help me do my job as the next Director of New Media Strategy. I thought I'd kick off my blog here with a presentation by one of the people who has shaped my own thinking about the Internet and how it can serve the greater good, Chris Messina. Chris was one of the developers of CivicSpace, a specialized version of Drupal based on the innovations of the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean.

CivicSpace was what made me finally take the leap and start to learn more about Drupal, which is the platform behind the HASTAC web site and many others that hope to build powerful communities of users. Chris is also a leader in the movement to open Internet users' data so we can control our own information and manage our personal networks how we'd like. I hope to write more about that stuff (open source, microformats, open ID, and open standards in general) in the future. Meanwhile, please let me share Chris' latest thinking on The Open, Social Web as presented at the annual NetSquared conference. (NetSquared is a great event, which I had the pleasure of attending in 2006 and 2007.)