Open Source Government In San Fran?

It was only a matter of time, but San Francisco has opened up it's information pipeline in a more accessible fashion to the fine residents of this city. For people in the ad biz, 'open source' is not a new term. A former client of mine is an open source platform for creatives. An advertiser can submit a proposal to an online community (a similar user interface to Facebook), and people from all over can collaborate to submit a project to the advertiser. A director from LA could find a guy with a green screen in Burbank, while their graphic designer for the new logo is in San Fran.

Wikipedia defines open source as "the creative practice of appropriation and free sharing of found and created content."

Long story short, the idea has come to the business of running SF....

courtesy Fast Company

It's a good thing Gavin Newsom checks his Twitter feed during meetings. Otherwise, San Francisco's mayor would've missed a life-changing missive about ... potholes? "It really made me wonder," he says. "What if we used social media to make our city services work better?" That stray tweet led to the city's first-of-its-kind Twitter account (@SF311), which encourages residents to send queries and messages about nonemergency issues. But it also underscores the city's open-source stance on government. Just as Google, Facebook, and Twitter released their programming interfaces to app makers, San Francisco opened its arsenal of public information -- train times, crime stats, health-code scores -- to software developers. "There's a tremendous amount of tech talent here," Newsom says. "We'd be fools not to leverage it." To date, more than 140 data sets have been liberated, spawning roughly 30 smartphone apps, such as Crimespotting (browse interactive city-crime maps), Routesy (see real-time train schedules), and EcoFinder (locate the nearest recycling spots). But San Francisco's open-source stance doesn't stop at the city limits: In February, it launched an idea-sharing site, which blueprints everything from citywide health insurance to banning plastic bags. And in March, it released the API for its 311 city-service center. Boston; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and Washington, D.C., have already pledged to adopt the new standard.

Will Customers Understand The gPhone and Android?

Driving into work today, my buddies and I were discussing a coworker, who was at the time standing in line to get the new iPhone. He was making the switch from the Blackberry, and had vowed months earlier to never buy the iPhone. And now he is the first in our office to get the 3G. It wasn’t a huge shock; he works in digital and is a tech savvy individual.

But I started thinking of all the iPhone users who have really struggled to get hold of all the functionality the iPhone offers, as well as adjust to its interface. Apple is the king of user friendly, so it isn’t shocking when you see Baby Boomers dragging their fingers across the iPhone screen. But there has been a grace period for folks to get used to the gadget in their hand.

The expected mayhem of today’s 3G release got me thinking about Android and its future with any potential customers who don’t really understand the system. While driving to Southern California last week to celebrate July 4th, somehow or another a friend and I got to talking about the cell phone market and the gPhone. She is close to completing her education to become a nurse. She is an unbelievably smart young woman, but isn’t in the tech/digital world. After I did twenty minutes on open source and the ideas behind it, she had the glazed look of a media buyer getting trampled by a salesman pounding them with worthless information about reach and “breadth and depth.” Maybe my explanation was off or too long winded, as I tend to be, but the big idea of open source went straight over her head.

So back to my original question (man, it took me awhile to circle back); will the average consumer be aware of the control and power an open source platform like Android offers? Or will it simply fly over their heads and they’ll use it as they would their Motorola Razr? Having not seen the final interface for Android, it’s hard to speculate on how friendly it will be to the non- techie customer segments. But a part of me is very curious if the impact will be as great as it can be or is expected to be. I work in digital and I love gadgets, and even I want to go on a mental diet when reading about the latest open source platforms and gizmos that engineers are working on. It’s not an easy topic at all to wrap your head around, so trying to package it up into a small communication device like a cell phone will be quite a feat.

So Google, give us your best. You’ve done well at capturing Joe American so far. But will you finally get too smart for the average customer? Will they come running the way they do for your email client and shared calendars? Or will they shy away, sheepishly admitting that they just don’t get it. Time will tell.