Thanks for the recap and observations. This event was full of excitement and enjoyable interactions and I look forward to the next. I observed the same phenomenon you mentioned about the tendency to focus too narrowly. For example, in our discussions meant to center around privacy and security many folks really just wanted to talk about twitter etiquette. Oh well, that is to be expected in a dynamic environment like an unconference.

I also think security should have been a bigger focus.

Today the big news item, for example, is http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29935591/ which is about more researchers and their findings on chinese hacking. This is not news to IT professionals or government security experts. But to the user community driving web2.0 type capabilities we see little to no indication of awareness of security. In fact, during the introductions of people at the first day of Gov20camp we heard many people say things like “firewalls are bad”. We need to raise the collective awareness of the need for security, especially in a gov2.0 world.

Bob