From the Editor: The Connectivity Issue

It is my great pleasure to announce that beginning this month PUBLICYTE will be published using monthly themes. Welcome to the Connectivity issue. During September, we will publish stories about how cutting-edge technologies are enabling people in the public and civic sectors to connect with each other and their stakeholders in new and productive ways. These stories span geographically across the country, from Los Angeles to Washington, DC, and from Boston to Atlanta. They also span all aspects of the public sector and civic life, from innovative military research to schoolchildren in underprivileged communities to how Generation Y views their role in the future of America.

The national security apparatus of the United States is often at the forefront of technology research and development — and with good reason. But amazingly, a lot of military war planning takes place in relatively crude “sand tables,” effectively huge sandboxes with 3D models of buildings, troop formations, and the like, that warfighters move around and analyze and develop tactics around. But even that tradition is becoming digitized. Our correspondent Phil West has been working with the U.S. Army on what we might call Sand Table 2.0 — large surfaces that multiple people can touch at once that enable collaborative warplanning within a type of virtual reality. West’s article highlights how a special research agreement between the Army and Microsoft allows the former to take advantage of the latter’s newest technologies before they’re more widely available.

Crossing the country, we’ll be bringing you some news from California. Publicyte is paying a visit to Roadtrip Nation, based in Costa Mesa, a pleasant community in Orange County. From inauspicious beginnings in 2001 as a group of friends hitting the road in a green RV to interview people who inspired them, in the founders’ words, the modern Roadtrip Nation “empowers you to define your own road in life instead of traveling down someone else’s… The Roadtrip Nation Movement exists to support, empower, and encourage individuals who want to define their own roads in life.” Their online videos are extraordinarily popular and valuable for connecting ideas within their community. Read my article on them here.

At this time in American history, perhaps more than ever, the Roadtrip Nation message rings true. America needs entrepreneurs and free thinkers, risk takers and visionaries, particularly from people born after 1980 or so — Generations Y and Z and whomever comes after that. We’ll give you the latest from the Roadtrip Nation founders, particularly about their three-year-old nonprofit educational organization, RoadtripNation.org, which through an innovative curriculum brings resources, insights, and inspiration from the road to middle school, high school, and college students across the country to help point them towards a meaningful life path.

There’s much more. From the best mobile apps for connecting with public sector organizations and information, to an interview with Pooja Nath, the founder of education startup Piazza out of Silicon Valley, to a field report from our Gen Y correspondent Andrea Genevieve Michnik from the #140edu conference in New York, Publicyte is out in the field all around the United States bringing you the most innovative stories about how technology is influencing the public sector and bringing about civic good and social change.

Thank you for reading. Don’t forget to subscribe via RSS or email, become a fan on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter to stay in touch with our content, conversation, and ideas.

Dr. Mark Drapeau

Editor-In-Chief, Publicyte