Michael Friis' Blog

Last fall, I wrote a chapter for a book titled “State of the eUnion”. My chapter is called “Democracy 2.0” and is about how sites like Folkets Ting, OpenCongress and TheyWorkForYou get built and what features should go into them. The other chapters are about the challenges and possibilities of governments and the Internet in general. They are written by people like Tim O’Reilly, Lawrence Lessig and David Weinberger — very humbling company. You can download a pdf or buy a copy on Amazon.

The whole Folkets Ting business has turned out rather well (even though the site is not currently updated — we’re working on it!) and I’ve been invited to speak on a few occations. Some of the talks were recorded, and in the interest of self-agrandissement they are included below in chronological order (except for the last one).

Short interview at Halvandet, the day before Reboot11 started:

Talk at Reboot11:

Talk (in Danish) at HeadStart morning inspiration-session in Århus:

Short blurb (in Danish) on what I think about the usefulness of public data at the ODIS conference:

Speech on “Political Data API” after a project of mine won a competition promoting reuse of public data (winners were announced at the conference mentioned above):

You can watch the same video with slides here

And finally, a non Folkets Ting video where I talk about TEDBot, recorded at the “Berlin in October” un-conference:

I’ve created a new web site on Danish politics in the tradition of The Public Whip and OpenCongress (although it’s not yet nearly as good as those guys). It’s called Folkets Ting and comes with a complimentary blog (both in Danish). Go check it out.