The Open-Source White House
A couple of weeks ago, Tony Hsieh, also known as @zappos on Twitter, sent this Tweet to his almost quarter million followers:
Meeting at White House tomorrow to discuss ways to help economy that administration may not have thought of yet. What are your suggestions?
139 characters and an open invitation to offer your ideas for economic recovery to the White House. At first, it was interesting to see that the CEO of an online shoe company founded only 10 years ago was being called on to share his ideas with the new administration. Also, while he may have taken some liberties here, the way he positioned his meeting — “that administration may not have thought of yet” — implied that the administration was open about the fact that they may not have all the answers and are looking for outside ideas to spark discourse and new ways of thinking. Most significantly, however, was that Hsieh was offering to take ideas from his Twitter followers and submit them to decision makers in the White House.
I could not help but see the parallels here between this approach to government and the open-source software philosophy. Much like open-source, the foundation for governance was laid down, but it had also been opened up to the outside world. The administration started this process by inviting Hsieh, but social media finished the job by enabling him to connect with his audience to solicit ideas.
It’s a huge shift in how we think about a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” that will hopefully spread throughout various areas of government and even business … even if writing the solution to our economic recovery in 140 characters (or even 140,000) may prove to be a bit challenging.