Overall it was an easy read. Technology is treated as too much of a panacea in my opinion, but some of the barriers he mentions are legitimate. When he sticks to topics he is more familiar with (the government side of the engagement coin) he does much better than when he speaks of technology, in my opinion. ( )

A solid 4.5 filled with great anecdotes and very little self aggrandizement and self promotion. ( )

One of the sweetest moments in what is a wonderful paean to community, collaboration, and the technology that can help foster those two critically important elements of civilization comes when Gavin Newsom, in the acknowledgment section at the end of the book he has written with Lisa Dickey ("Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government"), offers "thanks to all government workers whose work directly and indirectly impacts all our lives each and every day...." Citizenville effectively and convincingly promotes the idea of individual community members collaborating with each other and their colleagues in government to produce positive change. More importantly, it pushes us toward an approach that already fosters levels of engagement in playful ways: transferring our love of game-playing for virtual results (as exemplified by FarmVille) into a form of game with more rewarding real-world results. Newsom is explicit about the challenges we face in attempting to use technology to increase citizen-government collaborations: "The sad truth is that the history of government is a history of technophobia" (p. 6); government workers often collect magnificent amounts of useful data without working to make it accessible (p. 22); government agencies are much better at attracting constituents to one-time events than to encouraging long-term involvement (p. 115); and "...government isn't interested in solving problems so much as managing them" (p. 220). That's not a situation, he suggests, that is sustainable: "No one foresaw that sea change for newspapers, but in hindsight it had to happen. The same is true for government. It's hard to predict exactly how this will unfold, but it's absolutely inevitable that the relationship between people and government will change. If nothing else, the changing expectations of new generations, weaned on smartphones and the Internet, guarantee that we can’t just continue with business as usual" (pp. 174-175). The playfulness inherent in Newsom's "Citizenville" model has certainly found its way into many local efforts, and if implemented by others, will help us continue to produce positive results rather than falling into the destructively nonproductive trap of complaining about government. ( )