Stephen Tall, editor-in-chief of Liberal Democrat Voice, will be joining Iain Dale, Mick Fealty and Craig Elder in our panel session on blogging and social media.

Stephen, 32, was a Liberal Democrat city councillor in Oxford between 2000 and 2008, serving as Deputy Lord Mayor and the city’s executive councillor for finance. He was awarded the inaugural Lib Dem ‘Blogger of the Year’ prize in 2006 for his blog A Liberal Goes A Long Way.

In the same year, he was shortlisted for the New Statesman’s New Media Awards in the Elected Representative category. Stephen has written articles for, among others, The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, Parliamentary Monitor, the Politico’s Guide To Political Blogging In The UK, and Liberal Democrat News. He appears frequently in the media, including BBC1’s The Politics Show and Question Time Extra, BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme and The Westminster Hour, BBC Radio 5’s Pods and Blogs, and internet TV station 18DoughtyStreet.com. By day, he is Director of Development for the University of Oxford’s libraries, including the Bodleian.

Craig Elder, Online Communities Editor of the Conservative Party, will be taking part in the panel session on blogging and social media at Government 2010.

The panel session will be chaired by top UK political blogger Iain Dale.

Over the past three years Craig has worked on a range of diverse online projects including Webcameron, the Stand Up Speak Up interactive manifesto site, the first ever policy launch webcast in UK politics and the 2008 relaunch of the Party’s online campaigning platform, Conservatives.com.

More recently, along with continuing to develop the Party’s social media presence, he has worked on the “live rebuttal” of the 2009 Budget using Google Adwords and the publication of the Shadow Cabinet’s expenses in an open, re-usable format.

Craig blogs regularly at http://www.craigelder.co.uk and can be found @craigelder on Twitter

Ed Vaizey MP

Ed Vaizey, Member of Parliament for Wantage & Didcot, and Shadow Minister for Culture, will be speaking in Dominique Lazanski’s G2010 session focused on Internet regulation. 

Ed was elected as the Member of Parliament for Wantage and Didcot in May 2005. Since November 2006, he has been the Conservatives’ Shadow Minister for Culture, looking after arts and broadcasting policy.

Born in 1968, Ed attended Merton College, Oxford. When he left university, he spent two years working for the Conservative Party’s Research Department, before training and practising as a barrister.

In 1996, he left the law, and became the director of a highly successful public relations company based in London. In 2004, he left to become the chief speech writer for the then Leader of the Opposition, Michael Howard.

Ed also built up a career as a freelance political commentator, writing regularly for The Guardian, and appearing on programmes such as Despatch Box and The Wright Stuff, as well as broadcasting frequently on Five Live.

Ed married his wife Alex in September 2005, they live in a village near Wantage and in London with their son Joseph and daughter Martha.

Ewan McIntosh

Ewan McIntosh will be chairing our discussion on open data and mashups.  This session will also focus on how government departments and local authorities are embracing web technologies to enhance government service provision. 

In addition, citizens and non-profit groups are now also building rich applications themselves – often for a fraction of the cost.

Web sites are also evolving and embracing new open source tools and applications.  All of these issues will be discussed in this session. 

Ewan helps people understand how emerging technologies such as social media, mobile ubiquitous computers and gaming can help them learn better, work better and live better.

He currently works for Channel 4 Television Corporationʼs Innovation for the Public Fund, as Digital Commissioner for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Previously, Ewan worked in the world of education, latterly as National Adviser on Learning and Technology Futures for Learning and Teaching Scotland, the education agency responsible for curriculum development, and a member of several advisory boards, including the Channel 4 New Media Education Advisory Board.

As a teacher of French and German in the high school sector and an educational technologist working with children aged 3-18, he frequently gives talks and workshops around the world, trying to find new and better ways of using emerging technologies in education.

Ewan has also consulted for Governments around the world, and organisations including the BBC, British Council, General Teaching Council of Scotland, RM and Scottish Enterprise, advising on how social media can be harnessed for to improve learning in the organisation, leadership and communication.

More information and previous talks are available on his website:

http://www.ewanmcintosh.com, and you can follow his take on current trends on his regularly updated blog: http://edu.blogs.com

Gordon McKenzie

Gordon McKenzie, Managing Director of Microsoft’s Local Government Business Worldwide, will join the Government 2010 panel on government service centres, chaired by Jeffrey Peel. 

Gordon worked in the IT Industry with IBM and Unisys in Financial Services before joining Microsoft in 1994 to head up their Scottish Operation. With the establishment of the new Scottish Parliament he became an advisor to the government, helping to establish modern technology at the heart of its operations pioneering webcasting and petitioning as primitive forms of e-democracy.

More recently he has taken on the role of lead for Microsoft’s Local and Regional Government activities, and is the creator of the Microsoft Citizen Service Platform, which is designed to help governments serve citizens and businesses more effectively using the standard Microsoft platform and tools.

This role involves consulting with and designing for many local governments and partners who supply services to them and currently Gordon  is working with the Microsoft product groups to establish what the next version of the platform needs to provide to support the many different local government scenarios such as compliance systems, next generation contact centres, and social computing uses.

His particular interest is seeing how cities differentiate themselves through using technology to compete for and attract resources, improve their sustainability and quality of life, and involve the whole community in their strategies. 

Outside of work he is a keen cyclist and enjoys the occasional ‘sportif’, having completed the ‘Argus’ several times and most recently parts of the Tour Down Under as well as some of the stages of the Tour de France.

Microsoft LRG Web Resources:

Community Site:  http://www.citizenserviceplatform.com

Microsoft CSP Site: www.microsoft.com/csp