Student Research in Pierre Wednesday

Eighty-nine students from eight South Dakota institutions of higher learning converge on Pierre tomorrow (Wed, Feb 20) to present findings from their research. From 3 to 6 p.m. tomorrow, legislators and anyone else strolling through the Capitol Rotunda will have the chance to meet the researchers and read and ask about everything from Woody Guthrie's private correspondence to using argon to detect dark matter at the Homestake Lab.

If you'd like a full list of the students and projects coming to the poster session, you can download the session booklet in PDF format from USD. (Of course, it might jsut be faster to drive to Pierre and pick up a copy in person.)

I'll be with the 19-student-strong DSU contingent presenting a little research on "eGovernment" -- i.e., the fun we can have using computers and the Internet to make government work better. That's where my restless heart leads me: no kingdom of heaven on earth, just a citizen-legislator discourse system to help legislators organize all their research and help citizens have a bigger say in what happens in Pierre.

If you'd like to see what I'm working on, you're welcome to look at my online whiteboard. Remember, this is a work in progress, so you'll see a lot of journal articles and wild links, not to mention unedited egghead talk as I try to remind myself what I was thinking of. I'll also work on adding a Web version of my Pierre poster that won't take forever to download. And soon I might even work up an online survey so you all can be a part of the project and provide some input to guide what I'm designing.

In the meantime, if you're in Pierre tomorrow afternoon, drop by the Capitol, say hi, tell me what you think. One of the main principles my research and design are based on is that the government is us, that we citizens are participants, not mere consumers. Just like on the blog, your participation in my research is not just welcome, it's necessary!