Google hosted a reception for the Gov 2.0 Expo at their DC headquarters, close by to where the Expo was held at the DC Expo Center.   It was mostly a rubbing-elbows sort of a thing, featuring Tim O’Reilly greeting people at the door.

Inside, a number of different Google-based Gov 2.0 solutions were featured.  Not too surprisingly, the ones most-talked-about are generally ones which can mash in some manner of location-aware data – data which can then be ground into & visualized on Google Maps or Google Earth via KML, or which can then allow relevant location or constituency-specific contexts for the data.

Would have been nice if we could have been there with our new KML-based solution for Arlington County.

But I say “not surprising”, as that’s the overall problem that many of these Gov 2.0 solutions are  tackling – how to take mountains of irrelevant, different, unsorted, unusable data that is generated by federal, state & local governments, and turn that into powerful applications which can not only enhance peoples’ lives, but which can also then give relevancy and importance and value (finally) to so many branches of government.

Here are some photos from the reception:

A packed house at the Google Reception.	Tim O’Reilly and Debbie Weil at the Google Reception.

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