Your turn: Take the FCW challenge

All of the magazine’s editorial pages that week will be devoted to contributions from readers like you.

I’ve got a proposition for you, dear readers. In this age of social networking, crowdsourcing and user-generated content, it’s high time to put theory into action. So we’re going to lay our own publication on the line. On June 14, the entire issue of Federal Computer Week belongs to you.

That’s right. All of it.

We are calling out the federal IT community for the “FCW Challenge.” All of the magazine’s editorial pages that week will be devoted to contributions from readers like you. We’ve picked the topic — “What’s Ahead: The 6 Big Questions for the Future of Social Media in Government.” And we’ve picked the questions, which cover social networking, open-government plans, Acquisition 2.0, the IT agenda for government CIOs, the new federal workplace, and cybersecurity.

We’ve also teamed with a partner, the good folks at GovLoop, a social network for government employees. So now it’s time for the 90,000-plus readers of Federal Computer Week and the 27,000-plus members of GovLoop to put their heads together and tell us what’s really going on.

You can do this in a number of ways. Go to www.fcw.com/fcwchallenge to post your comments on any or all of the questions. Or go to www.govloop.com and write a blog post or participate in a discussion group. Don’t waste any time, though.The contributions are already starting to pour in.

After we’ve got a good sampling of ideas and opinions, we will ask thought leaders in each of these topic areas to respond with their perspectives. Then the GovLoop and FCW teams will select the best user submissions for publication in the print edition.

Print is not dead yet, as we are wont to say. But your ideas and exchanges, dear readers, will definitely give our pages a fresh breath of life.

— David Rapp, Editor-in-Chief

drapp@1105govinfo.com