@deborah909 @shava23 @colinrhinesmith @sarahebourne @corbett3000 @gtremblay

Tomorrow morning, I will head up to Boston to attend #gov20ne, an unconference about using social media tools and Web 2.0 technologies to create a more effective, efficient and collaborative government.

It has been a long time since I put up a Follow Friday post, and I thought this might provide a good reason to do so. The way I do my Follow Friday posts is that I write it as a blog post, with the people I’m following in the first line. This then gets picked up by TwitterFeed and sent to Twitter, and from there to Facebook, FriendFeed and who knows where all else.

This week’s list is of people that have signed up for #gov20ne that I know already or seem particularly interesting.

I’m not sure exactly when I met @deborah909. I believe it was at some gathering of technologists interested in non-profits. She is an interesting person and I always enjoy seeing here.

I think the first time I met @shava23 face to face was at a Media Giraffe Project gathering. However, there is a good chance that we had met previously in Second Life and perhaps other places online. She also ranks high on my list of interesting people that it is fun to run into.

@colinrhinesmith and have been emailing back and forth about community media and citizen journalism. In a recent discussion we tried to figure out if we’ve actually met, and if so, where. I think we may have met at some of the Media Giraffe Project or New England News Forum gatherings. Not only do I look forward to seeing him at #gov20ne, but I am especially interested in what he is arranging for the Alliance for Community Media National Convention in Pittsburgh this July.

I don’t believe I’ve met @sarahebourne. She is the Mass.Gov Chief Technology Strategist for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I believe she was involved in getting @Massgovernor on Twitter and I started following her through as a result of that. She may also be friends of some of my social media friends from Massachusetts, which may have been how I found out about @Massgovernor being on Twitter in the first place.

@corbett3000 is the CEO of iStrategy Labs. He has been involved with Apps for Democracy and #gov20dc. I don’t believe we’ve met but we may have crossed paths online.

@gtremblay works in the Commonwealth CTO's office. His name is really familiar to me, but I can’t place exactly why. The odds are we are on some mailing lists in common or something like that.

Of course, some of what is really interesting about unconferences is the unexpected encounters. It will be great to see Deborah, Shava and Colin again, as well as hearing what Peter and Glenn have to say. However, some of the most interesting discussions may just well come people who I don’t know yet.