speak.to

I'm very happy to have seen Barack Obama's hope win over fear in the election, and I'm looking forward to his Inauguration here on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. The Inaugural's theme of A New Birth of Freedom comes from the Gettysburg address.

A week of festivities is planned, and there's huge demand for the 240,000 tickets to the close-up area at the Swearing-in Ceremony, but the entire Mall will be open for the crowds of 1.5 million people that are expected (about 100,000 were estimated at Bush’s second inauguration in 2005). Just in time for Inauguration Day, the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Lincoln Bicentennial will have special events as well, so it's sure to be an exciting time in DC.

Obama's transition team has established the change.gov website, to provide anyone a "Seat at The Table." It's great to see that the site uses Creative Commons Licensing, giving visitors more freedom to use content from the site. The site makes information, videos, and policy documents available, and invites comments and uploading of your own materials for the transition team to review. This suggests a new type of open dialog from this administration.

In putting his administration together, Obama says he's looking to include people with a variety of views. I think that's great, and it's a big change from the Bush administration. He's appointed experienced people with a variety of opinions, who are not shy about expressing them, and that seems to bear this out. Details of the transition and appointments are available on the Obama Administration page at Wikipedia.

Everyone won't be happy with all the appointments, but the hope and change that have been Obama's themes can help out a lot here, and in general. I've been talking with people online from around the world, and everyone seems to share in the optimism and excitement.

For example, on the International Relations forum on Orkut, I found a topic called Top Job for Zionist under Obama: Change? Sindbad, a friendly Muslim guy in Bangalore, India, who created the topic, was very cynical about the appointment of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. But I found it wasn't hard to encourage him, based on the hope and change that Obama represents, and on how a former Israeli could benefit the negotiations and therefore Palestinians. I really enjoyed the conversation, even though it included some other noisy characters. We talked off-and-on for two weeks, with Sindbad at first saying "he won't be any better than Bush," but then at one point, "I get your point totally. I wish what you are saying comes true." He was still skeptical, but more optimistic, and we became friends.

Of course, Obama's not perfect, and he'll have a tough time meeting all the over-blown expectations. But it's hard to imagine being more hopeful about the change we'll see on Inauguration Day. I can hardly wait.