The League of Technical Voters held a 48 hr programmer's lock-in last month in Austin to help jump start the development of their web community. Silona Bonewald founded the LOTV to hook techies up with legislators and their staff so that legislators could make smarter laws about technology.

I covered the story for KUT News, which you can listen to here. (It never aired, but went straight to their website).

You can also view video from the event here:
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3

Bonewald found that at a state level at least, legislators are looking for ways to keep tabs on online technical conversations relating to their bills, as well as whitepapers from the community, among other things. The programmer lock-in began the process of designing and coding up a web community to help fill those needs.

The idea is to help legislators work collaboratively with the tech community to make laws that make sense. In the report, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales thinks the LOTV may have a chance at reaching their goal. However, technical understanding may not be enough. Gary Chapman, from the 21st Century Project at UT, explains why.