About

Alexander B. Howard is the Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, where he reports on technology, open government and online civics.

In addition to corresponding for O’Reilly Radar, writes for the Huffington Post, Govfresh, and has contributed to Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Forbes, the National Journal, CBS News’ What’s Trending, Govloop, Governing People, the Association for Computer Manufacturing and the Atlantic, amongst others. Quite a few people know him as “@digiphile” from his use of Twitter.

Howard is a frequent speaker and moderator at O’Reilly Media conferences and many other events in Washington and beyond, including the Web 2.0 Summit and Expo, the U.S. National Archives, D.C. Week, Social Media Week, SXSWi, Strata, GOSCON, AMP Summit, Tech@State, and the State of the Net. I’ve also spoken at the American Academy for Arts and Sciences, NIST, Club de Madrid, Cato Institute, the National Archives and the Social Security Agency. In 2011, he acted as Visiting Faculty at the the Poynter Institute.

Before joining O’Reilly Media, Howard was the associate editor of SearchCompliance.com at TechTarget. His work there focused on how regulations affect IT operations, including coverage of data protection, electronic privacy, security and enterprise IT strategy. For the first two and a half years of his career at TechTarget, Howard was the associate  editor of WhatIs.com, an online IT encyclopedia. In that role, he researched and wrote about nearly every aspect of enterprise IT.

Howard’s previous work experience also includes working in operations for an e-business consultancy, as a knowledge broker for a management consulting firm and (very briefly) as a garde manger at an outstanding Italian restaurant. Howard has taught middle schoolers about technology, coached high school tennis, been apprenticed to master builders and maintained the websites of various nonprofits, restaurants and small businesses in New England. He has designed marketing and sales presentations, edited energy research articles and reconciled accounts receivable for an environmental remediation firm.

Howard graduated from Colby College in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in biology and sociology. He sang a cappella there and spent time developing his interests in reading, fishing, cycling, gardening and hiking, along with a few games of Marathon, once the Macs were connected by Ethernet.

Howard is a native of Alleghany County, near the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. He moved to Philadelphia at 8, went to college in New England and, after brief sojourns in Brazil and Baltimore, settled in the Boston area in 1999.

In 2009, he moved to the District of Columbia with his greyhound, fiancee, power tools, plants and growing collection of cast iron pans, many of which are frequently used to pursue his  passion for good  cooking.

In his spare time, he practices writing about himself in the third person, with mixed results.

You can follow Alex on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn or friend him on Facebook.

Note: If you decide to connect or friend on either of the latter two  services, please introduce yourself in from a previous professional or personal context.

The view expressed on this blog are his and his alone. They do not reflect the opinions of his employers, clients or Dutch uncle.