Alex Howard, Fellow, Columbia University

Alexander B. Howard is a writer and editor based in Washington, DC. Currently, he holds a fellowship at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, is a columnist at TechRepublic, founder of “E Pluribus Unum,” a blog focused on open government and technology, and contributor to TechPresident, among other fine publications.

Howard has been recognized by The Washingtonian Magazine as one of Washington’s “TechTitans,” calling him a “respected trend-spotter and chronicler of government’s use of new media.” He has appeared as on-air as an analyst for Al Jazeera English, WHYY, Washington Post TV, and a guest on The Kojo Nnamdi Show on NPR multiple times. Howard is a member of the Government of Canada’s independent advisory panel on open government.

In the fall of 2013, he was a fellow at the Networked Transparency Policy Project in the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. From April 2010 to May 2013, he was the Washington Correspondent for Radar at O’Reilly Media.

Prior to joining O’Reilly, he was the associate editor of SearchCompliance.com and WhatIs.comat TechTarget, where he wrote about how the laws and regulations that affect information technology are changing, spanning the issues of online identity, data protection, risk management, electronic privacy and IT security, and the broader topics of online culture and enterprise technology.

Howard has also contributed to the National Journal, The Daily Beast, NextGov, Forbes,Buzzfeed, Slate, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, Govfresh, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable,TechPresident, CBS News’ What’s Trending, Govloop, Governing People, and the Association for Computer Manufacturing, amongst others.

Howard has been a keynote speaker, moderator and panelist at conferences in Washington and beyond, including the Web 2.0 Summit and Expo, Gov 2.0 Summit and Expo, Social Media Week, DC Week, SXSWi, Strata, GOSCON, AMP Summit, Tech@State, CAR/IRE, the State of the Net and the Open Government Partnership’s annual conference.

He also delivered remarks or moderated discussions at Harvard University, Stanford University, Columbia University, New York Law School, Alfred University, The Mona School of Business at the University of The West Indies, The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), The U.S. National Archives, NIST, The Club de Madrid, The Cato Institute, The New America Foundation, The World Bank, and the U.S. Social Security Administration. In 2011, he was Visiting Faculty at the Poynter Institute.

You can connect with him online in many other places, including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr,LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Google+ and his personal blog.