On the first full day of his presidency, Barack Obama issued an executive memo calling on the government to become more transparent, participatory and collaborative. He wrote:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Of course, public participation is a two-way street. That's why, today, Personal Democracy Forum is proud to announce that we are partnering with a cross-partisan coalition of old and new media in launching "Ask the President," an open, collaborative, participatory forum where anyone can post a question and vote up their favorites. Our lead partners, The Nation magazine and The Washington Times, have committed to send a credentialed journalist to every presidential press conference armed with a list of the top citizen-driven questions, aiming to ask the President at least one generated by the public.

Italian media consultant Antonella Napolitano summarizes her experience with 10domande, a project similar to our own 10Questions, an online-only debate in which voters uploaded video questions to the presidential candidates, and the public voted on their favorites (if you need a reminder of what 10Questions was all about, check out our summary of the project).

The story behind the voting on Round One, with our explanation of how we checked for ballot-stuffing. And yes, some people did try to cheat, but it didn't affect the results.

We've posted the top ten questions for the candidates, and already, one of them, Mike Huckabee, has answered!

We've just added Mike Huckabee to the list of participants in 10Questions. He joins John Edwards and Ron Paul as the confirmed participants; we look forward to the involvement of the rest of the candidates.

After we finish auditing the top ten videos on the site this Saturday, November 17 (voting closed yesterday), the candidates will be free to be post video responses. Look out for their video responses soon!

Voting on 10Questions closed yesterday with a huge surge in participation...and a number of last-minute submissions, including one that appears to have climbed into the top ten. And that raises an important question, was the process fair?

It's the last day of voting on 10Questions.com, and the big question is, will we make it over 100,000 votes?

One day to go in Round One of 10Questions! As we prepare for the candidates' responses in Round Two, developer David Colarusso gets some love from the press.

With two more days and a handful of hours to go, 10Questions is continuing to enjoy a healthy level participation and interest, including a handful of important, if quirky, questions.

As we head into the final stretch of Round One of 10Questions, we’re hoping to add a bunch more videos to the mix.

TechPresident blogger and 10Questions co-sponsor (via CultureKitchen) Liza Sabater is leading a 10Questions meetup Sunday afternoon in New York, and Morra Aarons of BlogHer is encouragin readers to submit as well.