The Sunlight Foundation demonstrated during the Health Care Reform Summit 2010 that open government data can allow journalists, bloggers and citizens to provide context to a live news event.

As officials testified,’Sunlight provided a live feed which displayed lifetime campaign contribution data, as well as’Twitter and blog commentary’all on the same page, which can be seen to the right.

At least 50,000 users tuned in to the page.’Participants were encouraged to join the blog conversations and to tweet about the summit, which is the only feature on the Web site that remains active.

The Sunlight Foundation would love to hear what you thought about Sunlight Live. Fill out a survey here. A Knight Foundation grant to Sunlight Foundation is helping create “widgets” content providers can use to provide data on members of congress, including their votes, budget earmarks, campaign contributors and more.

Poynter released an article on news organizations, such as Sunlight,’covering live events like health care summit with immediacy and depth. Check it out.

‘ Marly Falcon, Knight Foundation contributing blogger