We’ve just completed the first day of public launch here at OpenCongress — welcome to everyone reading. Thanks to everyone who helped spread the word about our launch by blogging about our site, and especially to everyone who wrote in with feedback and suggestions, please keep it coming: writeus@opencongress.org.

Every day, our Congress Gossip Blog will highlight useful news and blog reporting from around the web and offer summaries of Congressional actions. Today, I wanted to start out by recommending five ways in which you can use OpenCongress to track the issues you care about and help build public knowledge about Congress. (We’re quite clearly big fans of RSS feeds as a timely and convenient way to track the latest actions in Congress… visit our About RSS page for pointers on how to subscribe to RSS feeds.)

First, find your Congressperson and Senators here on OpenCongress, and subscribe to their RSS feeds to stay in touch with them.

Second, subscribe to the RSS feed for the most viewed bills, so you can keep on top of what’s most buzzed-about on the web.

Third, browse through the Issue Areas and pick one that matters to you, then subscribe to its RSS feed so that you’ll know when relevant bills are in play.

Fourth, look around in the most viewed bills or your chosen issue areas and find a bill that interests you, then write a blog post about it that includes the bill’s official title (for example, “H.R.800”). A link to your blog post will likely soon appear in the blog coverage of that bill on OpenCongress.

Fifth, take that blog post and suggest it as a link to be featured on on the open-submissions Congress Gossip Blog.

For more recommendations on the ways that individuals and organizations can use OpenCongress as an easy way to follow the latest legislative maneuvers, visit our page, How To Use OpenCongress.

We’ll be writing more soon about our first day of public launch. We’re excited to have opened our doors.

(Photo of the Capitol Dome by dbking)