By Dianna Dauber, AmericaSpeaks

Tuesday night, I had the honor to watch the President’s State of the Union address live from the White House. Following the speech, I was invited to stay and participate in a Town Hall style meeting with Senior Administration officials.

The Town Hall was moderated by Kalpen Modi (of “Harold and Kumar” and “House” fame) and live-streamed at whitehouse.gov. For about an hour, the panel took live questions from the audience, and from viewers who submitted their questions via Facebook and Twitter. I was impressed to see that the questions from the audience were randomly chosen and not pre-screened.

The panelists were Ben Rhodes, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting; Brian Deese, Special Assistant to the Presidents and Deputy Director, National Economic Council; Roberto Rodriquez, Special Assistant to the President for Education Policy and Sarah Bernard, Director Online Research, Office of New Media.

You can watch the Town Hall here.

Getting the opportunity to directly connect with decision makers was a pretty amazing and meaningful experience for me. The panel answered questions fully and gave valuable feedback regarding the White House’s plan to reach some of the goals President Obama spoke about in his speech. An emphasis was also placed on youth concerns.

Questions ranged from the budget, to foreign policy, to education and jobs. Thanks to a viewer who submitted a question over Twitter we also learned that Secretary Salazar was the cabinet member who stay at the White House during the SOTU.

As part of their ongoing public engagement initiative, the White House is still taking questions from the public today – Thursday – about the State of the Union Address.

Here is today’s schedule:

• 11:30 a.m. EST: Economy Roundtable with Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.  Submit your questions through MSNMoney, Mint.com, and Examiner.com.  Tune in to WhiteHouse.gov/live to watch the live event.
• 1:00 p.m. EST: Foreign Policy Roundtable Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor.Submit your questions through ForeignPolicy.com, Economist.com, and Military.com. Tune in to WhiteHouse.gov/live to watch the live event.
• 2:30 p.m. EST: Live YouTube interview with President Barack Obama. Submit your questions or vote for your favorite questions at YouTube.com/AskObama. Tune in to WhiteHouse.gov/live to watch the live event.
• 3:15 p.m. EST: Education Roundtable with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.Submit your questions on mtvU, GOOD, BabyCenter, and PBS Teachers. Tune in to WhiteHouse.gov/live to watch the live event.
• 4:30 p.m. EST: Health Care Roundtable with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. Submit your questions on WebMD, AOL Health, Nurse.com, and Medscape. Tune in to WhiteHouse.gov/live to watch the live event.
• Yahoo! Interview with Vice President Joe Biden.  Yahoo! will be sitting down with Vice President Biden asking him your questions on Thursday afternoon. Go to Yahoo! to submit your question and check back again to see his answers.

Get all the details here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/01/26/got-questions-about-state-union