- Blog
- Profile
- Homepage
-
Getting RHoKed in Philly
This past weekend, civic hackers gathered at the new Drexel ExCITe Center for the latest installment of the Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon in Philadelphia. In addition to a new location for this latest installment of RHoK, the event was organized by TechnicallyPhilly (in previous years, TechnicallyPhilly had been a collaborator and supporter of the…
-
The App Economy and Government as a Platform
Most people in the civic technology world have heard of the concept of “government as a platform” – the term famously coined by Tim O’Reilly several years ago to describe the application of Web 2.0 concepts to government. I talk to people in municipal government about this concept on an almost daily basis, and I…
-
An SMS-Enabled Polling Locator
This is a great weekend for civic hacking. Daylight Savings Time has given us an extra hour, advances in telephony application development have made it dead simple to build text messaging applications and Google has given us the Civic Information API. With an election on Tuesday, I wanted to build a quick application that demonstrated…
-
Open Data: Beyond the Portal
One of the most visible statements a government embarking on a new open data program can make is the selection of an “open data portal.” An open data portal provides a central location for listing or storing data released by a government for use by outside consumers, making such data more easily discoverable. A portal…
-
Data Driven Startups
It’s been almost 10 months since I wrote a post on this site about steps that governments can take to encourage and support civic startups, and over 2 years since my first post on the connection between open data and entrepreneurship. It’s really cool to see high ranking public officials like Federal CTO Todd Park…
-
3 Reasons to Care About Open Data
As CIO for the District of Columbia, Vivek Kundra helped usher in the era of open government by saying that he wanted to “democratize” government data – putting it in to the hands of talented people outside of government that could build useful things with it. Thinking about the hundreds of civic hacking events that…
-
Opportunities for Civic App Developers
There is no shortage of civic hacking events and app challenges taking place. This is a good thing – it demonstrates the health of the civic hacking ecosystem, and the demand for open data to power these apps. However, two especially exciting opportunities for civic app developers seems to also be two of the less…
-
Mid-Atlantic Osmosis
I had the pleasure of attending the UnWIREd conference in Baltimore this past weekend, and got a chance to watch people that love their city engage in a productive dialog about how to make it better. I have lots of friends in Baltimore, and attending civicly-focused events there is always fun because of the passion…
-
Creating the Commons
“Building a culture of collaboration and participation is a key ingredient to making innovative programs work in cities.” Listen to an interview I did recently for Gov20 Radio on municipal collaboration and innovation.
-
From “Zero to Civic” in 5 Minutes
One of the most powerful things about open government data is all of the options it enables. Open data is the single most important ingredient in civic apps, and it can also power visualizations, mashups and countless other civic uses. The very best open data typically lends itself to several different kinds of uses. When…
Civic Innovations 