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Practical Hackathons: Free is not Always Better
This is the first in what I hope will be a series of posts with practical advice for organizing and running hacking events, particularly those focused on building civic apps and using open government data. These posts will lead up to, and (hopefully) follow a talk I’m giving at SWSWi in March discussing the outcome…
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Open Gov, Open Data, Open Doors to New Business
Great article in TechPresident today about San Francisco’s efforts to start a civic accelerator with Code for America, and what other cities are doing to implement the same idea in their own way. Government 2.0 geeks will no doubt find the news exciting and look to San Francisco as a beacon illuminating the way forward…
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E-Mail Makes a Comeback
As a communication medium, I think e-mail is making a comeback. Don’t call it a comeback; I’ve been here for years. – Ladies Love Cool James I realize this seem patently ridiculous to anyone working furiously towards a state of inbox zero, or that struggles to maintain a reasonable number of unread e-mails in their…
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Will A Lack of Procurement Reform Smother Civic Startups?
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post listing five things that governments can do in 2012 to encourage and foster civic startups. Though the month of January is not yet over, we now an interesting case study developing in the City of Chicago that highlights the overwhelming importance of one of these five items…
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The Next Big Thing: Open311 Inquiry API
Earlier this month, Philip Ashlock of OpenPlans published a nice Open311 “wish list” for the new year. There is a lot of exciting stuff on this list, and Phil’s thoughts are sure to be the basis for lots of innovative and interesting work in 2012. When people think about the “Open311 standard” they typically think…
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Civic Hacking and Unconference Events
This is a busy week in the world of civic hacking and unconferences, with events going on from the Mid-Atlantic to the South Pacific. This Saturday in the Washington DC – Baltimore area, there is Transportation Camp (put on by the good folks at OpenPlans) and CreateBaltimore 2 (put on by the Greater Baltimore Tech…
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Interview on Gov 2.0 Radio
I had the pleasure of talking with Allison Hornery of Gov20Radio this weekend on civic hacking, civic startups and open government data. You can listen to this interview here. 2012 is going to be a big year for civic hacking and I make some fairly strong assertions about what we’ll see this year in terms…
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Do Hackathons and Civic Hacking Matter?
There are lots of smart people asking tough questions about civic hacking and hackathons as the new year begins – a new year that promises to see lots of action on the civic hacking front. I think this is a good thing. The more we examine how civic hackathons work and the more we evaluate…
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What Does A Civic Startup Look Like?
In my last post, I made reference to some of the qualities of civic startups – the special and important things about these kinds of small, agile companies that set them apart from other startups. I think clarifying what civic startups are (and what they are not), as well as what we expect them to…
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Five Things Governments Can Do to Encourage Civic Startups
2012 is shaping up to be the “Year of the Civic Startup.” With the growth of the open government movement and more and more governments embracing open data, we see an increasing number of useful civic applications being developed. Every weekend hackathon spawns multiple projects that could potentially live on as a successful venture or…
Civic Innovations 