Philadelphia
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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… Continue reading
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Philly Tech Week Hackathon Recap
On Saturday, April 28th, the 2nd Philly Tech Week came to a close. Like the inaugural Philly Tech Week last year, this weeklong series of technology events and panels concluded with a hackathon focused on open government data and journalism. I gave a brief preview of this event over on the Code for America blog,… Continue reading
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Great Cities and the Shadow of Teotihuacan
Great cities have always had an influence beyond their borders. This is true not only of contemporary cities like New York, Paris and Beijing but also of ancient cities. The influence of Rome can still be seen today in the form of ancient roadways and aqueducts. But whether exporting engineering or religion like ancient Rome,… Continue reading
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A Tale of Two City Hackathons
I had the pleasure of traveling to Austin, TX last week for the SXSWi festival and to present on civic hacking events in Baltimore and Philadelphia. The presentation I gave can be viewed below. There’s also a storify covering my session here (courtesy of @sam_piroton) I had a lot of fun preparing this presentation as… Continue reading
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Storming the City Walls with Code for America
Last year, I wrote about a civic hacking event that took place in Philadelphia at the office of Azavea. The event last year was organized by the team of Code for America fellows working for the year in Philadelphia. Exactly one year to the day later, the latest group of fellows working in Philadelphia held… Continue reading
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Philly Urban Apps & Maps Studio Launches
Yesterday, at the Fox School of Business at Temple University, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter helped launch the Urban Apps & Maps Studio – a civic business incubator that will support the development of software applications to address urban issues in Philadelphia. The video below – by former Code for America fellow Anna Bloom – provides… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
About Me
I am the former Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia. I also served as Director of Government Relations at Code for America, and as Director of the State of Delaware’s Government Information Center. For about six years, I served in the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), and helped pioneer their work with state and local governments. I also led platform evangelism efforts for TTS’ cloud platform, which supports over 30 critical federal agency systems.
Civic Innovations 