Damian Thorman, National Program Director, shares some insights from the KF Tech for Engagement initiative so far, and highlights some of the key focus areas for collaboration in the future.

In the beginning…there was a sense of experimenting – throw anything out there and see what sticks.  I think today we’re facing a different question.  We’ve got a lot of tools…the question today is how do you take these tools and get them adopted, and how do we articulate the value?

About Damian Thorman

Damian Thorman joined Knight Foundation in 2007 as National Program Director. The National Program supports innovative ideas and leadership with the potential to drive transformative change nationally and in Knight’s resident communities. He helps develop new grant opportunities at a national level that target systemic change within the framework of informed, engaged communities.

Thorman most recently served as assistant prosecuting attorney of the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office in Kansas City, Mo. He founded and ran the Thorman Strategy Group, a consulting practice that assisted foundations, nonprofits and for-profit organizations from 2002 to 2005. He served as adjunct political science professor at Avila College in Kansas City, Mo. Thorman was the director of public affairs and policy at the Ewing Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City from 1994 to 2002. In Washington, D.C., he served as assistant director at the American Academy of Pediatrics, professional staff member of the House Education and Labor Committee, and congressional aide to then-U.S. Rep. Bill Richardson. He also served a brief stint as a reporter for the National Catholic Reporter in Los Angeles.

He has a law degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a MBA from Rockhurst University.

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Episode links and resources

• Knight Foundation
• Tech for Engagement initiative
• Tech for Engagement summit
• Report: Digital Citizenship: Exploring the Field of Tech for Engagement
• Technology for Engagement Manifesto
• Code for America
• Change by us

Accelerating Democracy: Tech for Engagement from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

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Building a culture of collaboration and participation is a key ingredient to making innovative programs work in cities.

Mark Headd talks about his time with Code for America as their Head of Government Relations, and shares some of the emergent learnings from the intersection between the various elements of CfA’s program – the cities, the fellows, the brigade, the commons and now the start-ups.

“The most important thing that cities can do to keep pushing innovation in their cities is to bring in those people closest to them that are products of their own innovation.”

About Mark Headd

Mark has been the Director of Government Relations for Code for America since April 2012, as well as being a writer, speaker and thought leader on communication technologies and open government. He is a civic hacking veteran and a keen builder of civic software.

Mark has also just been appointed the City of Philadelphia’s first Chief Data Officer.

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Episode links and resources

• • Code for America
    • Brigade
    • Commons
    • Engagement Commons
    • Accelerator
    • Fellows
    • Cities
  • Young Rewired State
  • Sheltr

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• Tags: #cfa #civic #innovation

Nick Grossman joins Gov20 Radio for a conversation about civic innovation, including the latest from Civic Commons and how to communicate the benefits of tech-enabled civic transformation to leaders as well as the tech community.

About Nick Grossman

Nick is the most recent Executive Director of Civic Commons, a visiting scholar at the MIT Media Lab in the Center for Civic Media, and an advisor to Code for America.  He’s also been involved with OpenPlans building open technologies for cities and advancing urban and technical policy issues.

Projects that Nick has worked on include Open311, MTA Bus Time, OpenBlock, OpenTripPlanner, TransportationCamp,  Streetsblog, Streetfilms and GothamSchools.

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• The Civic Commons organisation
• Open Plans agency
• Code for America website

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We’re joined by Julio Gonzalez Altamirano from Open Austin and Matt Esquibel from the City of Austin to talk about open government, open data, and civic application development in the city.

A lot of credit goes to the Austin community – the technical expertise and the energy helps the City develop that kind of mindframe as we’re going forward.

About Julio Gonzalez Altamirano and Matt Esquibel

• Julio Gonzalez Altamirano is the founder and a key leader in the Open Austin network, working closely with the City to support greater open govenrment outcomes and mobilizing local citizens to participate in Open Austin activities.
• Matt Esquibel is Programmer Analyst Supervisor for Internet/Intranet Web Design in the Office of Communications & Technology Management at the City of Austin in Texas. Matt has been leading the open government initiatives for the City of Austin, and is the key liaison point with the Open Austin community.

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Episode links and resources

• Interview with Matt Esquibel on GovFresh
• Open Austin website for civic activists and participants
• The new City of Austin website and Open Data Portal

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Hear from Michael P McDonald and Micah Altman of the Public Mapping Project, which is an organization that is using open source software to enable people to create their own redistricting maps and send them to local government for potential adoption. Using a tool called District Builder, citizens can make their own maps based on demographics, voting patterns and legal requirements (among other criteria) and submit them to local government for consideration for redistricting.

Redistricting is a very, very difficult problem – it’s so complex that we know no one person is going to find the optimal solution… having that added crowdsourcing power means we can discover new ways of drawing districts that maybe people just hadn’t thought of before.

About Michael McDonald and Micah Altman

• Dr Michael McDonald is Assistant Professor of Government and Politics in the Public and International Affairs Department at George Mason University, and a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. His research interests include voting behavior, redistricting, Congress, American political development, and political methodology.
• Dr Micah Altman is Director of Research and Head/Scientist, Program on Information Science for the MIT Libraries, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Altman is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. Prior to arriving at MIT, Dr. Altman served at Harvard University for fifteen years as the Associate Director of the Harvard-MIT Data Center, Archival Director of the Henry A. Murray Archive, and Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences.

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Episode links and resources

• Public Mapping project for participatory redistricting
• District Builder software to enable citizens to collaborate on creating redistricting scenarios

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Kevin Curry, founder of CityCamp, talks about Brigade, the new civic tech organizing program he’s heading up for Code for America that seeks to energise the tech developer community across the US to participate in a focused civic application development campaign.

The extended network that Code for America has and then with all the civic hacking communities all over the country… the time was right to catalyse that community and mobilise them into building the civic web.

About Kevin Curry

Kevin Curry is the Program Director for CfA Brigade. He created CityCamp together with CfA founder & ED, Jennifer Pahlka. Kevin is a co-owner of Bridgeborn, Inc. and a graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (BA History, ’92, MS Computer Science, ’99). He is a native of Virginia Beach, Virginia where he lives with his wife, daughter, and two pugs. You can follow Kevin’s work on the Code for America blog.

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Episode links and resources

• Code for America Brigade website
• CityCamp network website

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