This Saturday, Feb. 22, join San Antonio’s Code for America (CfA) Fellows and your fellow citizens at Rackspace headquarters for the local installment of CodeAcross, a “national event bringing people together to make their city better.”
CfA Fellows Maya Benari, David Leonard, and Amy Mok are already hard at work with City staff, including Chief Technology Officer Hugh Miller and Kevin Goodwin, assistant director of the City’s Information Technology Services Department, learning about city services and systems and listening to ideas for making things better. Follow along with them on their blog at www.techzans.com.
Founded in 2009, Code for America (CfA) is a national nonprofit that partners with local governments and citizens to foster civic innovation.
By working to reinvigorate civic participation, accelerate the civic startup marketplace, facilitate collaboration between government leaders, and build new tools that enhance and strengthen communities, CfA is helping governments solve old problems in new ways.
But they also want to hear from San Antonians about what kinds of data they’d like access to and what kinds of applications they’d like to see developed. They’re inviting everyone – technical expertise not required – to share thoughts about how San Antonio can use technology to make the city better.
“Beyond Transparency” is the theme for the day on Saturday. After the Fellows introduce the program and share some sample applications other cities have developed through their CfA engagements, we will hear from city officials, and Rackspace Data Scientist Maggie Giust.
Then comes lunch provided by Rackspace, after which participants will brainstorm possible projects. Participation (and lunch) is free, but please register for the event at www.eventbrite.com.
For more information on Code for America, watch Founder Jennifer Pahlka’s TED talk: codeforamerica.org/TED.
*Featured/top photo by Kara Gomez, Open Book Studios.
Related Stories:
Code for America Fellows Connecting Citizens and City Hall
Embracing Broadband: The Future of the Internet in San Antonio
San Antonio’s High Speed Network Still Untapped
Local Startup: Pipeline for Tech-Savvy Foreign Workers
Change Agents in Residence: An SA2020 Implementation Accelerator
If people have the initiative then they’ll go and provide their support and input but if our own people can’t organize and create apps without outside support then what’s the point.
We can’t stand on our own two feet so we will allow others to stand for us.