I spent this past week at the second annual Code for America Summit, a showcase for Code for America 2012 projects and a meeting of the minds for the Gov 2.0 community. Code for America has been getting a lot of well-deserved press this past year, in part because of the amazing work they’ve done in just two years and also because of founder, Jen Pahlka’s fantastic TED talk. My colleague, Rebecca Petzel, had the pleasure of facilitating a strategy workshop for them last […]
Code for America
Our First Year
Tomorrow, on September 15, 2012, Groupaya celebrates its one year anniversary. It completely snuck up on all of us. We’ve had our noses to the grindstone this whole year, focusing on doing great, meaningful work, on learning as much as we can, on exploring innovative ways to make a greater impact on the world, and on living our values. It’s been incredibly intense and an absolute joy. We all feel very lucky to have had this experience together this first […]
Growing Social Impact in a Networked World
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of participating in the GEO / Monitor Institute conference, “Growing Social Impact in a Networked World.” This was a gathering of philanthropic foundations who are interested in networks: what they mean to their work and how best they can leverage them. This meeting was the culmination of a process that started about four years ago with the Packard Foundation‘s first explorations into networks and with the establishment of a formal community of practice […]
Code for America Summit: The Future of Civic Engagement
As you might expect from someone who’s passionate about collaboration for social good, I’m interested in open government. I always thought that I understood what open government was about: what was possible, what was happening, and why. I get what it means for government to be a platform rather than a vending machine and why open data is about so much more than transparency. What I realized at last week’s Code for America Summit was that, while I may be […]