“Over the last two years, we’ve advanced the open government movement in Raleigh; the CityCamp umbrella needed to grow to include other cities and municipalities in North Carolina. In addition to Durham, Cary, and Chapel Hill, many other cities around the state such as Asheville, contain energetic open source enthusiasts and tech-savvy programmers and designers,” said Jason Hibbets, CityCamp NC Co-Chair.  “The advantage to our Capital City location is close access to State government. CityCamp NC becomes the community launch pad where everyone around the state comes to prototype ideas, make connections, and improve the State of North Carolina.”

CityCamp NC will be held during the work-week, Thursday and Friday, May 30 -31, 2013, followed by a Nation Day of Civic Hacking event hosted by Raleigh’s Code for America Brigade on June 1, 2013. And new this year, CityCamp NC will be held at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library on the NC State University Campus. Annually, the event builds on passionate involvement from volunteers, city and state advocates, local businesses and returning and new sponsors like GoTriangle, North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA), Red Hat, Lenovo, OrgSpan, and WRAL.

“Last years’ experience was terrific. Lorena Akin pitched the idea of a mobile app for greenway users and a few hours’ later six strangers became collaborators, friends and winners,” said Eric Majewicz, member of the 2012 winning RGreenway team. “Our group used open data provided by the City of Raleigh to build an app that lets users navigate and interactively utilize the city’s greenway system.” The RGreenway team (http://rgreenway.com) continues to meet regularly to continue implementing improvements for the original mobile app. To date the app has had 7,000 downloads of the iPhone version and 650 downloads of the Android version.

This year, CityCamp NC will award a top prize of $3000 plus a consulting session with Jason Caplain at Bull City Venture Partners to the winning team. A second and third team will be awarded prizes of $1000 and $500, respectively.

The event kicks off Thursday, May 30^th with Adriel Hampton, VP of Community at NationBuilder, inspiring with ”Be Here Now: Living Open Government” followed by lightening talks, pitches, and unconference sessions where ideas begin to solidify and teams begin to form. Friday, May 31 is a build day culminating with the team presentations and awards.

North Carolina State Senator Josh Stein added, “Government should provide citizens open access to information like transit data so the people can innovate and help improve government’s delivery of services.  CityCamp North Carolina helps our effort to transform and enhance public confidence in government.”

Prior to May 16, the event is $10 to attend and includes breakfast and lunch both days and a CityCamp NC t-shirt. Prior to May 16, the event is $5 for students and government employees (appropriate ID must be shown at the door).  After May 16, the price continues to be $10 ($5 for students and government employees) but breakfast/lunch/t-shirt will not be guaranteed. The event kicks off Thursday, May 30 at 9am [doors open at 8:15am] at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library on the NC State University Campus, and continues through Friday, May 31 concluding at 6pm. Parking is free. The team presentations will begin at 5pm on Friday, May 31.

Register for CityCamp NC 2013.

Visit our updated site: citycampnc.org

In that time there have been 30 CityCamps independently organized BY YOU in
25 cities across 8 countries and 5 continents:
http://citycamp.govfresh.com/cities

Always a fun time to scroll back through the Introductions thread…
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/citycamp/messages/topic/5tikRb8TaKCI4ba31BLrH3

…and look way back on the CityCamp Tumblr:
http://citycamp.tumblr.com/page/7

Citizens interested in maintaining and monitoring their favorite City of Raleigh bus shelter now have a helping hand: the Adopt-A-Shelter interactive web application. Adopt-A-Shelter instantly displays the adoption status of all city bus shelters. Code for Raleigh, a recently formed Code for America brigade in Raleigh that includes volunteers from CityCamp Raleigh, deployed the application for use in Raleigh.

Code for Raleigh advocates for existing applications and technology created by Code for America, a national non-profit focused on improving government through technology. Code for Raleigh has recently deployed an Adopt-A-Shelter application at adoptashelter.raleighnc.gov highlighting 184 shelters available for adoption in Raleigh. Citizens can easily sign up for a one-year commitment to help keep Raleigh bus shelters clean for Capital Area Transit (CAT) riders.

“It’s an interactive way for residents to see which bus shelters have been adopted,” said David Eatman, the City’s transit administrator. “We are delighted that citizens from Code for Raleigh have stepped up to offer this technical resource to encourage participation in this City program.”

Code for Raleigh recently entered their Adopt-A-Shelter application in a Code for America Race for Reuse campaign. Only five weeks remain to promote the project and increase the adoption rate. Code for Raleigh hopes to have 20 new shelters adopted by December 6, 2012 to meet their success criteria.

“We think we can double the existing adoption rate from twenty to forty adopters during the campaign,” said Jason Hibbets, a Code for Raleigh brigade captain. “Over the next five weeks, we hope to drive awareness about the bus shelter adoption program and host a civic-athon on December 1 to sign-up new users, add new features, and create Triangle Wiki pages about each adopted shelter.”

There are a few key dates and milestones to be aware of during the Race for Reuse campaign. Code for America brigades across the United States will set campaign goals by Friday November 16. An “engagement day” and civic-athon scheduled for Saturday, December 1 would foster new users and address bug and feature requests to the application. Raleighites can sign-up to attend the event.

The campaign ends on Thursday, December 6, and the Raleigh brigade aims to have the existing twenty adopters included in the new online program and add at least twenty more adopters by the campaign deadline.

• Application URL: http://adoptashelter.raleighnc.gov/
• Event URL: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/4808312793

About the Adopt-A-Shelter Program

The City’s shelter adoption program began in September.  Adoption requires maintaining the shelter. Those wishing to participate in the initiative can assist in removing trash in and around the shelter area on a monthly basis. City of Raleigh staff will provide adopters with trash bags, disposable gloves and safety vests to assist in the trash removal around adopted shelters. These volunteers also are asked to notify City of Raleigh staff of any special maintenance needs and report vandalism or suspicious activity.

About Code for Raleigh

Code for Raleigh is a Code for America brigade whose mission is to deploy, maintain, and sustain civic technology and open data infrastructure in Raleigh. The brigade is a volunteer group that is part of a national network of civic advocates. Code for Raleigh aims to bring citizens, city government, and businesses together to openly innovate and improve our quality of life through technology. Existing projects include Triangle Wiki, a free, openly-editable, community-centric website for local history, media, and interesting characters. The brigade was formed in October 2012 by CityCamp Raleigh volunteers.

About Code for America

Code for America helps governments work better for everyone with the people and the power of the web. Founded in 2009, Code for America held its inaugural fellowship in 2011 with 19 fellows and three cities. Through the fellowship program, Code for America provides an opportunity for the web generation to give back by connecting developers and designers with cities to work together to innovate. Code for America has grown, and now connects 26 fellows and eight cities. The Code for America Accelerator, launched April 2012, will support disruptive civic startups, and The Code for America Brigade helps organize hackers locally to reuse and deploy civic software. Code for America is reimagining government for the 21st century.

Smaller governments, typically those in rural towns, don’t have the IT capacity to foster serious innovation in citizen participation like governments in larger cities do. Two groups decided it was time to give back and have come together to share their technical knowledge and expertise: OpenColorado and Colorado Code for Communities will combine community, platform, and digital literacy to create a hosted service platform that includes open data with different web and mobile applications.

OpenColorado announces adopt-a-city program

The announcement of the adopt-a-city program was made this year during CityCamp Colorado on Friday, October 26th in Denver. To kick off the program, the goal is to adopt at least two cities in Colorado over the next year and stand-up infrastructure that will encourage citizen engagement.

“What we’re looking to do is give back to the rural communities. The ones that grow our food, drill for our oil, and power our cities,” said Brian Gryth president and co-founder of Open Colorado.  ”It’s time for us to give back to those cities with our expertise and technology.”

Code for Communities building a human-driven platform

Colorado Code for Communities, a Code for America Brigade in Denver, has big plans for 2013. They want to deploy eight apps by the end of the year, such as Adopta, add 400 new datasets to opencolorado.org by September, and get two regional communities in Denver to pass an open government directive.

As for this year, the brigade hopes to complete development of two apps that came out of the Code for Communities hackathon this summer, by December.

“Code for Communities is about building a human-driven platform that can exist independent of any one person or organization,” said Jason Lally, Colorado Code for Communities brigade captain and Director of the Decision Lab at Placematters. “Technology is not an end but a means to solving community problems in the 21st century. The only way we’re successful is if this effort is owned by many partners and individuals.”

Endpoint.co and OpenBike demos

Demonstrations of other applications developed at the Code for Communities hackathon were given at CityCamp Colorado during the afternoon portion. First, was endpoint.co, a data normalization system providing information about the characteristics of your neighborhood through an API. The purpose is to get information such as crime data, demographics, and other available open data integrated for easy user consumption. “We take big data and make it simple to use,” said William Golde, endpoint.co evangelist.

OpenBike was another app, currently under development, introduced by developer Michael Lockwitz. It’s an interactive biking platform combining quantitative, open data with qualitative, user-provided data for characteristics such as safeness, beauty, and difficulty of routes. OpenBike was originally dubbed Team RadRoutes and it started because the group was looking to solve an absence of information problem for the biking community.

Colorado Code for Communities has some lofty, yet achievable goals. And it will be exciting to watch them make progress and share their open source and open data knowledge and expertise across Colorado and beyond.

Extras from the community

For more information about other projects and a recap from the previously held hackathon, see Jason Lally’s post: Civic hackathon inspires competition, collaboration around planning and sustainability apps in Denver region.

Examples of the spirit and energy at CityCampCO this year include a storify by Michele Hovet and watch this man sing the Chinese national anthem.

See our pictures on Facebook.

Bonus material

• Michele Hovet, Deputy City Manager for Arvada Colorado and CityCamp vet, put together a great Storify of the event.
• Michele, Scott Primeau, and I also talked to Kristy Fifelski of GovGirl on How to Host a CityCamp? which highlighted CityCamp Colorado. Find the GovGirl video.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This event, the third annual CityCamp Colorado, will again bring together community leaders, government employees, technology experts, and citizens to share ideas to enhance government transparency, citizen participation, and accountability. The overall goal is to create solutions to support more informed, healthy, and livable communities. Over 150 people are registered to attend CityCamp Colorado, which will be held in the Atrium of Denver’s Wellington E. Webb Building.

The Webb Atrium is a wide open public space, which will make for an engaging and accessible camp. “The Webb Atrium will give both attendees and the public a glimpse into civic innovation in Colorado” OpenColorado President Brian Gryth said.

Starting at 8:30 AM, we will host breakfast for Denver Startup Week. At 9:00 AM, we will kick the day off with coffee and inspiration with Ignite CityCamp Colorado. The Ignite will celebrate ideas and innovations that are transforming our communities. We have seven presenters who will provide thought fuel for our day. Denver Councilwoman Robin Kniech and Chuck Fredrick, the City of Denver Chief Information Officer will then take the stage to make remarks about the future of Denver government.

At 10:30, Brian Gryth, OpenColorado Preseident, and Jason Lally, the Leader of Colorado Code for Communities, will announce the 2012 Roadmap: an aggressive plan to kick start a transformation of Colorado government.

We will also have demonstrations from several groups showing off civic websites and mobile applications that are improving Colorado communities.

More information about the event is at opencolorado.org/citycamp-colorado/.

Attendees were allowed to give 1-minute pitches for ideas, workshops, or projects. There were over 30 pitches Then attendees voted on their favorite ideas. We had five rooms with sessions starting every hour from 10am-4pm. One room was dedicated to TranspoCamp. (Okay, so we started a little late and the first two sessions were at 10:30 and 11:30, but we made up time during lunch.) The group gathered back at 12:55pm to go over the contest rules and address any questions. Then afternoon sessions started and teams started forming.

By the 4:00pm deadline, we had ten teams submit their project ideas. The concepts range from neighborhood story telling to open standards, a greenway application to developing a community health score, a mobile gaming idea for discovering more about Raleigh to searching various Raleigh resources in one place. And of course, QR codes. By the way, we have two teams with elected official on them. Maybe a first for any CityCamp worldwide.

Elected officials enhance CityCamp Raleigh 2012 experience

During Friday’s session, we had eight elected officials attend. Seven from Raleigh: Mayor Nancy McFarlane and City Council members Bonner Gaylord, Thomas Crowder, Randall Stagner, Mary Ann Baldwin, Russ Stephenson,  and Eugene Weeks; One from Cary, Town Council member Lori Bush who was on the government perspective panel and offered some great insights from just over the Raleigh border.

On Saturday, several elected officials returned and were very active during today’s sessions. Mayor Nancy McFarlane and City Council members Bonner Gaylord, Thomas Crowder, Mary Ann Baldwin, and Russ Stephenson. Stephenson even pitched an idea about community health scoring that attracted 20 people to a morning session. Attendees were excited that our representatives were so engaged during the unconference and stayed for most of the day.

We tried to document as many sessions on TriangleWiki as we could. If you attended, please add your notes to the appropriate wiki page.

June 3 Agenda

Below is the agenda for Sunday, June 3, the final day of CityCamp Raleigh 2012. This is our civicathon/collaboration day. The $5,000 prize will be awarded to the best idea. And the best idea will be judged on the following criteria:

1. Feasibility: The ease with which the City would be able to implement the team’s idea.
2. Creativity: The novelty of the idea and presentation.  Presentations that plagiarize the work of others will be disqualified.
3. Execution: The level at which the team has been able to develop the technological application or solution during CityCamp Raleigh.  Submissions of products that were already in development prior to CityCamp Raleigh will be disqualified.

We’re back at the AIA building (address below). Doors will open at 9:00 am. Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee will be served for breakfast. We’ll provide space for teams to collaborate. Team presentations will start at 3:00pm. Each team will be given five minutes with one minute for questions and answers. We encourage anyone interested to come watch the presentations.

Agenda

• 8:30 am Registration opens, breakfast is served
• 9:00 am Teams get to work, Triangle Wiki community gathering
• 12:00 pm Lunch (Keep working, yo!)
• 3:00 pm Presentations to the group and judging panel
• ~3:45 pm Judging panel thinks hard…
• ~4:00 pm Winner announced
• Celebrate, high fives, pictures, next steps

Raleigh, NC—CityCamp Raleigh announced the second annual, city-focused “unconference” that unites government, business, neighborhood, non-profit, and academic communities to create next-generation solutions for Raleigh. The event highlights the power of participation, promotes open source in local government and explores how technology can increase government transparency and participation. All citizens are invited to participate either before or after the conference by posting suggestions and ideas on the CityCampRal.org homepage under the ‘Submit Your Topic’ header.

“Last year we proved that CityCamp is a worthwhile endeavor and saw first-hand how innovative ideas can come from anyone in our community. We advanced the open government movement in Raleigh by bringing together technology professionals, citizens and local government,” said planning committee co-chair Jason Hibbets. “Proof of our success is in the passionate involvement we have from so many volunteers, city advocates, local businesses and returning and new sponsors like Alfresco, Red Hat, WRAL, and Salesforce.com.”

“The innovation and collaboration fostered at CityCamp Raleigh is indicative of the high level of citizen participation and quality of community and government interaction,” commented Mitchell Silver, Chief Planning & Development Officer and Planning Director for the City of Raleigh, and CityCamp Raleigh Government Panel moderator. “The first CityCamp Raleigh had a substantial effect on the local community.”

Here are some of the ways the first CityCamp Raleigh was an inspiration or catalyst in helping to advance open government and create next-generation solutions locally:

• The Raleigh City Council unanimously approved a resolution stating its intent to foster “open” government by encouraging the use of open-source systems and open access to data.

• City Councilors agreed to provide $50,000 annually to fund an open data catalog. Raleigh city data will be digitally published and made ready for use by city residents, software developers or news outlets.

• City of Raleigh website visitors can now sign up for a free service called MyRaleigh Subscriptions that delivers email and text alerts about topics such as street closings, public meetings, city projects, and events.

• Help spur the TriangleWiki project – a free, openly-editable, community-owned website that gathers first-hand information on local history, events, greenways, parks and everything interesting related to the Triangle region.

Matt Miszewski, SVP of Public Sector for Salesforce.com, will be participating on the business panel this year. “As the former CIO for the state of Wisconsin, I’m passionate about open government, open data, and using open source as an economic engine,” said Miszewski, “Having participated in CityCamp events in London and Boston, I’m excited about the collaboration and discussions at CityCamp Raleigh to advance innovation in city government.”

Speakers at the event include DeLisa Alexander, Chief People Officer, Red Hat, Inc.; Jimmy Goodmon, VP/GM, Capitol Broadcasting New Media Company; Gail Roper, Raleigh Chief Information and Community Relations Officer at City of Raleigh; Lori Bush, Cary Town Council at-large representative; Kevin Curry, Code for America and CityCamp co-founder, to name a few.

Eight teams presented at last years’ CityCamp Raleigh to compete for the $5000 prize. Consistent with the 2011 event, the $5000 prize this year will be awarded on creativity, execution, and feasibility. Jason Horne, one of the winners from team Open It Up last year, is looking forward another opportunity to make a difference. “It’s not just the prize, though that was nice – it’s about a team of strangers coming together over three days to collaborate on a solution to help our community.”

The event is free to the public and kicks off Friday, June 1st at 1pm [doors open at 12pm, event starts at 1pm] at Vintage 21 downtown Raleigh, 117 S. West Street, and continues Saturday and Sunday, June 2-3, 2012, in the AIA building at 14 East Peace Street, Raleigh. Expect a similar format from the first CityCamp Raleigh. Day one begins with government and business panels. And – new this year – a lightening round of five-minute varied local interest presentations hosted by Ryan Boyles of Ignite Raleigh. The “unconference” format begins on Saturday from 9am – 5pm when solution exploration begins, and teams begin to form. Sunday from 10am – 3pm groups can gather for more workshops and collaboration before team presentations begin at 3pm.

CityCamp Raleigh participants provide input and share experiences on crime, trash, transit water/sewer, property taxes, streets (potholes, curbs), storm water management, parks and recreation, and other issues. Public engagement enhances the government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Citizens are invited to share input as early as today at citycampral.org.

Follow us on Twitter @CityCampRal or #ccral

Visit our Facebook page www.facebook.com/CityCampRal

Admission free, but space is limited http://citycampral.eventbrite.com/

Sponsors include Alfresco, Red Hat, Inc., Salesforce.com, Runtime Expectations, and WRAL

On Friday, June 1, we are planning on having two panels focused on how open source and open government are applied to civic participation and to business. Then, if we can pull it off, an inspirational lightning-talk session to leave attendees fired-up for the rest of the weekend.

On Saturday, June 2, we will kick off our unconference–where the agenda will be determined by those in attendance. Folks will pitch ideas to start off the morning, several workshops will be hosted, and teams will start to form around ideas on how to improve civic engagement or other civic-minded needs in the City of Raleigh.

On Sunday, June 3, teams will collaborate on solving a civic issue that can improve the quality of life in Raleigh. Simultaneously, CityCamp Raleigh will host a Triangle Wiki content sprint to add pages, images, and ideas to trianglewiki.org. At 3pm, teams will present and CityCamp Raleigh will award one winning team with a cash reward.

If your are interested in sponsoring, planning, or participating in this years CityCamp Raleigh visit citycampral.org for more details. We look forward to shaping the future of our city with you. Be sure to mark your calendar for the first weekend in June when together, we will make change happen the open source way. Registration for the event will be opened in early May.

From February 24 through March 4, passionate citizens around the country will come together to “Code Across America” – to make their cities even better. In over a dozen cities, there will be hackathons to build civic apps, “brigades” to deploy existing apps, unconferences to plan for the year ahead, and meetups to strengthen the community. Five of these cities are CityCamp cities. Check out details of what’s going on and where it’s happening below.