“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
Yesterday, close to 75 people took their sunny Saturday afternoon to come together at CityCampDC to put their bright minds to work on some of the city’s hardest problems. To get us started in the right direction, 4 of our city leaders delivered some inspiring insights:
- Bryan Sivak, CTO, DC Government (@bryansivak) – talked about DecodeDC, QR-Codes and a tech incubator OCTO is exploring
- Harriet Tregoning, Director, DC Office of Planning – gave us a sneak peak at the Creative DC Action Agenda
- Steve Morre, CEO, Washington DC Economic Partnership – inspired the crowd to think of new ways to use our city’s physical spaces
- Gloria Nauden, Executive Director, DC Commission on Arts and Humanities – show off some of the projects they’re funding and talk about how getting together with local community organizers drives art creation and grant writing
Peter Corbett, CEO, of iStrategyLabs (@corbett3000) then facilitated what was a unconference style discussion + ideation session + action planning day that will result in a number of civic innovation projects.
Three core areas of opportunity emerged:
- Digital Divide
- Community Organizing
- H Street P0p-Up Lab
Digital Divide
This is a huge issue in DC — while we are up in our cloud, many people either don’t have access or any interest in a computer. While everyone doesn’t necessarily have to have a Twitter account, it’s still important to show everything the internet has to offer. Since this is such a big issue, we zero’d in on things we can do right now to make a difference – and have identified if they’re still exploratory, ready for formalization or are active.
Here are the Digital Divide Project ideas:
- [Exploratory] Explore group buying strategies (i.e. Living Social for Social Good) for donating food, or source thousands of smart phones for the under served
- [Ready for Formalization] Write a formal proposal and plan for a Mobile Tech Education Lab – a concept that Shireen Mitchell and Jill Foster won a Social Citizen award for during the last Apps for Democracy competition. Barring funding – we’ll plan to do a low cost pilot to get feedback and iterate on the concept.
- [Exploratory] Aggregate all the DC Public School technology “wish lists” so we can donate in bulk
- [Ready for Formalization] Peter Corbett is going to reach out to his contact at Intuit to see if their talent mapping software can be applied to the city of DC itself so we can learn who does what, best, in DC.
- [Ready for Formalization] DCWEEK is going to institutionalize their tech/creative pro-bono consulting program so its sustainable
Learn more about what the Digital Divide team discussed:
Community Organizing
Another group discussed Community Organizing and how to build a step-by-step guide using both digital and analog tools to organize people on the local level to connect people on topics such as arts, community maintenance and improvement as well as basic issues like food, health care.
Here are the Community Organizing Goals
- Create a geographical user interface to help communities aggregate neighborhood needs and issues.
- Build guide of how to connect local organizations in neighborhoods and show them how to use digital and analog tools in order to connect people on topics such as arts, community maintenance and improvement as well as basic issues like food and health care.
- Connect the community with tools to create a dissemination of information and build relationships.
Learn more about the goals of the Community Organizing team:
H Street Pop-Up Lab
The third group planned out the improvements for H Street. This project is already underway, as it had been created on the wiki and brought to life in the form of a Pop-up Lab on H Street. Brought to you by dedicated volunteers and the DC government, we’ve transformed an abandoned library kiosk on the corner of H & 13th NE into a community meeting and workspace.
Here are the H St. Initiatives:
- Connect with local businesses and residents to discuss their needs and ambitions for the neighborhood
- Collect the stories of the residents and map the businesses locations and times
- Share the information gathered with the community in way that would give H St. a digital footprint.
Learn more about the H St. project here:
Afterwards, we sent people off into their separate directions to take action with their words. To begin working with the passionate people in their groups to change DC. Since the H Street Pop-Up Lab was open today, about a dozen people gathered to begin connecting and gathering information from the neighborhood. Later an art installation was put into the renovated kiosk as well.
And that, is how we spend our weekend at CityCamp DC. Changing DC, one neighborhood at a time.
