A few months ago, I had the pleasure of being part of an event called Hacking Society -- I helped organize the event w/ the folks at Union Square Ventures, and it was a real honor to spend a day surrounded by many of my internet heroes. It's taken us a little while, but we've been working through the transcripts and recordings from the event, and have been piecing together some video clips. Today we posted the first set, and a bunch more will be ready soon. Fred has a post up today about one of them: a conversation about the problem of money in politics, kicked off by Larry Lessig, leading to some brainstorming about how we might hack at the problem. As always, the commenters on Fred's blog are
A few months ago, I had the pleasure of being part of an event called Hacking Society -- I helped organize the event w/ the folks at Union Square Ventures, and it was a real honor to spend a day surrounded by many of my internet heroes. It's taken us a little while, but we've been working through the transcripts and recordings from the event, and have been piecing together some video clips. Today we posted the first set, and a bunch more will be ready soon. Fred has a post up today about one of them: a conversation about the problem of money in politics, kicked off by Larry Lessig, leading to some brainstorming about how we might hack at the problem. As always, the commenters on Fred's blog are
having at it
, so I'll go jump in the conversation there. I've spent a decent portion of the last few weeks listening through the audio from Hacking Society, to the point where I feel like everyone from that day is actually residing inside my head. Which is weird, but also nice. I encourage you to head over there and
Last week at the Web 2.0 Expo, I gave a talk on The Opportunity for Civic Startups. I was filling in for Code for America's Jen Pahlka, and the presentation itself is an hybrid of a version I did at the t=0 Entrepreneurship Festival at MIT a few weeks ago, a version Jen did at Future of Web Apps earlier this year and a version that Andrew McLaughlin has been giving. Here are my slides. I broke it down into two main sections: (1) trends that are setting the stage for civic startups, and (2) models/approaches that civic startups are following. Unfortunately, the timing of the speaker notes on slideshare doesn't match the slides, so the notes are in off by a few slides, but you can get the idea. One of my favorite threads in this story is "the rise of the civic hacker" -- folks who use their coding & product development superpowers to make cities work better, almost always from outside of official channels. The "civic hacker ethic", if you will, is about making shit, and it represents a pretty new way of getting civically engaged -- less about arguing policy or politics and more about building something helpful. What's even cooler is that there are now a solid handful of civic hackers who have parlayed a passion project on the side into a real business or career: Dan O'Neill & Adrian Holovaty with Everyblock, Harper Reed (transit hacker and now Obama campaign CTO), Jon Wegener of Exit Strategy NYC, Joshua Tauber (GovTrack & Pop Vox), Ben Berkowitz of SeeClickFix and many more. And there's more where that came from. I believe that we're just at the beginning of a big wave of civic startups (here's looking at you, Code for America 2011 graduates), and I am looking forward to continuing to follow them, help them, and learn from them.
Next week, I'm heading to Santa Clara for a few days of "big data" at the O'Reilly Strata Conference. I'm really looking forward to it, and expect to have my mind blown several times over. I'm on the program committee for the conference, though I joined late and missed the chance to review proposals, so I'll be coming at it with pretty fresh eyes. The illustration above is from a recent Economist issue dedicated to the subject -- according to the article, worldwide data production has increased nearly tenfold in the past 5 years. It's really hard to fathom the scope of this increase, and I'm excited to spend a few days with a group of people who are at the cutting edge of understanding and managing this space. It seems clear to me that manipulating massive amounts of data is one of the next great skills. A few months ago,
having at it
, so I'll go jump in the conversation there. I've spent a decent portion of the last few weeks listening through the audio from Hacking Society, to the point where I feel like everyone from that day is actually residing inside my head. Which is weird, but also nice. I encourage you to head over there and
Last week at the Web 2.0 Expo, I gave a talk on The Opportunity for Civic Startups. I was filling in for Code for America's Jen Pahlka, and the presentation itself is an hybrid of a version I did at the t=0 Entrepreneurship Festival at MIT a few weeks ago, a version Jen did at Future of Web Apps earlier this year and a version that Andrew McLaughlin has been giving. Here are my slides. I broke it down into two main sections: (1) trends that are setting the stage for civic startups, and (2) models/approaches that civic startups are following. Unfortunately, the timing of the speaker notes on slideshare doesn't match the slides, so the notes are in off by a few slides, but you can get the idea. One of my favorite threads in this story is "the rise of the civic hacker" -- folks who use their coding & product development superpowers to make cities work better, almost always from outside of official channels. The "civic hacker ethic", if you will, is about making shit, and it represents a pretty new way of getting civically engaged -- less about arguing policy or politics and more about building something helpful. What's even cooler is that there are now a solid handful of civic hackers who have parlayed a passion project on the side into a real business or career: Dan O'Neill & Adrian Holovaty with Everyblock, Harper Reed (transit hacker and now Obama campaign CTO), Jon Wegener of Exit Strategy NYC, Joshua Tauber (GovTrack & Pop Vox), Ben Berkowitz of SeeClickFix and many more. And there's more where that came from. I believe that we're just at the beginning of a big wave of civic startups (here's looking at you, Code for America 2011 graduates), and I am looking forward to continuing to follow them, help them, and learn from them.
Next week, I'm heading to Santa Clara for a few days of "big data" at the O'Reilly Strata Conference. I'm really looking forward to it, and expect to have my mind blown several times over. I'm on the program committee for the conference, though I joined late and missed the chance to review proposals, so I'll be coming at it with pretty fresh eyes. The illustration above is from a recent Economist issue dedicated to the subject -- according to the article, worldwide data production has increased nearly tenfold in the past 5 years. It's really hard to fathom the scope of this increase, and I'm excited to spend a few days with a group of people who are at the cutting edge of understanding and managing this space. It seems clear to me that manipulating massive amounts of data is one of the next great skills. A few months ago,
(quoting Zed Shaw) that really stuck with me -- the gist of which is that programming is a great "secret weapon" to apply to your work in another field. I totally agree. So, I'll add that manipulating big data -- a sub of programming in some ways, but an independent field in others -- should be part of every rising undergrad's toolkit. If I could press rewind on my life, there's no question that I'd add computer science (with a focus on data and stats) as a minor area of study, and use it to supercharge my major. I will definitely be posting quotes and photos from the conference at
(quoting Zed Shaw) that really stuck with me -- the gist of which is that programming is a great "secret weapon" to apply to your work in another field. I totally agree. So, I'll add that manipulating big data -- a sub of programming in some ways, but an independent field in others -- should be part of every rising undergrad's toolkit. If I could press rewind on my life, there's no question that I'd add computer science (with a focus on data and stats) as a minor area of study, and use it to supercharge my major. I will definitely be posting quotes and photos from the conference at
