We just posted this morning on the Civic Commons blog that our founding Executive Director Andrew McLaughlin is now moving on to take a totally awesome job atTumblr, and that I’ll be moving into the ED role at CC as of today. It has been great working with Andrew since Civic Commons launched in May (and by “launched”, we mean, “launched with funding”, as we’ve been developing the idea for much longer than that).  It’s been a real honor to work with him, and I’ve learned a lot about how to approach the vision, strategy and management of an organization with ambitions of high impact.  Andrew has a ridiculous background, with extended stints at ICANN, Google, and the White House, and frankly, I’m proud that we were able to squeeze Civic Commons in there between the WH and now Tumblr :) But in all seriousness, I couldn’t be more excited for Andrew’s next move — Tumblr is one of my favorite web platforms.  Not only did it singlehandedly ignite my personal ability to blog, it has also helped to demonstrate that social web platforms can be mobilized for incredible civic purposes.  I’m a firm believer that the future of the Civic Web is as much about making our social apps more civic as it is about making more civic apps.  And it’s clear that Tumblr has the ability to lead the way here. As for what’s next here at Civic Commons: we’ve accomplished a lot in our first seven months — from working with many government entities to open-source internal applications, to growing the Open311 project — an open web standard that facilitates citizengovernment communications, to working to open up the civic technology marketplace.  Perhaps more importantly, we’ve learned a lot about what’s hard and where we think our real opportunity is, and are refocusing our efforts to best reflect that. More on that in the coming days and weeks. So, to Andrew: thank you, and here’s to an amazing new frontier.  To our team, partners and collaborators at Civic Commons, let’s get busy taking it to the next level.

We just posted this morning on the Civic Commons blog that our founding Executive Director Andrew McLaughlin is now moving on to take a totally awesome job atTumblr, and that I’ll be moving into the ED role at CC as of today. It has been great working with Andrew since Civic Commons launched in May (and by “launched”, we mean, “launched with funding”, as we’ve been developing the idea for much longer than that).  It’s been a real honor to work with him, and I’ve learned a lot about how to approach the vision, strategy and management of an organization with ambitions of high impact.  Andrew has a ridiculous background, with extended stints at ICANN, Google, and the White House, and frankly, I’m proud that we were able to squeeze Civic Commons in there between the WH and now Tumblr :) But in all seriousness, I couldn’t be more excited for Andrew’s next move — Tumblr is one of my favorite web platforms.  Not only did it singlehandedly ignite my personal ability to blog, it has also helped to demonstrate that social web platforms can be mobilized for incredible civic purposes.  I’m a firm believer that the future of the Civic Web is as much about making our social apps more civic as it is about making more civic apps.  And it’s clear that Tumblr has the ability to lead the way here. As for what’s next here at Civic Commons: we’ve accomplished a lot in our first seven months — from working with many government entities to open-source internal applications, to growing the Open311 project — an open web standard that facilitates citizengovernment communications, to working to open up the civic technology marketplace.  Perhaps more importantly, we’ve learned a lot about what’s hard and where we think our real opportunity is, and are refocusing our efforts to best reflect that. More on that in the coming days and weeks. So, to Andrew: thank you, and here’s to an amazing new frontier.  To our team, partners and collaborators at Civic Commons, let’s get busy taking it to the next level.