My Gigabit Bid

Okay, I'm submitting my Gigabit bid. If you like it, vote for it on the Gigabit Genius Award Google moderator page. It should be one of the most recent ones. This was adapted from a post a few days ago. For more information on the grant, go here.

Summary:

Set up a system where residents could access their desktop and files over the internet, from any computer. Offer a service that rents out netbooks that come configured to connect to the system. For visitors, it would serve as their portable guide to the city. For residents, it would serve as their city dashboard. And for students, it would enhance their classroom materials.

My Take on Gigabit City Ideas

The deadline for submission of ideas to the Gigabit Genius Grant is nearly here (it was extended, at some point, to June 30). I've looked through the submissions (all 158 of them, so far) and there are a few that I like.

Some are good ideas but very vague, some of the ideas are very science fiction, and some have very little to do with high-speed communications at all, but all's good in the name of generating initial ideas.

One thing I notice is that so few of the ideas link to any place where they provide more information, which is a shame; I'd like to see more depth to some of them. So, for some of the ones I liked that didn't have much further explanation, here's my take.

Philly Software for Citizens Brainstorming Meeting - Thoughts

So, before I forget what happened, over the next couple of days I have to record my thoughts on the brainstorming session that took place tonight at IndyHall.  I'd normally post this kind of stuff on a more personal blog, but this was, after all, a public meeting.  Forgive me if the thoughts are a little stream-of-consciousness.

Philly Software for Citizens Brainstorming Meeting

I'd like to see a community in Philadelphia that is concerned with the effective creation and distribution of software that allows city residents/citizens to better use and affect their city.  This partly came out of a report that I put together for a class that I took in the Spring.  The report was called "Phillyware: Taking Philadelphia into the 21st Century through Software Developer Civic Involvement".

Anyway, I'd like to get more people in on generating ideas for what this should look like.  So, I'm planning a brainstorming session.

The flyer:

The invitation:

Event Page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=124590897575130&ref=mf

Please come and join Philadelphia software developers, designers, and technology advocates in discussion about creating a place for developers to innovate around software tools that can better enable residents to use and affect their city.  Let's brainstorm what this could look like, some potential roadblocks, logistical considerations, etc.

Consider three aspects: community engagement + developer innovation + political advocacy = Software for Citizens*.

What: Philly Software for Citizens Brainstorming Session

Where: Independents Hall, 20 North 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA

When: June 24th, 6:30 PM

Why:

• To keep local government and authorities accountable in the data they release and in how they release data
• To allow Philadelphians to think ahead of the curve about what their city can be
• Because we ARE citizens
• Because it'd be fun (you know it would!)

Some possibilities for discussion:

• Periodic [un]conferences around those three areas
• A community around a project repository (like Gnome.org, but around OpenPlans.org, for example)
• Meetings with Philadelphia community groups
• Camps/Hackathons (like in Ottawa: http://opendataottawa.ca/)
• Bring your own ideas...

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* "Citizens" in this case isn't political; it just refers to participating members of society. See the Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=131677170182058) for more information.