More than a year ago, to help foster the growing community of artists/technologists in the Pacific Northwest, we organized a workshop bringing together key stakeholders in the region, as a collaboration between Microsoft Research, Cornish College of the Arts, and…
First Day at the Data Science for Social Good Incubator
Today is the first day of the DSSG Incubator. I gave a short presentation, including overview of Third Place and recent work informing this project, and got to meet all the students, and start planning the next ten weeks.…
Awarded our 501c3 status
It’s official, we have received our letter of determination from the federal government, we are a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization, classified further as a public charity. As a new non-profit startup this as a very important hurdle to go through, so…
Participting in the Data Science for Social Good Incubator Program
We’ve been selected to participate in the Data Science for Social Good summer incubator program! It’s a really great opportunity for us to work with smart graduate students and faculty at the UW eScience Institute, while sitting side by side with…
Recipient of Microsoft Azure for Research Award
I’m excited to announce we are a recipient of the Microsoft Azure for Research Award, which includes large allocations of Azure storage and compute resources for a period of a year. While at the iConference in March, I saw a…
Innovative Community of Practice and Civic Tech in the Northwest
I gave a couple of talks in April discussing how to foster innovative communities of practice (one at the Cultural Congress hosted by the Washington State Arts Alliance, and one for the e-gov subcommittee of the CTTAB). Here are the…
Welcome to Our New Board of Directors
Perhaps the most important task in founding a new non-profit organization is forming a board of directors that is not only excited about the core mission, but will also provide the expert advice, ethical oversight, and social connections required to…
Designing for the Perils of Public Voice in the Age of Social Media
On February 26th I gave a talk at the Seattle Pecha Kecha #60, Watch Me Now, Notes on a Surveillance Society. The event brought together speakers from across the information ecosystem – including policy makers, technologists, advocates and others to discuss the…
2015 iConference Social Media Expo — Open Government Data and Social Media
Yesterday we held our third Social Media Expo at the 2015 iConference, sponsored by FUSE Labs at Microsoft Research. This has been a great way for us to encourage interdisciplinary student teams to explore emerging themes in the field that…
Designing for Hack the Commute
Local civic tech hackathons and uncoferences are a great way to get to know a community even as it is gelling into one. I went to Hack the Commute, hosted by the City of Seattle and the Washington State Department…
Apolis: Our Third Place Heatmap Project at HackHousing
This past weekend I attended “HackHousing”, a hackathon hosted by Zillow in coordination with the White House, U.S. Department of Commerce and theDepartment of Housing and Urban Development and in partnership with the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University…
Upcoming Seattle Open Data Day
I’ve been helping Seth Vincent (Code for Seattle) organize Seattle Open Data Day with Will Scott at the University of Washington. I strongly encourage you all to go to Seattle Open Data Day, an unconference on open data and civic…
Draft of paper Neighborhood Community Well-being and Social Media
With the transition leaving Microsoft Research and starting up Third Place Technologies, I have not had much time for revising this paper, but still wanted to throw it out for people to read if they are interested. This line of…