We were very excited to get an email from Michael Mattmiller, the City of Seattle’s CTO, outlining aspects of Mayor Murray’s proposed 2017-18 budget presented to the city council. We thought it was worth quoting in full but wanted in…
Engaging with Tech Creatives through Electric Sky
We were very happy to help organize and sponsor Electric Sky this June, it has proven to be a great event for engaging with — and fostering the growth of — the community of tech creatives at the intersection of art…
Ignite Talk: The Data is In: (Top 5 Ways) How to Improve your Neighborhood Community’s Wellbeing
Our Executive Director Shelly Farnham gave an Ignite talk last week to a sold out house of over 800 people at Town Hall last week. Below is the video, and a slightly extended version of the talk in text. The Data Is…
Introducing Spokin
The CTO of the City of Seattle saw our presentation of our community well-being report pages at the DSSG program, and asked that we demo Spokin and the community well-being report pages to the mayor’s office. We did this last…
Electric Sky: An Experimental One Day “Campathon” Fostering Art & Tech
One of our target creative communities for our technology interventions and community engagement activities is the art and tech community in the Pacific Northwest. As such, we helped host “Electric Sky” this summer, as a way to bring together people…
Wrapping Up Our Community Wellbeing Report Pages Prototype at DSSG
During the summer of 2015, we were selected to participate in the University of Washington’s eScience Institute Data Science for Social Good summer incubator program, where we worked with an interdisciplinary group of graduate student fellows and faculty research scientists…
Fostering Innovation Communities Paper Presented at ISEA2015
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…