Everyday there is a new discovery, a new passion or a new art form. We live our lives as digital archeologists, cultivating content and consuming it by the truckload. These posts are a selection of our favorite bits of inspiration, so we hope they inspire you too.
RECAP FROM SXSW 2012 — KEYNOTE ADDRESS, DAY 5:
What I love about Jennifer Pahlka’s final keynote at SXSW Interactive today was her focus on changing government from the inner-workings. She highlighted a series of outdated digital systems that often causes us frustrations. But who wants to work with local governments? Who wants to help with civic software or back-end systems for cities. At the heart of it, local government is what we as Americans connect with the most. By fixing the systems on local level, you can help fix government.
The key question, can you get talented developers from Silicon Valley and bring them down to key local cities to help code and develop apps to solve real issues. Not big federal programs, but local governments that struggle to get their systems up to date.
Pahlka realized that there’s an opportunity to change the system. Just like “Teach for America” program to recruit teachers, why couldn’t we recruit coders to help different cities in need. Things are changing today, and our preconceptions of government not wanting to change and evolve is dissolving.
A great case study was focused on the Boston Public School system. The tool allows parents and students to find eligible schools and create a customized list of favorites. Before, it was a crazy set of documents that parents had to sift through to determine what schools they could send their kids too. It wasn’t this huge $2 million project, but simple, efficient and created with the bureaucracy.
Join up and do some good: Code for America
If you’re a developer and interested in Code for America, check out the site. The CfA Fellows work hand in hand with forward thinking cities across the country to help them do more with less. I love it because it’s really about connecting people in need with the talent that has typically reserved for well-funded start-ups and big digital agencies.
As a developer, you can also join the Code for America Brigade. Start a brigade locally with other developers and maybe you can help on other projects in the works!
“Coding isn’t about making software, it’s about rewiring society.”
— Clay Johnson
“We’re not just consumers of government and services. We’re citizens and as neighbors and fellow citizens, we can help each other.” Pahlka said. “I’m calling on everyone to act like a citizen.”
“We’ve built an amazing consumer internet. We can do so much now. But now it’s about building a citizen’s internet,” Pahlka said. “When you think about serving your country. We think about the military. But we also are fighting another battle. And we need an army of geeks.”
At it’s core, government is what we do together as a society. It’s not a problem as an institution, but a problem in collective participation. And through digital tools, that participation and connectivity grows within our communities. It’s about breaking down silos and figuring out how digital solutions can help us all.
Check out other projects from CfA:
On Wednesday, the world learned that Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer. Many received the news from their Apple computers or iPhones, devices that would not have been possible without his entrepreneurial spirit.
Steve Jobs’ story is an inspirational one. Instead of taking the path that was laid out for him, he made one on his own. As he explains in his commencement address to Stanford in 2005, his parents had always intended for him to go to college, but after 16 months he felt he was just wasting their money, “So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out ok.”
When I was in my senior year of high school, I found myself fed up with classes that I wasn’t interested in. Much to the dismay of my parents, I decided to dropout. People had a lot to say about my unconventional choice. They told me I was never going to make it if I didn’t go back to school and doomed me to be a high school dropout for life. Within months, I received my GED and was accepted to Webster.
By my sophomore year of college, I was getting tired of driving up to campus to do my homework in Adobe CS4. I was contemplating my first Apple purchase, so I could run the creative suite at home. I sat in my 1988 Volvo one night thinking about the choice I was about to make. I could have easily put that money into a new car (which I also needed), but the MacBook Pro was an investment in my future. I bought the MacBook Pro, and I’ve never looked back. It has awarded me more opportunities than I could have ever imagined.
Aside from his inventions, Steve Jobs seemed to be a man with inspiring and insightful views. The world will never forget his innovations, but don’t forget to remember his philosophy, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”
You’ll love and lose; and you’ll gain. Love what you do and live life to the fullest before it’s too late because death is a “destination we all share.”
Steve Jobs
1955-2011
After a whirlwind weekend of electronic nerdophilia, I’m back in the land of normal sized TVs and stable internet connections to share my thoughts on the connected TVs, Tablet, and Interfaces I encountered at CES 2011 in Las Vegas.
While I would have loved to have posted my thoughts earlier, apparently packing 140,000 technophiles into an area doesn’t do wonders for the local internet service. Shocker right? To recap the last post, I was looking for three big trends at CES: Internet Television, Tablets, & Natural User Interfaces. While I wasn’t blown away or shocked by what I saw there were some interesting developments with long term effects for advertisers and consumers alike. There were also some curious oddities that stuck out to me that you may not hear about elsewhere… I’ll get into those later.
Last weekend, I watched Toy Story 3, the first time I’ve ever seen a 3-D movie. But one of my favorite parts of going to the movies is seeing the trailers and there are plenty of 3-D movies in the works.
The glasses have grown by leaps and bounds from the paper ones with red and blue film in the cereal box, to high end versions for more than $170 that come with a 3-D large screen TV.
Everywhere I go, the latest fad is 3D. I can watch the World Cup and other sports in 3-D with ESPN.
Or I can start playing 3-D video games with Nintendo’s 3DS which was shown during E3. Over a dozen gaming companies are developing titles for the new system.