Yearly Archives: 2012

Inspiration

This is an inspiring time to be walking the halls of Code for America’s headquarters in San Francisco. Part of this inspiration comes from watching the enthusiastic response communities are having to the applications Fellows are deploying. For example, at the recent launch of Prepared.ly, an application developed in partnership with the City of Austin,Read… Read more »

Introducing the Brigade Captains Program

Brigade is all about recognizing and supporting the volunteer efforts of civic minded technologists throughout the country who want to contribute to the civic web and code for America where they live. Our aim at Code for America is grow, strengthen, and connect the network of people involved in doing so. We have two mechanismsRead… Read more »

Review of Ines Mergel’s “A Manager’s Guide to Designing a Social Media Strategy”

Social media have been changing the way companies and government agencies operate since the middle of last decade–upending long-held ways of doing business and reshaping the relationship between government and citizens. Though more than 100 million Americans are members of a social media site like Facebook or Twitter, few government agencies have explicit policies forRead… Read more »

Government Needs to Go Open Source

Why is it so hard for government to look for resources that already exist? As someone who’s managed social media accounts for the government I understand the challenge. The inclination is still for the need to “own” and “create” rather than collaborate. Even when it comes to training videos or conference entertainment, there is noRead… Read more »

U.S. Drones Policy: Strategic Frameworks and Measuring Effects Conclusion

This post is the conclusion to my write-up on the American Security Project‘s U.S. Drones Policy: Strategic Frameworks and Measuring Effects, which I introduced and delved into yesterday. The event was moderated by Joshua Foust, Fellow for Asymmetric Operations at ASP and columnist for PBS and The Atlantic Monthly. The panel of speakers consisted ofRead… Read more »

A Big Shout Out to the Presidential Innovation Fellows

“Every new movement needs heroes.” Tim O’Reilly said this in the recruitment video we made when we were just starting Code for America over two years ago. We were so grateful when the tech and design community answered our call, and we were grateful again when hundreds more applied for the second year. But nowRead… Read more »

Are you overwhelmed?

We’re in public service and that means getting the word out about the goings-on in government to the broadest reach possible. A few years ago we were webmasters. Today, we’re webmasters, digital media providers, social media managers, content managers, information architects, editors, and more. Today, we have to put information everywhere: on the web andRead… Read more »

An AIDS Free Generation — How one Sammies Finalist is making it happen

In the 1980s, an AIDS diagnosis was considered a death sentence. Even more troubling was the number of children who contracted the disease from their mother. But thanks in part to the work of Dr. Lynne Mofenson, future generations won’t have to worry about being born with HIV or AIDS. She pioneered a clinical trialRead… Read more »