Yearly Archives: 2013

Call for Nominations for the John Saltmarsh Award for Emerging Leaders in Civic Engagement

Nomination materials for the 2013 Saltmarsh Award are due Monday, April 8, 2013. The award is given in recognition of exemplary early-career leaders who are advancing the wider civic engagement movement through higher education to build a broader public culture of democracy. In an effort to recognize, support and encourage the next generation of leadersRead… Read more »

Boots on the Ground

Community as capacity is one of the founding principles of the Brigade. We believe governments work better when cities and communities collaborate. But organizing a community is hard work. In fact, our most frequent requests at the Brigade throughout 2012 were for advice around best practices for this. Luckily for us, we have an unbeatableRead… Read more »

Lessons from Brigade, Year One: DO THIS!

“If we’re not documenting these experiences and sharing them, then how do we justify all these resources?” ~ Steven Clift (@democracy) speaking with fellows about the need to share learning In November, I wrote to the 2012 Fellows during their final week that it was the fastest year of my life in a long time.Read… Read more »

Brigade Spotlight: AMA with Noel and Hannah

In December 2012, the Brigade added two new members to staff: Noel Hidalgo and Hannah Young. Noel joins us as the Program Manager for New York City and Hannah as the Program Coordinator across the entire Brigade program. As we kick off 2013, we wanted to introduce Noel and Hannah by the way of aRead… Read more »

Sucking eggs

This post may involve teaching most readers to suck eggs. It doesn’t name a tool because it can’t. I’m a civil servant and we can’t do stuff like that. But it might be useful anyway, we’ll see. (edited to add: as I’ve written this, I’ve realised that this is the way that someone who isRead… Read more »

The Takeaway with Dan Cooper, Former Metro Attorney

The Takeaway with Dan Cooper Former Metro Attorney and Former Metro Acting Chief Operating Officer It is difficult to write this feature without thinking about everyone’s favorite TGIF show “Hanging with Mr. Cooper.” However, we are confident Dan has heard enough “Hanging with Mr. Cooper” and D.B Cooper references to last a lifetime. We hopeRead… Read more »

An Upside For Feds, No Federal Pay Freeze

Later today the House will vote on a plan to effectively lift the debt limit for four months, removing, or at least postponing, the threat of default. The bill, HR 325, temporarily extends the debt limit without seeking any concessions on spending, and allows Republicans a way to avoid having to actually cast a voteRead… Read more »

A space to think

I’m planning on looking at and reflecting on the principles I previously suggested here and writing a blog post for each one using my own personal circumstances and requirements to help me understand what applying the principles would mean in practice. My previous post “the ‘right’ environment” essentially looked at the principle “Enabling communities andRead… Read more »

Pay Freeze Paused? Plus the DorobekINSIDER 7 Stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER: Big Data is a word that’s being thrown around a lot recently. It’s a new term for an old problem; having too much data. Not an overly complicated issue to grasp, albeit the solution to the problem is a much more complicated one. With the federal Big Data market being estimatedRead… Read more »