For the past few months, we have been researching various formats and desired outcomes for the program — I think we talked to at least a dozen other accelerators, tons of startups, and a bunch of investors and entrepreneurs… (We wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing.)

Today, we’re pleased to share some exciting news: we’re now officially accepting applications for the Code for America Accelerator.

This first-of-its-kind, four-month program will “turbo-charge” select civic startups by providing them a springboard to amplify market awareness of their product, additional funding (a $25K seed grant), business mentoring specific to the Gov 2.0 space, and introductions to a broad network of civic leaders and potential investors.

What’s interesting about the civic space is that there’s real activity happening in cities across the country (e.g. Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, NYC), so we’ve built the program to accomodate those teams’ local expertise and connections, while hooking them up with the best of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Every month, accepted teams will attend week-long “retreats” in SF packed with trainings, talks, and networking events; for the rest of the time, teams can work out of our offices, or wherever else they might need to be. Throughout the program, our network of advisors and mentors will be “on call” to help.

Applications will be accepted starting today until June 1: http://codeforamerica.org/accelerator

None of this would be possible without the strong team we’ve recruited to lead this new program. We’re thrilled to have brought on board experienced telecommunications and consumer software entrepreneur Ron Bouganim as the director of the Accelerator. Ron has served as co-founder or exec team member on multiple successful startups, including CCI (sold to British Telecom), Trymedia (sold to Macrovision), Razz, and most recently, Echo. He is also an active angel investor, advisor to dozens of startups, and was a mentor to our inaugural 2011 class of fellows. I’ve had the privilege to work with Ron for over a year now, and I can say that his experience and insight is only matched by his wit and good humor — and that’s saying something. We’re thrilled to have him run this important new initiative.

Ron will have the benefit of a terrific board of advisors: Caterina Fake (co-founder of Flickr and Pinwheel), Peter Schwartz (founder of the Global Business Network), Ron Conway, (partner at SV Angel), and Aneesh Chopra (former CTO of the United States), who had this to say:

“We’ve seen incredible advances in technology platforms over the past decade that have lowered entry barriers for new life-enriching products and services, but not for many of our local, state, or regional governments that are constrained by legacy investments in outdated, closed software. Given heightened attention to government spending, there’s not only the need, but an urgency to engage with new, disruptive startups.”

We know, however, that this hard work. (What important work isnt?) That’s why we’ve pulled together a broad network of innovators inside government and out to support our startups teams. We’re pleased to have the financial support from Google and the Kauffman Foundation, the endorsement of cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco, and the backing from an all-star set of industry, civic, and venture capital mentors, including Jeff Clavier, Bryce Roberts, Ted Rheingold, Marci Harris, and Manish Shah. Plus, the startups will benefit from the real-world experience of proven civic entrepreneurs such as Ryan and Mike Alfred of BrightScope, Ben Berkowitz of SeeClickFix, and Steve Ressler of GovLoop, among others.

For a a full list of mentors, as well as more insight into the program, check out codeforamerica.org/accelerator.

The first class will kick off this August, and the deadline for applications is June 1. Apply now.

(An important aside: Many thanks go to Angel Kittiyachavalit, for the gorgeous design of the Accelerator website, and so to the host of fellows and staff that helped edit and enhance it. This was truly — and pleasantly — a team effort.)

The TechCentralSF Startup Veteran weekend is a two-day business and app development competition. The event’s goal is to invite returning veterans to be part of a team focused on building successful startups around the next generation social, mobile, gaming, ecommerce, health, or other applications and to foster a community of (veteran) entrepreneurship. Our veterans can add a unique perspective to many of these types of applications. Winning teams get prizes ranging from tablet to free office space.

RSVP now here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3003598845

• What: TechCentralSF’s Startup Veterans Hackathon/Weekend – Co-chair Craig Newmark of craigslist and board member IAVA – Iraq/Afghanistan Veteran’s of America
• When: Saturday March 24 and Sunday March 25 – 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day.
• Where: Adobe Systems, – 601 Townsend Street, San Francisco
• Registration Link

A Open Process

An element of the new model that caught my attention was the application form. (I’ve spent the past two years working on recruiting fellows for CfA…) Two things were particularly interesting.

First, it’s short. (Shorter in fact than ours, which we’ve fiendishly tried to whittle down). Knight’s application allows only 450 words. Total. Talk about making every word count. As we’ve found, however, shorter applications make it not only easier to apply, but also easier to engage the selection committee — because our application is short, our committee members tend to review dozens of candidates.

Second, it’s in the open. Instead of the applications going into some firewalled system, they are posted directly to the public tumblr, where reblogging and commenting are encouraged. This is an interesting attempt to promote the notion of open innovation. “Closed” submissions via email are allowed as well, however, so it will be interesting to see where the chips fall, and how many competitors are willing to compete in the open.

Shorter, Leaner Process

Structurally, they’ve made changes as well. Instead of a long, annual competition for funding, they’ve switched to a short, iterative process where they’ll have multiple competitions throughout the year, each with its own focus. The first is Networks — that is, taking advantage of existing software and platforms to engage. This strikes me as a smart way to promote more targeted innovation, following the lean startup methodology which we’ve attempted to institutionalize in our fellowship. More ideas and more cycles of feedback should hopefully lead to faster innovation.

Applications are being accepted now, and the deadline is March 17, though naturally, “it’s better to get ideas in early and respond to feedback.”

As we develop our strategy around the CfA Accelerator — our own attempt to boosting innovation, but in the civic space — we’re trying to learn how best to support and encourage entrepreneurism. So we’re excited to see how these new changes play out.

(Editor’s Note: Code for America is a Knight Foundation grantee through their Technology for Engagement Initiative.)

From February 24 through March 4, hundreds of passionate citizens around the country will come together to “Code Across America” – to make their cities even better. In over a dozen cities, there will be hackathons to build civic apps, “brigades” to deploy existing ones, unconferences to plan for the year ahead, and meetups to strengthen the community.

Details

When: Simultaneous event, February 25; Ongoing, February 24 – March 4
What: Civic innovation events ranging from hackathons and app deployments to unconferences
Who: Urbanists, Civic Hackers, City Reps, Developers, Designers, etc — anyone with the passion to make their city better
Where: Fifteen cities and growing! (Currently: Austin, Chattanooga, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Honolulu, Macon, New Orleans, Norfolk, Oakland, Philadelphia, Raleigh, San Diego, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz.)
Register: Registration information for the events, along with more information, is available at codeforamerica.org/code-across-america.

Not to worry. Our corps of civic minded geeks have got your back:

Building off of our blog post last year, CfA Honolulu — Mick Thompson, Diana Tran, and Sheba Najmi — hacked together this little app to make it easier to show some geeky love.

Just go to c4a.me/cfavalentines, click on your favorite card (mine is “You had me at Heroku” obviously), and you can email it off to your Valentine with a special note.

I’ll send some additional love to the fellows — a collaboration of 2011 and 2012! — who designed the lovely cards, including Karla, Anna, Ryan, Diana, and Mick, and if you’ve got a good idea for another, let us know at @codeforamerica.

Happy Valentine’s Day,
Your Nerdy Cupids at Code for America

(As an extra geeky note: the fellows were able to reuse the code they had written for the HNL Hackathon: opensource “civic” software FTW.)

That said, however, this year, we have tried to identify some common themes for our work, and that of the broader community. This isn’t meant to be descriptive or prescriptive of the year ahead. Instead insquisitive. We have noticed some ideas emerge — for instance “Cites 2.0,” this year’s TED Prize winner — and we think they merit consideration and even debate.

That’s why we are asking experts, activists, entrepreneurs, and leaders to share their insights through short guests posts on the CfA Blog. We have already received confirmations for participation from Clay Johnson, author of Information Diet, Nigel Jacobs from Boston’s New Urban Mechanics, and Rishi Jaitly of the Knight Foundation, and we are actively looking for others to contribute as well. If you’re interested, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Below are brief summaries of the themes we hope our contributors will flesh out throughout the year; in the meantime, we would love your input and ideas in the comments.

Themes

City 2.0

Cities are under greater pressure than ever, struggling with budget cuts and outdated technology. Yet at the same time, cities around the world are finding new ways to do more with less, to innovate, and it’s shifting our conception of what’s possible. We believe this is just the beginning of a fundamental shift in the way our cities operate and how we engage within them.

Disruption as a Public Service

Carl Schumpeter described the process of tearing down an existing market and rebuilding it with new, more efficient, and responsive businesses as the process of “creative destruction.” We’ve seen in recent decades this process unfold in multiple industries — books, music, newspapers — for the better. This year, Code for America will be working to bring that same kind of disruption into the public sector, helping government work better for all of us.

The Civic Web

Government has been called the answer to the problem of collective action: the way in which we come together to do that which we cannot do alone. Increasingly, the role of the internet as core collaborative tool for our time is becoming clear. As it evolves, however, it grows ever important to leverage that potential for civic action, to build the civic web.

It’s Not About Politics

Turn on any cable news network, and one story likely dominates the headlines: the national elections. Estimates, in fact, suggest that more than $2 Billion will be spent on just the Presidential alone. Worst of all, these elections effectively narrow the focus of regular citizens — away from their communities, away from their personal ability to make a difference — to a myopic obsession with which one of two people will sit in an oval office hundreds of miles away. We think it’s time that changed.

On January 26 at 5:30pm, we’re hosting an Open House. Come have a drink and a snack, and learn about their projects, and discuss what comes next.

All are welcome! RSVP below or on Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.com/edit?msg=1&saved=1&eid=2769330141

(Note: we hope to host this event at our new offices, but as construction is still underway, we may end up at our current space. RSVP, and we’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date.)

In 2012, Code for America will be launching a Civic Startup Accelerator to support disruption as a public service. The Accelerator will invite entrepreneurs to propose ventures that redesign the citizen/government experience through innovative technology.

But we need someone to lead it.

The Director of the CfA Accelerator will be a mix of entrepreneur, civic-nerd, coach and connector. You’ll have to not only build and execute a successful accelerator program, but also help define this emerging market to investors. This can’t be just another startup factory; the quirks and nuances in this space will require a specialized program and a leader with the creativity, enthusiasm, and doggedness to get it off the ground, and fast.

In a few months, you’ll need to iron out a plan for the accelerator, pitch investors on your vision, recruit mentors for the teams, and then go out there and find the most promising ideas for civic startups. Finally, you’ll need to bring everything together for a 12-week sprint, turning those ideas into sustainable businesses. And then, of course, you have to do it all again.

Our ideal candidate has experience as an entrepreneur, is passionate about public service, and can build a network of investors, mentors, and advisors to make the program successful. Previous involvement with civic-oriented startups is a plus.

This sounds like a challenge, we’re sure, and that’s because it is. It’s a challenge that matters. If you’re successful, you’ll not only have helped multiple companies find their way to impact, but you’ll have helped give shape, meaning, and promise to this increasingly important space.

Interested? Good. Apply here: http://codeforamerica.org/jobs/

Among other elements of the new Web site: organization of a “Snow Corps,” which will match volunteers with mounds to shovel; winter-related computer applications to guide people when two inches of snow has fallen, alerting them to parking bans on city streets or, if it is too late, telling them where their car has been towed to; and an “adopt-a-sidewalk” program that will soon allow residents to share shoveling tools and claim shoveling responsibilities on a map.

Notably, “Adopt-a-Sidewalk,” which is tool launching soon, is in fact built on top of (or forked to use the technical term) of the app CfA fellows developed for the city of Boston last year: Adopt-a-Hydrant.

If you recall, that tool, as well, was made as a response to the city concerns over the impact of snowstorms on emergency readiness. Developed by fellow Erik Michaels-Ober, Adopt-a-Hydrant, however, was written to function as a platform, able to be re-purposed for any kind of civic infrastructure; in fact, the original app included reference to “Hydrant” only once in the code, making it simple and easy to be reused. Of course, as you can see on GitHub, the city of Chicago is building on top of the platform with new features and customizations — which should only make it more useful for the next city.

As the article rightly notes, however, it remains to be whether Chicagoans will “really wish to officially stake out shoveling responsibilities,” so we too are eager to see the platform rolled out this year. ABC Chicago reports that it will launch after beta testing with the media partner, OhSoWe.

In any event, this, to me, illustrates both to the value of reusable software and the creative ways cities can use it — the motivating ideas for our Civic Commons Marketplace. The Marketplace, which just beta launched, is intended to help cities connect around the software they buy and build; the thinking being that cities need to know what others are using to share tools and best practices for better, more cost-effective services. Put simply, cities can and should share technology for the public good. And indeed that’s exactly what we’re seeing here with Chicago building off of Boston’s efforts: open, collaborative civic innovation.