Posted on March 7, 2011 by Jennifer Pahlka
Our fellows have returned from four weeks in City Hall with their municipal government counterparts, and I’m pleased to share a little bit about the first ever City Residency month. There have been challenges big and small, and we’ve learned a lot. Overall, though, we couldn’t be happier with the results. To give you just a taste, the first fellows conducted 444 interviews, held 4 DataCamps, attended 68 other community events, and have at least 12 side projects in the works for their cities.
Posted on February 25, 2011 by Jennifer Pahlka
The news broke yesterday of Chris Vein’s appointment to Beth Noveck’s old post under Aneesh Chopra in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. We’re excited for Chris but also for what it means for the values and …
Posted on February 1, 2011 by Jennifer Pahlka
Today, the first class of Code for America fellows start their month-long residencies in your cities. Having just spent an amazing month with all of them in San Francisco (where we all experienced the first ever CfA Institute), I think you’re in for a treat. I thought I’d write a short note about the Fellows’ progress so far and what to look forward to in the month ahead. We think you’ll find the first class of fellows to be a talented, committed, mission-driven group. From the first hours they spent in our office, it was apparent what brought them together for this program: a belief in Code for America’s vision and a genuine desire for public service.
Posted on January 7, 2011 by Jennifer Pahlka
There was a great moment yesterday when Eric Ries asked the fellows, “what were your roles before you came to Code for America? How many of you were programmers? Designers? Project managers?” Hands went up and down as our teams displayed their …
Posted on January 6, 2011 by Jennifer Pahlka
We welcomed the first class of fellows to the office, and to the program, yesterday. What a day! Before we even made it to the new office (and more on our office saga later), the Twitterverse was alight with well …
Posted on November 23, 2010 by Jennifer Pahlka
In just a few weeks, our inaugural class of fellows will be coming together in San Francisco for the first time. These are folks from all kinds of different backgrounds and strengths, who will be spending a year putting their …
Posted on November 1, 2010 by Jennifer Pahlka
Today we’re thrilled to introduce you to our inaugural class of Fellows. Out of a pool of over 360 amazing applicants, these 20 stood out for their talent, experience, and passion.* They will be the first participants in our experiment …
Posted on October 29, 2010 by Jennifer Pahlka
Lauren Collins’s New Yorker article on British Prime Minister David Cameron’s agenda of civic engagement contains a number of real gems, most of them as sobering as they are entertaining. I had to laugh out loud at some of the …
Posted on October 19, 2010 by Jennifer Pahlka
Civic Commons was born, appropriately, because several people had the same idea at the same time, and were able to pool their resources to get something off the ground. So far it has run as an informal consortium, led by …
Posted on September 8, 2010 by Jennifer Pahlka
Today we are here at the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC for the exciting announcement of the Code for America project for DC. The project is called Civic Commons, and it’s a way to help governments share software they …
