Our blog about technology
and civic issues

Join Us @ the Speak Up NY Working Group

By Nick Grossman | Published: July 22, 2010
Last month, we hosted a one-day workshop with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s office called Speak Up, New York.  The purpose of the event was to bring together NYC community groups and “civic hackers” to discuss how community groups are using technology to organize and engage.  With a keynote from Deputy US CTO for Open Read more...
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Bootstrapping a Developer Outreach Program

By Nick Grossman | Published: February 12, 2010
Recently, we’ve been working with a lot of public agencies (mostly in the transportation sector) who are interested in setting up developer conferences or app contests.   While we are big fans of both conferences and contests, our main point of advice has been get away from thinking just about conferences & contests, and focus on Read more...
Also posted in open data | Tagged | Leave a comment

Planning/Tech Workshop: The Aftermath

By Nick Grossman | Published: November 17, 2009
We were blown away by the great turnout at last Friday’s Tech for Participatory Planning workshop.  Thanks to RPA for hosting with us, and to everyone who came out for a great afternoon of lightning talks, brainstorming, and discussion.  It’s clear that we just scratched the surface here, and we raised way more questions than Read more...
Also posted in Online Participation, events | 3 Comments

Text-to-voice

By Nick Grossman | Published: November 9, 2009
On their blog today, Mobile Commons explains how AARP used text-to-voice to mobilize senior citizens around health care reform. It’s not news that mobile (and particularly phone and sms) are the tech tools that connect with the widest audience, but I’m continually impressed by the way that Mobile Commons has built a platform that makes it Read more...
Also posted in Online Participation, open government | Tagged | 4 Comments

Workshop: Tech for Participatory City Planning

By Nick Grossman | Published: November 3, 2009
Dear friend / planner / city staffer / community organizer / software engineer / entrepreneur / planning geek: The Open Planning Project and the Regional Plan Association would like to invite you to an upcoming workshop to brainstorm new technology for participatory city planning. When: Friday, November 13th, 12:30 – 5:30pm  (followed by a happy hour on Read more...
Also posted in Online Participation, open government | Leave a comment

Wanted: Volunteer Web Dev for City Planning App

By Nick Grossman | Published: October 28, 2009
Are you a web developer with Python and Geo chops, looking for a fun side project?  Even better, are you also a resident of Greater Boston, interested in city planning and civic engagement?  Do you know someone who is? If so, let us know.  The Open Planning Project is partnering with the Somerville Community Corporation to Read more...
Also posted in Jobs, Online Participation | 8 Comments

Community Almanac Redesign

By andy | Published: August 20, 2009
We’re very excited about the new version of the Orton Family Foundation’s Community Almanac that we’ve been working on at TOPP Labs. In this post I’ll share some of the design decisions that went into that project and some of the reasons why things have changed.
Also posted in Activity Feeds, Online Participation | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Crowdsourcing and Disinformation

By Paul Winkler | Published: June 30, 2009
Recently, TOPP Labs embarked on a joint venture with Transportation Alternatives to build a “Candidate Survey” website, showing New York users how their local political candidates responded to a TA survey. TA is going to build the public-facing site, and TOPP is going to build a back-end service that does geographic lookup of candidates based on Read more...
Also posted in Online Participation, government | 5 Comments

Block Party NYC Site Launched

By cabraham | Published: June 17, 2009
Who knew there are over 3000 block parties in New York City each summer?  Well, we’ve just launched BlockPartyNYC.org to be the go-to site for everything block party.  The site both contains information to assist you in throwing a block party, and allows you to promote your block party on our interactive map.  You can Read more...
Also posted in Launch | 1 Comment

Map Your Comments

By cabraham | Published: June 8, 2009
We’ve just released a plugin for WordPress that allows comments to be located on a map.  We saw that some of the issues we are exploring on Streetsblog and GothamSchools have an important geographic aspect to them and that the discussions that were taking place around these issues would be enhanced if each comment could Read more...
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