On August 1 2013 the 21st Century Democracy & Technology Meetup hosted a NYC Civic Tech Demo Night at Tipping Point Partners NYC. Introducing the night was Tipping Points founder and CEO Art Chang, who revealed a forthcoming expanded collaboration – a “tech campus” – between his firm, New York Law School, and other institutions.
Presenting first was FundElevator, a new crowdfunding platform for both causes and politicians that will have its soft launch in the next few days.
The second was NYC Votes. Art Chang is also the Chair of NYC Voter Assistance Advisory Committee(VAAC), part of the NYC Campaign Finance Board‘s (CFB) Voter Assistance Unit, as reconstituted by the 2010 Charter Commission. The CFB has three primary mandates: administering the Campaign Finance Program, publishing the Voter Guide, and overseeing the Debate Program. The CFB provides easily accessible and comprehensive information on candidates’ campaign finance and works to make candidates and elected officials more responsive to New York City citizens, rather than special interests, by reducing the opportunity for campaign contributors to influence candidates and elected officials and by providing a means for credible candidates who might not have access to “big money” to run competitive campaigns via a matching funds program. To assist in this purpose the VAAC spawned the 21st Century Democracy project which in turn spawned a Digital Action Working Group of leading local techies,namely AppOrchard, Method, and Pivotal Labs, who set to work on creating an app – NYC Votes – to help achieve the CFP’s purpose. NYC Votes is aimed to provide the complete voting experience from registering to vote, to learning about the candidates, to funding candidates (thereby gaining them 6x NYC matching funds), to casting a vote at the poll site on Election Day. The app is scheduled to go live on Aug 7 2013 at the New York Tech Meetup. This night was something of a dress rehearsal for that.
View on YouTube: http://youtu.be/GFB90PvU4OQ
Transcribe on AMARA: http://www.amara.org/en/videos/uH601JQul4ez/
Twitter: #civictech | #nycvotes
Speakers:
Art Chang – Chair, NYC Voter Assistance Advisory Committee
Mickey Costa – CEO, FundElevator
James Schuler – CTO, FundElevator
Amy M. Loprest – Executive Director, NYC Campaign Finance Board
Rusty Munro – Creative Director, Method
Michael Schubert – Managing Director, NYC, Pivotal Labs
Michael Carlson – Product Manager, AppOrchard
On Friday October 17 2014 Susan Crawford, co-author of The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance! will discuss the book’s theme with John Paul Farmer, Director of Tech & Civic Innovation, Microsoft at Microsoft Civic in NYC. Example questions: How can emerging technologies and data analytics improve life in our cities? How do we enshrine democratic discourse and citizen input even as urban processes become more automated? Admission is free. Space is limited. You must register to attend. It will be recorded.