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PdF 2010: Announcing the Developer Track

BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, May 18 2010

We're doing something new this year at Personal Democracy Forum, a special Developer breakout track to create some time and space for shop talk and idea-sharing among the technologists who actually make the platforms and tools that the rest of us rely on so heavily.

The Developer track is inspired by an idea from Clay Johnson, the director of Sunlight Labs, who notes, "Going to conferences as a technologist in this space often means speaking a foreign language, since building great tools and innovating depends on a lot more than using social media to build your email list." He adds,

Here we're getting designers & developers to talk to each other, and hopefully we will start pushing the field forward for better civic participation--whether it be elections or governing or organizing or plain old journalism. We're facing similar problems, and doing innovative things, so let's take the opportunity to spend some time talking about what's under the hood of what we do.

Unlike our other breakout tracks, the Developer track will use the cumulative four hours of breakout session time for eight half-hour presentations/conversations by individual coders or designers. Each is doing cutting edge work, either for partisan or nonpartisan ends--though as with all our other sessions, we'll park the partisan politicking at the door and instead focus on how technology itself is changing the game.

The schedule of presenters are:

--Thursday, June 3rd, 2:00-3:00pm: Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg (creators of IBM's Many Eyes data visualization platform and co-founders of Flowing Media); Aaron Brown (senior product manager at Google, discussing Fusion Tables)

--Thursday, June 3rd, 3:30-4:30pm: Bob Ellsworth (senior technical fellow at the Republican National Committee), Jascha Franklin-Hodge (CTO, Blue State Digital)

--Friday, June 4th, 2:00-3:00pm: Andrew Hoppin (CIO, New York State Senate) and Nathan Freitas (lead developer, New York State Senate CIO's office); Joe Edelman (founder and CEO of Citizen Logistics, former developer of Couchsurfing.com)

--Friday, June 4th, 3:30-4:30pm: Matt deBergalis (CTO, ActBlue); Chris Lundberg (Co-founder and CTO, Democracy in Action)

Chris DiBona (open source and public sector programs manager at Google) will be moderating the 2:00-3:00pm sessions, and Clay Johnson will be moderating the 3:30-4:30pm sessions.

News Briefs

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The Thicker China's "Great Firewall" Becomes, the Subtler the Doors to Sneak Through

As China announces it will tighten restrictions on access to the Internet, Chinese citizens show that they've developed new ways around them. GO

tuesday >

Cory Booker Hires Democratic Organizing Veteran Addisu Demissie To Manage Senate Run

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ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools

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New Organizing Institute to Move from Collecting Election Data to Organizing Election Officials

The New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit that trains campaigners and is no led by former Obama for America data director Ethan Roeder, is launching a new initiative next week aiming to "fix that" for local elections. NOI will announce a national network where local election administration officials can congregate to share solutions to common issues. It's a transition for a team at NOI that had previously been managing the Voting Information Project, which collects data on polling places, election districts and voter registration deadlines and prepares it for third parties in machine-readable format. In the 2012 election cycle, backed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and partnered with Google, VIP made information available in all 50 states. GO

Russian SOPA Passed First Reading

A first draft of a law nicknamed “Russian SOPA” was approved by the Russian parliament last Friday, June 14. Like the original Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill will establish penalties and procedures for online copyright violations.

GO

monday >

Czech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal

The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.

GO

friday >

Mayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit

The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO

New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy

New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO

Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup

Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.

GO

A “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award

“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO

Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China

Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.

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thursday >

U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday

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Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data

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Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy

Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO

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