Posts tagged with "Washington DC"
Week in DC Tech: January 5 Edition
Art, Mobile Phones, and Open Government This Week in Washington
Happy New Years! We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and had a blast ringing in 2009. If you’re anything like us here at Development Seed, you have a lot you want to accomplish in the coming year. One thing every Washingtonian knows is that networking gets you far in this town. So start working on your 2009 professional goals this week by attending a technology meetup or two.
Here are a few events we’re hoping to catch, and you can find a full listing of the week’s events here.
Tuesday, January 6
7:00 pm
SEO Social 2.0: Do you want to push your organization’s website or Facebook page to the top of search rankings? Of course you do! Come out to this meetup to talk to people about how to best do this and to find out what else you should be doing as a website or brand manager.
Wednesday, January 7
Artomatic Happy Hour: Artomatic is one of the best local art shows in town, and we’re hoping their happy hours turn out to be almost as good. On top of the opportunity to meet and talk to local artists, this event will also feature the unveiling of the results of a scientific investigation into the correlations of casual drinking and creativity.
Thursday, January 8
3:00 – 5:00 pm
USAID Development 2.0 Challenge Awards Ceremony: Several months ago USAID and its Global Development Commons asked for innovative ways mobile phones could be used to impact development efforts. The winners have been announced, and this Thursday is your chance to meet them and see what ideas they came up with. Look for Eric if you go.
This weekend Jeff, Alex, and Tim will be rehashing campaign strategies with the people who implemented them at Rootscamp DC. This is one of our favorite local events because it brings together a diverse group of people who’ve run the campaign strategy for politicians or progressive causes, have pounded the pavement on their behalf, or have built the technology that made their tactics possible.
Recently Development Seed has worked on a lot of tools that could be integrated into a campaign – maps, data visualizations, sms tools, and a messaging and notifications system that allows you to connect to websites via sms, instant message, and email. We’ve done most of this work for international development agencies, so we’re excited to see which topics spark interest with campaigners and to hear what other tools they’re looking for.
Rootscamp is a very cool unconference that brings campaigners together soon after the end of an election season to share their experiences and discuss what worked for them, what bombed, and what tools they need to be more successful. It’s also organized to be open to anyone – and at a cost of just $10 it’s hard to argue that it is. This is always an energizing event, and we’re expecting it to be even more so this year with so many Democratic wins. We’re excited to be sponsoring Rootscamp for the second year in a row. If you go to Rootscamp this weekend, look for us!
Drupal Meetup Tonight in Washington, DC
Come Out to Talk Drupal, Trade Tricks, and Drink Beer
The last Drupal meetup of the year is happening tonight, and it will be a fun one. On top of all the toasting to a happy holiday season and a great 2009 that will surely be happening, there will also be the usual lightening round of five minute presentations about different Drupal topics. This month Alex and Jeff will talk about some of our recent mapping work. The floor is open so if you’d like to present, just come prepared to talk. Also, the event planner who’s handling the logistics for DrupalCon DC will be joining us tonight, so please come out and introduce yourself.
All the event details are here. Hope to see you tonight!
Week in DC Tech: December 8th Edition
Drupal, PHP, Politics, and Parties This Week in Washington, DC
According to the forecasts, we can expect several extremely cold for DC days this week with maybe even some snow, and strangely enough, a couple downright mild days mixed in. If you want to stay warm and keep your heating bill low, or, depending on the day, enjoy a respite from the cold , we have a few ideas for you that will also help you get your tech fix.
Here are some of the tech events we’re hoping to check out this week. As always, you can find a full listing at DC Tech Events.
Monday, December 8
7:00 – 9:00 pm
DC Drupal Meetup: If you use Drupal or want to learn how to, come out for this meetup to talk with local Drupal developers and users, show off recent projects, and share experiences.
Tuesday, December 9
8:00 – 10:00 am
Broadband Breakfast Club’s Monthly Meeting: Start your day with a discussion on how applications and broadband mapping can increase demand for high-speed internet. Warning: there is a $45 fee for this event.
Wednesday, December 10
6:30 – 9:30 pm
DC’s Web Women’s Holiday Fest: It can be hard to meet the elusive woman techie, but at this party you’ll be surrounded by them. Come out to meet your female colleagues, network, and spread the holiday cheer.
Week in DC Tech: December 1 Edition
Python, Drupal, and Agile Development This Week in Washington, DC
With Thanksgiving now behind us, it’s officially the holiday season. Here in Washington, DC, like many places, this means a big slow down in absolutely everything non-holiday related. However, there are still a few tech-related events to check out this week. Here are the ones we’re hoping to attend. You can find a full listing of the week’s events at DC Tech Events.
Tuesday, December 2
7:00 pm
The Washington DC Python December Meetup: Are you using Python in your projects or just interested to see what it can do? Come out for this meetup to talk with Python users to get the scoop.
Wednesday, December 3
6:30 – 8:30 pm
NOVA Drupal Meetup: If Drupal is your preferred open source platform, come out for the monthly meetup in Northern Virginia. There will be a short presentation on scaling Drupal using Amazon Web Services.
Week in DC Tech: Thanksgiving Week Edition
History, Current Events, and LED Projects This Week in DC
Most of us are looking forward to a short work week and a lot of upcoming turkey (or tofurkey). But for those who haven’t skipped town already and aren’t involved in Thanksgiving preparations, there are a few tech events happening. Here’s a look at what’s happening this week in Washington, DC and, as always, you can find a full listing at DC Tech Events.
Tuesday, November 25
6:00 pm
Routinely Targeted: Attacks on Civilians in Somalia – A Human Rights Defenders Speaking Tour: This one isn’t technology related but will certainly be an eye opener. Two activists – one a photojournalist and the other a women’s rights activist – will speak about daily life in Somalia and the violence that many civilians regularly face.
7:00 – 9:00 pm
Dorkbot DC: Always one of the geekier events of the month, at this month’s meeting Alden Hart will talk about LED projects and the lessons he’s learned working on microcontroller LED designs.
Washington, DC Drupal Meetup Tonight
Come Out to Talk Drupal With Other Developers and Users
The November DC Drupal Meetup will take place tonight at 7:00 pm at Stetson’s. So far two people have volunteered to give a five minute lightening presentation. Jeff will talk about the new module Nice Map, which allows you to make good looking maps like you can see here. Ian will discuss the strategies we’ve implemented to more efficiently build websites. Anyone is welcome and everyone is encouraged to give a lightening presentation. If you’d like to present, please post your topic here and come ready to talk tonight.
DC Drupal meetups are for all levels of Drupal developers and users, so don’t be shy if you’re a newbie. These meetups are great opportunities to learn more about Drupal and what you can do with it, meet developers working with the platform, and meet users to hear about their experiences working with Drupal. You can find more details about the meetup in the Washington, DC Drupal group. Hope to see you tonight!
Week in DC Tech: November 17 Edition
Drupal, Open Government, and Rehashing the Online Presidential Campaign
Welcome to winter, Washington, DC. Temperatures plunged on Saturday night, giving us our first real taste of winter. Unfortunately according to the forecast, this cold weather is here to stay for at least the next week. Luckily, there are lots of indoor tech events taking place this week to give you a warm post-work activity or at least a stopping point in your commute home. Here are a few of the events we’re planning to attend this week. You can find a full listing of local technology events at DC Tech Events.
Monday, November 17
7:00 – 9:00 pm
DC Drupal Meetup: Drupal is one of the most popular open source content management systems out there, and this event is your chance to meet the people working with it every day. Whether you’re a Drupal developer or user, or a wannabe Drupal developer or user, come out and meet the local Drupal community.
Tuesday, November 18
11:30 am – 1:30 pm
‘The Intersection of Marketing and Technology: Like most industries, marketers are in hot pursuit of determining how to best use technology and social media to get their messages to their audience. Experts will discuss the more promising strategies at this lunch event.
Washington, DC Government Pushes for Open Data and Tech Innovation
DC Emerging As a Leader in Opening Up City Data
Today Alex, Jeff, and I had the opportunity to talk with some of the DC government’s leading technology officers about open data at the Apps for Democracy press conference. Washington, DC is emerging as a leader in opening up government data, and I have to say we’re proud. The city opened up more than 200 real time data streams as part of the Apps for Democracy contest, a competition they sponsored that asks local web developers to take this data, analyze it, and put it on a website in a way that DC residents will find useful, and rumor has it that they’ll open more data streams up in the near future.
Here’s a photo of Alex, Jeff, and I with Mayor Fenty at the press conference. We’re psyched to have a mayor who encourages innovation in technology and comes out to give awards for it.
The fact that DC seems to be firmly behind open data is pretty revolutionary – they’re one of the first governments in the United States to do something like this. We spoke with Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra and City Administrator Dan Tangherlini and they both see that it’s not only the citizens who benefit from open data and the more information that comes with it, but also city governments who benefit from all the tools that are made with this data too. There was even talk about how our entry Stumble Safely could be repurposed as a tool for police officers to better identify crime hot spots around bars : )
OutsideinDC: A Guide to Biking in Washington, DC
Find Bike Routes, Monitor Bike Theft, and Get a Bike
OutsideinDC is a guide to biking in Washington, DC where you can find detailed bike routes for commuting or fun, monitor bike theft in real time, and use Craigslist to shop for equipment. It’s a community space, so if you have a tip or want to sound off on biking in DC, just add #dcbike to a twitter message and it will show up on the front page of this site.
We built this site for the Apps for Democracy competition. If you like OutsideinDC, vote for it!. The competition closes at 11:59 on Wednesday, November 12. The purpose of the competition is to show what great community tools – like this site – are possible when governments open up their data and let people use it. OutsideinDC is built entirely on open source software and is the only app in the competition to be 100% open source. The site is built on Drupal, and there’s no google maps here, just Mapnik, a C++/Python GIS toolkit, which is drawing all the maps and has awesome anti-aliasing rendering.
