Digifesto

The space of people excited about the intersection of e-government, transparency, open data, and open source software has exploded recently. The amount of talk and, consequently, bullshit flying around about this topic has ballooned proportionately.

Kudos to Matt Cooperrider, then, for assembling a serious meetup for local open government that has some ass-kicking potential.

About forty people met for the first meetup at New Work City. There were plenty of familiar faces from the NYC civic tech scene, but there were also several that I had never encountered before. Not for their lack of significance but, on the contrary, seemingly because of it: professionals in the open government world who normally have better things to do than go to meetups. The list of organizations represented included the New York Senate, the Sunlight Foundation, and the Personal Democracy Forum.

It’s too early to tell, but I’d say there’s a significant chance of something coming out of this.