Civic Hacking

This weekend: the HRVA Civic Hackfest.  http://guestlistapp.com/events/86160

Alt Daily coverage.

Some more references.

What's it all about?  Code For America.  Exploit the information we have to make civic improvements.  Ask any journalist who wrestles with government data.  There's transparency (i.e., lip service) and there's transparency.  Publishing information as a PDF based on scans of paper documents doesn't really do much for folks who are exercising their civic duty to analyze and correlate government actions with social  benefits.

Only you can make your government more responsive.  Voting is one way.  Civic Hacking is another.

Another way is doing good data wrangling to expose the depth of influence money has over politics.  Look at OpenSecrets.org for an example.