Saturday, April 20th, 300+ government officials, civic hackers, community leaders and entrepreneurs showed up at this year’s CityCampKC (#CCKC13) at The Kauffman Foundation to share ideas on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations. These individuals gave up an entire Saturday to focus on initiatives and topics which may help steer the direction of Kansas City’s continued tech growth and economic development over the coming years.
CityCampKC is a daylong ‘unconference’ focusing on community, government and technology development in Kansas City. This event has versions in over two-dozen cities worldwide — its “unconference” style allows participants to create content, lead and openly exchange ideas. The event is for anyone living in the KC metro area that is interested in the intersection of local government, city life and technology.
What is an Un-Conference you may ask? Instead of a predefined speaker list, sessions are programmed by attendees with the goal being to emphasize the increasing diversity in innovation, municipal movements and community organizations. Discussion topics are chosen on the morning of the event and topic ideas were scribbled by attendees on a gigantic white board.
Like all CityCamps, the event for 2013 focused on four primary objectives:
1. Gather local government officials, municipal employees, experts, programmers, designers, citizens and journalists to share perspectives and insights about the city in which they live.
2. Develop patterns for using the Web (and Fiber) to facilitate local government transparency and effective local governance.
3. Foster communities of practice and advocacy on the role of the Web, mobile communication, online information, and open data in cities.
4. Create outcomes that participants will act upon after the event is over. Discussions during CCKC13 ranged from open source-style web-based governance to leveraging Google Fiber as a tool across the city.
Beyond the topics chosen for the day, all attendees were asked to consider the following questions during the speakers forum and discussion sessions:
How can technology enable us to work together across jurisdictions?
How can we empower citizens to take greater part in our government?
How can open source software and open data save taxpayer money?
How can we increase online service delivery despite shrinking budgets?
CityCampKC is invaluable to economic development in the region because it invites community members and civic leaders from across Kansas City and the Midwest to collaborate, share ideas and tools that can be replicated in various cities and on various scales; in turn bringing other cities or civic minded individuals to KC to learn how to recreate those models in their city! If you are interested in helping create the Kansas City you want to live in, pencil in CityCampKC 2014 on your calendar.
View videos from the event on CityCampKC’s YouTube channel.