Ottawa Hackfest Re: Apathy is Boring & CitizenFactory.com

[Michael Lenczner]

Hi all,

As Ilona said we launched Citizen Factory March 1st but we've been a
bit slow to let people know about it.  Moving forward, and just
speaking for myself, I'm really excited about the idea of having
Apathy is Boring working on providing context and relevance to all the
civic information that will be more accessible in the coming years.  I
think there's a lot of important work that needs to be done in that
area (post liberating the data ;) )

re: Ottawa
Michael Mulley (OpenParliament), Daniel Haran, Bernard (from AisB) and
I are heading up to Ottawa for the hackfest tomorrow and we're looking
forward to sitting down with Shawn Simister (RepresentMe.ca).  3
different projects using Parl info sitting down together - plus
whoever else is there -  should help us all figure out some good plans
for keeping things speeding forward. :)

Mike


On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Ilona Dougherty
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi all,
> As some of you know, the gang here at Apathy is Boring have been quiet
> members of the Civic Access listserv for the last few years. Although our
> focus is youth engagement, our interest in technology as a way to foster
> active citizenship has kept us interested in the goings on of this listserv.
> We've been wondering for quite some time how we can make Parliament and the
> legislative process easier to understand for Canadian youth. With the help
> of the Department of Canadian Heritage, Micheal Lenczner, and Daniel Haran,
> we recently started developing website that aggregates Parliamentary data
> and (more importantly) makes this information meaningful to young Canadians.
> An early version of CitizenFactory.com went live at the end of March. We’re
> planning a publicized launch in the coming months, once additional features
> have been added.
> Since our soft launch, we’ve been excited to see Michael Mulley (who was
> kind enough to help out during a Citizen Factory hack day) launch
> OpenParliament. Datadotgc.ca also launched, and – thanks to the work of
> David Eaves and others – Parliament has agreed to provide more data in XML.
> Our goal with Citizen Factory is not only to provide this information to
> youth, but also to help them decode it and take action. Apathy is Boring has
> access to tens of thousands of youth across Canada with whom we'll share
> this tool.
> We thought this was as good a time as any to tell you about Citizen Factory.
> We would appreciate your comments and feedback. If you want more
> information, Bernard Rudny (our staff member who has been overseeing the
> project) will be attending the Open Data Hackfest in Ottawa this weekend
> along with Mike and Daniel. You can also email him
> at [hidden email].
>
> We’re excited to see all the recent activity in this area, and we look
> forward to contributing.
>
> Ilona
>
> Ilona Dougherty
> [hidden email]
> Executive Director :: directrice générale
> Apathy is Boring :: L'Apathie C'est Plate
> 514.844.AisB (2472) :: 1.877.744.2472
>
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>
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> Apathy is Boring uses art and technology to engage youth in democracy. Help
> support our work!
> « L’apathie c’est plate » passe par l’art et la technologie dans le but
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>
>
>
>

--
http://michaellenczner.ca
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