Civic Commons was born, appropriately, because several people had the same idea at the same time, and were able to pool their resources to get something off the ground. So far it has run as an informal consortium, led by the Office of the CTO of the District of Columbia, Code for America, and OpenPlans. Read more…

The Boston Hacks/Hackers Meetup is hosting a hackathon for building apps based on OpenBlock, to “figure out what cool things we can do with Boston data”, as Joel Abrams of the Boston Globe puts it. Even if you don’t live in Boston, it might be worth a trip if you’re interested in hacking with OpenBlock. Read more…

We were not in Soho anymore. There was no pizza, no sticker-covered Macs, and most strikingly, no day jobs. Everyone in the room actually worked in the field of transit information systems, specifically on the design of user interfaces for real time trip planning. The room was packed. The clothes were black. Designer eyeglasses and Read more…