MiramarMike: Blog

I was at a client recently and I expressed the view that this client wasn't particularly adept at forming partnerships and yet they had it as a key component of their future. I wasn't disagreeing with their future state, it's admirable to behold, but I was raising it as a large risk that they saw themselves as being an organisation that with very strong partnerships (at an international, national, governmental, business and community level) as key to their being and yet they didn't have a history of such behaviour. And I was rightly challenged on my view as I am by no means the font of all knowledge with this organisation and there were many in the room that had a long history with it. A number of 'partnerships' were rolled out, some were acknowledged as having atrophied over time, and some were now being seen as more 'procurement processes' (you have / do 'a' and we'll give you $n for it ... that's not a partnership I would trust my

(this post first appeared on the ATLabs site: Engaging Civic-Minded Developers ) No-one wants to work for free. Only a handful are willing to take the time, energy and focus they normally reserve for work, family, friends and apply them to ideas that are seemingly unformed, goals that are best described as aspirational or projects that may never see the light of day. Even these folks don’t want to work for free. So why do these people be they experienced developers, UX designers, project managers, customer representatives, tech students or even “people with an interest in computers” put aside time to bring their considerable skills to “civic tech”? Ok, a definition is needed for “civic tech”, and here’s mine: The application of technology to open up opportunities to solve local* issues by the community directly affected Here’s one example of such a problem/solution - there are too many taxis with one person driving from the airport thus creating traffic flow issues. Maybe

Cracking video explaining how open data makes a difference to us all - well done to the Open Government Information and Data Programme team!