Two weekends ago I was at Changecamp Ottawa with over 100 other people intent on discovering new ways to use technology to improve citizen participation, and by extension, democracy.  Some personal highlights:
  • Seeing David Hume draft the beginnings of a policy on participation for the city of Ottawa.
  • Watching Senator Elaine McCoy, and the very motivated StimulusWatch.ca group, run an unconference discussion on their project.
  • Participating in a session run by Tracy Lariault of CivicAccess, on access to government data.  This was one of the most popular sessions -- some people from Ignatieff's technology team were in the crowd.
  • Chatting with a group of coders who were thinking of taking the software base for fixmystreet.ca in a completely direction for solving citizen problems.
  • Being one of the lucky few to score a changecamp t-shirt.
Congratulations to the organizers.  Particular congratulations and thanks are due to the City of Ottawa, who hosted the event at City Hall.  It shows foresight: encouraging a more open, technology-savy city government enhances Ottawa's position as a tech center.  As David Eaves argued recently, in support of an open Vancouver:
"...programmers and creative workers in all industries are attracted to places that are open because it allows them to participate in improving where they live. Having a city that is attractive to great software programmers is a strategic imperative for Vancouver. Where there are great software programmers there will be big software companies and start ups."
Reflections by a ChangeCamp Ottawa organizer, including some sweet photos of the event, are here.
Future ChangeCamps: