Why good hackers make good citizens?

Catherine Bracy

00:03
I'm going to talk about hackers. And the image that comes to your mind when I say that word
is probably not of Benjamin Franklin, but I'm going to explain to you why it should be.

00:14
The image that comes to your mind is probably more likely of a pasty kid sitting in a
basement doing something ___________, or of a shady criminal who is trying to steal your
___________, or of an international rogue with a political ___________. And mainstream
culture has kind of fed this idea that hackers are people that we should be afraid of.

00:40
But like most things in technology and the technology world, hacking has equal power for
good as it has for ___________. For every hacker that's trying to steal your identity there's
one that's building a ___________ that will help you find your loved ones after a disaster or
to monitor environmental quality after an oil spill. Hacking is really just any amateur
innovation on an existing system, and it is a deeply democratic activity. It's about critical
thinking. It's about questioning existing ways of doing things. It's the idea that if you see a
problem, you work to fix it, and not just complain about it. And in many ways, hacking is
what built America. Betsy Ross was a hacker. The Underground Railroad was a brilliant
___________. And from the Wright brothers to Steve Jobs, hacking has always been at the
foundation of American democracy.

01:36
So if there's one thing I want to leave you here with today, it's that the next time you think
about who a hacker is, you think not of this guy but of this guy, Benjamin Franklin, who was
one of the greatest hackers of all time. He was one of America's most ___________
inventors, though he famously never ___________ a patent, because he thought that all
human knowledge should be freely available. He brought us bifocals and the lightning
rod, and of course there was his collaboration on the invention of American democracy.

02:09
And in Code For America, we really try to embody the spirit of Ben Franklin. He was a
tinkerer and a statesman whose conception of citizenship was always predicated on
action. He believed that government could be built by the people, and we call those people
civic hackers.

02:30
So it's no wonder that the values that underly a healthy democracy, like collaboration and
empowerment and participation and enterprise, are the same ___________ that underly the
Internet. And so it's no surprise that many hackers are turning their attention to the problem
of government.
02:49
But before I give you a few examples of what civic hacking looks like, I want to make clear
that you don't have to be a programmer to be a civic hacker. You just have to believe that you
can bring a ___________ tool set to bear on the problems that government faces. And we
hear all the time from our community of civic hackers at ___________ for America that they
didn't understand how much nontechnical work actually went into civic hacking projects. So
keep that in mind. All of you are potential civic hackers.

03:17
So what does civic hacking look like? Our team last year in Honolulu, which in this case was
three full-time fellows who were doing a year of public service, were asked by the city to
___________ the website. And it's a massive thing of tens of thousands of pages which just
wasn't going to be possible in the few months that they had. So instead, they decided to build
a ___________ site that better conformed to how citizens actually want to interact with
information on a city website. They're looking for answers to questions, and they want to
take action when they're done, which is really hard to do from a site that looks like this. So
our team built Honolulu Answers, which is a super-simple search ___________ where you
enter a search term or a question and get back plain language answers that drive a user
towards action. Now the site itself was easy enough to build, but the team was faced with the
challenge of how they ___________ all of the content. It would have taken the three of
them a very long time, especially given that none of them are actually from Honolulu. And
so they did something that's really ___________, when you think about how government is
used to working. They asked citizens to write the content. So you've heard of a hack-a-
thon. They held a write-a-thon, where on one Saturday afternoon -- ("What do I do about
wild pigs being a nuisance?") (Laughter) — Wild pigs are a huge problem in Honolulu,
apparently. In one Saturday afternoon, they were able to populate most of the content for
most of the frequently asked questions, but more importantly than that, they created a new
way for citizens to participate in their government.

04:53
Now, I think this is a really cool story in and of itself, but it gets more awesome. On the
National Day of Civic Hacking this ___________ ___________ in Oakland, where I live, the
Code For America team in Oakland took the open source code base of Honolulu
Answers and turned it into Oakland Answers, and again we held a write-a-thon where we
took the most frequently asked questions and had citizens write the answers to them, and I
got into the act. I authored this answer, and a few others. And I'm trying to this day to
articulate the sense of ___________ and responsibility that I feel for the place that I
live based simply on this small act of participation. And by stitching together my small
act with the thousands of other small acts of participation that we're enabling through civic
hacking, we think we can reenergize citizenship and restore ___________ in government.

05:51
At this point, you may be wondering what city officials think of all this. They actually love
it. As most of you guys know, cities are being asked every day to do more with less, and
they're always looking for innovative solutions to ___________ problems. So when you give
citizens a way to participate beyond attending a town hall meeting, cities can actually
capture the capacity in their communities to do the business of government.

06:17
Now I don't want to leave the impression that civic hacking is just an American
phenomenon. It's happening across the globe, and one of my favorite examples is from
Mexico City, where earlier this year, the Mexico House of Representatives entered into a
contract with a software development ___________ to build an ___________ that legislators
would use to track ___________. So this was just for the handful of legislators in the
House. And the contract was a two-year contract for 9.3 million dollars. Now a lot of people
were really angry about this, especially geeks who knew that 9.3 million dollars was an
absolutely ___________ amount of money for what was a very simple app. But instead of
taking to the streets, they issued a challenge. They asked programmers in Mexico to build
something better and cheaper, and they offered a prize of 9,300 dollars -- 10,000 times
cheaper than the government contract, and they gave the entrants 10 days. And in those 10
days, they submitted ___________ apps, five of which were presented to Congress and are
still in the app store today. And because of this action, that contract was vacated, and now
this has sparked a movement in Mexico City which is home to one of our partners, Code for
Mexico City.

07:42
And so what you see in all three of these places, in Honolulu and in Oakland and in Mexico
City, are the elements that are at the ___________ of civic hacking. It's citizens who saw
things that could be working better and they decided to fix them, and through that work,
they're creating a 21st-century ecosystem of participation. They're creating a whole new set
of ways for citizens to be involved, besides voting or signing a petition or protesting. They
can actually build government.

08:12
So back to our friend Ben Franklin, who, one of his lesser-known accomplishments was that
in 1736 he founded the first volunteer firefighting company in Philadelphia, called a
___________. And it's because he and his friends noticed that the city was having trouble
keeping up with all the fires that were happening in the city, so in true civic hacker
fashion, they built a solution.

08:39
And we have our own brigades at Code for America working on the projects that I've just
described, and we want to ask you to follow in Ben Franklin's footsteps and come
___________ us. We have ___________ brigades in the U.S. We are ___________ to
announce today that we're opening up the brigade to international cities for the first
time, starting with cities in Poland and Japan and Ireland. You can find out if there's a brigade
where you live at brigade.codeforamerica.org, and if there's not a brigade where you live, we
will help you. We've created a tool kit which also lives at brigade.codeforamerica.org, and
we will support you along the way. Our goal is to create a ___________ ___________ of
civic hackers who are innovating on the existing system in order to build tools that will
solve entrenched problems, that will support local government, and that will empower
citizens.

09:30
So please come hack with us.

09:32
Thank you.

09:34
(Applause)
 Why good hackers make good citizens?
Catherine Bracy

00:03
I'm going to talk about hackers. And the image that comes to your mind when I say that word
is probably not of Benjamin Franklin, but I'm going to explain to you why it should be.

00:14
The image that comes to your mind is probably more likely of a pasty kid sitting in a
basement doing something mischievous, or of a shady criminal who is trying to steal your
identity, or of an international rogue with a political agenda. And mainstream culture has
kind of fed this idea that hackers are people that we should be afraid of.

00:40
But like most things in technology and the technology world, hacking has equal power for
good as it has for evil. For every hacker that's trying to steal your identity there's one that's
building a tool that will help you find your loved ones after a disaster or to monitor
environmental quality after an oil spill. Hacking is really just any amateur innovation on an
existing system, and it is a deeply democratic activity. It's about critical thinking. It's about
questioning existing ways of doing things. It's the idea that if you see a problem, you work
to fix it, and not just complain about it. And in many ways, hacking is what built
America. Betsy Ross was a hacker. The Underground Railroad was a brilliant hack. And
from the Wright brothers to Steve Jobs, hacking has always been at the foundation of
American democracy.

01:36
So if there's one thing I want to leave you here with today, it's that the next time you think
about who a hacker is, you think not of this guy but of this guy, Benjamin Franklin, who was
one of the greatest hackers of all time. He was one of America's most prolific
inventors, though he famously never filed a patent, because he thought that all human
knowledge should be freely available. He brought us bifocals and the lightning rod, and of
course there was his collaboration on the invention of American democracy.

02:09
And in Code For America, we really try to embody the spirit of Ben Franklin. He was a
tinkerer and a statesman whose conception of citizenship was always predicated on
action. He believed that government could be built by the people, and we call those people
civic hackers.

02:30
So it's no wonder that the values that underly a healthy democracy, like collaboration and
empowerment and participation and enterprise, are the same values that underly the
Internet. And so it's no surprise that many hackers are turning their attention to the problem
of government.
02:49
But before I give you a few examples of what civic hacking looks like, I want to make clear
that you don't have to be a programmer to be a civic hacker. You just have to believe that you
can bring a 21st-century tool set to bear on the problems that government faces. And we hear
all the time from our community of civic hackers at Code for America that they didn't
understand how much nontechnical work actually went into civic hacking projects. So keep
that in mind. All of you are potential civic hackers.

03:17
So what does civic hacking look like? Our team last year in Honolulu, which in this case was
three full-time fellows who were doing a year of public service, were asked by the city to
rebuild the website. And it's a massive thing of tens of thousands of pages which just wasn't
going to be possible in the few months that they had. So instead, they decided to build a
parallel site that better conformed to how citizens actually want to interact with information
on a city website. They're looking for answers to questions, and they want to take action when
they're done, which is really hard to do from a site that looks like this. So our team built
Honolulu Answers, which is a super-simple search interface where you enter a search term
or a question and get back plain language answers that drive a user towards action. Now the
site itself was easy enough to build, but the team was faced with the challenge of how they
populate all of the content. It would have taken the three of them a very long time, especially
given that none of them are actually from Honolulu. And so they did something that's really
radical, when you think about how government is used to working. They asked citizens to
write the content. So you've heard of a hack-a-thon. They held a write-a-thon, where on one
Saturday afternoon -- ("What do I do about wild pigs being a nuisance?") (Laughter) — Wild
pigs are a huge problem in Honolulu, apparently. In one Saturday afternoon, they were able
to populate most of the content for most of the frequently asked questions, but more
importantly than that, they created a new way for citizens to participate in their government.

04:53
Now, I think this is a really cool story in and of itself, but it gets more awesome. On the
National Day of Civic Hacking this past June in Oakland, where I live, the Code For America
team in Oakland took the open source code base of Honolulu Answers and turned it into
Oakland Answers, and again we held a write-a-thon where we took the most frequently
asked questions and had citizens write the answers to them, and I got into the act. I authored
this answer, and a few others. And I'm trying to this day to articulate the sense of
empowerment and responsibility that I feel for the place that I live based simply on this small
act of participation. And by stitching together my small act with the thousands of other small
acts of participation that we're enabling through civic hacking, we think we can reenergize
citizenship and restore trust in government.

05:51
At this point, you may be wondering what city officials think of all this. They actually love
it. As most of you guys know, cities are being asked every day to do more with less, and
they're always looking for innovative solutions to entrenched problems. So when you give
citizens a way to participate beyond attending a town hall meeting, cities can actually
capture the capacity in their communities to do the business of government.
06:17
Now I don't want to leave the impression that civic hacking is just an American
phenomenon. It's happening across the globe, and one of my favorite examples is from
Mexico City, where earlier this year, the Mexico House of Representatives entered into a
contract with a software development firm to build an app that legislators would use to track
bills. So this was just for the handful of legislators in the House. And the contract was a two-
year contract for 9.3 million dollars. Now a lot of people were really angry about
this, especially geeks who knew that 9.3 million dollars was an absolutely outrageous amount
of money for what was a very simple app. But instead of taking to the streets, they issued a
challenge. They asked programmers in Mexico to build something better and cheaper, and
they offered a prize of 9,300 dollars -- 10,000 times cheaper than the government
contract, and they gave the entrants 10 days. And in those 10 days, they submitted 173
apps, five of which were presented to Congress and are still in the app store today. And
because of this action, that contract was vacated, and now this has sparked a movement in
Mexico City which is home to one of our partners, Code for Mexico City.

07:42
And so what you see in all three of these places, in Honolulu and in Oakland and in Mexico
City, are the elements that are at the core of civic hacking. It's citizens who saw things that
could be working better and they decided to fix them, and through that work, they're
creating a 21st-century ecosystem of participation. They're creating a whole new set of
ways for citizens to be involved, besides voting or signing a petition or protesting. They can
actually build government.

08:12
So back to our friend Ben Franklin, who, one of his lesser-known accomplishments was that
in 1736 he founded the first volunteer firefighting company in Philadelphia, called a
brigade. And it's because he and his friends noticed that the city was having trouble keeping
up with all the fires that were happening in the city, so in true civic hacker fashion, they built
a solution.

08:39
And we have our own brigades at Code for America working on the projects that I've just
described, and we want to ask you to follow in Ben Franklin's footsteps and come join us. We
have 31 brigades in the U.S. We are pleased to announce today that we're opening up the
brigade to international cities for the first time, starting with cities in Poland and Japan and
Ireland. You can find out if there's a brigade where you live at
brigade.codeforamerica.org, and if there's not a brigade where you live, we will help
you. We've created a tool kit which also lives at brigade.codeforamerica.org, and we will
support you along the way. Our goal is to create a global network of civic hackers who are
innovating on the existing system in order to build tools that will solve entrenched
problems, that will support local government, and that will empower citizens.

09:30
So please come hack with us.
09:32
Thank you.

09:34
(Applause)

https://www.ted.com/talks/catherine_bracy_why_good_hackers_make_good_citizens
 Why good hackers make good citizens?
Catherine Bracy
00:03
I'm going to talk about hackers. And the image that
comes to your mind when I say that word is
probably not of Benjamin Franklin, but I'm going to
explain to you why it should be.
00:14
The image that comes to your mind is probably
more likely of a pasty kid sitting in a basement
doing something ___________, or of a shady
criminal who is trying to steal your
___________, or of an international rogue with a
political ___________. And mainstream culture
has kind of fed this idea that hackers are people that
we should be afraid of.
00:40
But like most things in technology and the
technology world, hacking has equal power for
good as it has for ___________. For every hacker
that's trying to steal your identity there's one that's
building a ___________ that will help you find
your loved ones after a disaster or to monitor
environmental quality after an oil spill. Hacking is
really just any amateur innovation on an existing
system, and it is a deeply democratic activity. It's
about critical thinking. It's about questioning
existing ways of doing things. It's the idea that if
you see a problem, you work to fix it, and not just
complain about it. And in many ways, hacking is
what built America. Betsy Ross was a hacker. The
Underground Railroad was a brilliant
___________. And from the Wright brothers to
Steve Jobs, hacking has always been at the
foundation of American democracy.
01:36
So if there's one thing I want to leave you here with
today, it's that the next time you think about who a
hacker is, you think not of this guy but of this guy,
Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the greatest
hackers of all time. He was one of America's most
___________ inventors, though he famously never
Why good hackers make good citizens?
Catherine Bracy
00:03
I'm going to talk about hackers. And the image
that comes to your mind when I say that word is
probably not of Benjamin Franklin, but I'm going
to explain to you why it should be.
00:14
The image that comes to your mind is probably
more likely of a pasty kid sitting in a basement
doing something mischievous, or of a shady
criminal who is trying to steal your identity, or of
an international rogue with a political
agenda. And mainstream culture has kind of fed
this idea that hackers are people that we should be
afraid of.
00:40
But like most things in technology and the
technology world, hacking has equal power for
good as it has for evil. For every hacker that's
trying to steal your identity there's one that's
building a tool that will help you find your loved
ones after a disaster or to monitor environmental
quality after an oil spill. Hacking is really just any
amateur innovation on an existing system, and it
is a deeply democratic activity. It's about critical
thinking. It's about questioning existing ways of
doing things. It's the idea that if you see a problem,
you work to fix it, and not just complain about
it. And in many ways, hacking is what built
America. Betsy Ross was a hacker. The
Underground Railroad was a brilliant hack. And
from the Wright brothers to Steve Jobs, hacking
has always been at the foundation of American
democracy.
01:36
So if there's one thing I want to leave you here
with today, it's that the next time you think about
who a hacker is, you think not of this guy but of
this guy, Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the
greatest hackers of all time. He was one of
America's most prolific inventors, though he
___________ a patent, because he thought that all
human knowledge should be freely available. He
brought us bifocals and the lightning rod, and of
course there was his collaboration on the invention
of American democracy.
02:09
And in Code For America, we really try to
embody the spirit of Ben Franklin. He was a
tinkerer and a statesman whose conception of
citizenship was always predicated on action. He
believed that government could be built by the
people, and we call those people civic hackers.
02:30
So it's no wonder that the values that underly a
healthy democracy, like collaboration and
empowerment and participation and enterprise, are
the same ___________ that underly the
Internet. And so it's no surprise that many
hackers are turning their attention to the problem of
government.
02:49
But before I give you a few examples of what civic
hacking looks like, I want to make clear that you
don't have to be a programmer to be a civic
hacker. You just have to believe that you can
bring a ___________ tool set to bear on the
problems that government faces. And we hear all
the time from our community of civic hackers at
___________ for America that they didn't
understand how much nontechnical work actually
went into civic hacking projects. So keep that in
mind. All of you are potential civic hackers.
03:17
So what does civic hacking look like? Our team last
year in Honolulu, which in this case was three full-
time fellows who were doing a year of public
service, were asked by the city to ___________ the
website. And it's a massive thing of tens of
thousands of pages which just wasn't going to be
possible in the few months that they had. So
instead, they decided to build a ___________
famously never filed a patent, because he thought
that all human knowledge should be freely
available. He brought us bifocals and the lightning
rod, and of course there was his collaboration on
the invention of American democracy.
02:09
And in Code For America, we really try to
embody the spirit of Ben Franklin. He was a
tinkerer and a statesman whose conception of
citizenship was always predicated on action. He
believed that government could be built by the
people, and we call those people civic hackers.
02:30
So it's no wonder that the values that underly a
healthy democracy, like collaboration and
empowerment and participation and
enterprise, are the same values that underly the
Internet. And so it's no surprise that many
hackers are turning their attention to the problem
of government.
02:49
But before I give you a few examples of what
civic hacking looks like, I want to make clear that
you don't have to be a programmer to be a civic
hacker. You just have to believe that you can
bring a 21st-century tool set to bear on the
problems that government faces. And we hear all
the time from our community of civic hackers at
Code for America that they didn't understand how
much nontechnical work actually went into civic
hacking projects. So keep that in mind. All of you
are potential civic hackers.
03:17
So what does civic hacking look like? Our team
last year in Honolulu, which in this case was three
full-time fellows who were doing a year of public
service, were asked by the city to rebuild the
website. And it's a massive thing of tens of
thousands of pages which just wasn't going to be
possible in the few months that they had. So
instead, they decided to build a parallel site that
site that better conformed to how citizens
actually want to interact with information on a city
website. They're looking for answers to
questions, and they want to take action when they're
done, which is really hard to do from a site that
looks like this. So our team built Honolulu
Answers, which is a super-simple search
___________ where you enter a search term or a
question and get back plain language answers that
drive a user towards action. Now the site itself was
easy enough to build, but the team was faced with
the challenge of how they ___________ all of the
content. It would have taken the three of them a
very long time, especially given that none of them
are actually from Honolulu. And so they did
something that's really ___________, when you
think about how government is used to
working. They asked citizens to write the
content. So you've heard of a hack-a-thon. They
held a write-a-thon, where on one Saturday
afternoon -- ("What do I do about wild pigs being a
nuisance?") (Laughter) — Wild pigs are a huge
problem in Honolulu, apparently. In one Saturday
afternoon, they were able to populate most of the
content for most of the frequently asked
questions, but more importantly than that, they
created a new way for citizens to participate in their
government.
04:53
Now, I think this is a really cool story in and of
itself, but it gets more awesome. On the National
Day of Civic Hacking this ___________
___________ in Oakland, where I live, the Code
For America team in Oakland took the open source
code base of Honolulu Answers and turned it into
Oakland Answers, and again we held a write-a-
thon where we took the most frequently asked
questions and had citizens write the answers to
them, and I got into the act. I authored this answer,
and a few others. And I'm trying to this day to
articulate the sense of ___________ and
responsibility that I feel for the place that I
live based simply on this small act of
participation. And by stitching together my small
act with the thousands of other small acts of
better conformed to how citizens actually want to
interact with information on a city
website. They're looking for answers to
questions, and they want to take action when
they're done, which is really hard to do from a
site that looks like this. So our team built
Honolulu Answers, which is a super-simple
search interface where you enter a search term or
a question and get back plain language
answers that drive a user towards action. Now the
site itself was easy enough to build, but the team
was faced with the challenge of how they populate
all of the content. It would have taken the three of
them a very long time, especially given that none
of them are actually from Honolulu. And so they
did something that's really radical, when you think
about how government is used to working. They
asked citizens to write the content. So you've
heard of a hack-a-thon. They held a write-a-
thon, where on one Saturday afternoon -- ("What
do I do about wild pigs being a nuisance?")
(Laughter) — Wild pigs are a huge problem in
Honolulu, apparently. In one Saturday
afternoon, they were able to populate most of the
content for most of the frequently asked
questions, but more importantly than that, they
created a new way for citizens to participate in
their government.
04:53
Now, I think this is a really cool story in and of
itself, but it gets more awesome. On the National
Day of Civic Hacking this past June in Oakland,
where I live, the Code For America team in
Oakland took the open source code base of
Honolulu Answers and turned it into Oakland
Answers, and again we held a write-a-thon where
we took the most frequently asked questions and
had citizens write the answers to them, and I got
into the act. I authored this answer, and a few
others. And I'm trying to this day to articulate the
sense of empowerment and responsibility that I
feel for the place that I live based simply on this
small act of participation. And by stitching
together my small act with the thousands of other
small acts of participation that we're enabling
participation that we're enabling through civic through civic hacking, we think we can reenergize
hacking, we think we can reenergize citizenship and restore trust in government.
citizenship and restore ___________ in
government.
05:51
At this point, you may be wondering what city
officials think of all this. They actually love it. As
most of you guys know, cities are being asked every
day to do more with less, and they're always
looking for innovative solutions to ___________
problems. So when you give citizens a way to
participate beyond attending a town hall
meeting, cities can actually capture the capacity in
their communities to do the business of
government.
06:17
Now I don't want to leave the impression that civic
hacking is just an American phenomenon. It's
happening across the globe, and one of my favorite
examples is from Mexico City, where earlier this
year, the Mexico House of Representatives entered
into a contract with a software development
___________ to build an ___________ that
legislators would use to track ___________. So this
was just for the handful of legislators in the
House. And the contract was a two-year
contract for 9.3 million dollars. Now a lot of people
were really angry about this, especially geeks who
knew that 9.3 million dollars was an absolutely
___________ amount of money for what was a
very simple app. But instead of taking to the
streets, they issued a challenge. They asked
programmers in Mexico to build something better
and cheaper, and they offered a prize of 9,300
dollars -- 10,000 times cheaper than the
government contract, and they gave the entrants 10
days. And in those 10 days, they submitted
___________ apps, five of which were presented to
Congress and are still in the app store today. And
because of this action, that contract was
vacated, and now this has sparked a movement in
Mexico City which is home to one of our
partners, Code for Mexico City.
05:51
At this point, you may be wondering what city
officials think of all this. They actually love it. As
most of you guys know, cities are being
asked every day to do more with less, and they're
always looking for innovative solutions to
entrenched problems. So when you give citizens a
way to participate beyond attending a town hall
meeting, cities can actually capture the capacity in
their communities to do the business of
government.
06:17
Now I don't want to leave the impression that civic
hacking is just an American phenomenon. It's
happening across the globe, and one of my
favorite examples is from Mexico City, where
earlier this year, the Mexico House of
Representatives entered into a contract with a
software development firm to build an app that
legislators would use to track bills. So this was
just for the handful of legislators in the
House. And the contract was a two-year
contract for 9.3 million dollars. Now a lot of
people were really angry about this, especially
geeks who knew that 9.3 million dollars was an
absolutely outrageous amount of money for what
was a very simple app. But instead of taking to the
streets, they issued a challenge. They asked
programmers in Mexico to build something better
and cheaper, and they offered a prize of 9,300
dollars -- 10,000 times cheaper than the
government contract, and they gave the entrants
10 days. And in those 10 days, they submitted 173
apps, five of which were presented to
Congress and are still in the app store today. And
because of this action, that contract was
vacated, and now this has sparked a movement in
07:42 Mexico City which is home to one of our
And so what you see in all three of these places, in partners, Code for Mexico City.
Honolulu and in Oakland and in Mexico City, are
the elements that are at the ___________ of civic 07:42
hacking. It's citizens who saw things that could be And so what you see in all three of these places, in
working better and they decided to fix them, and Honolulu and in Oakland and in Mexico City, are
through that work, they're creating a 21st-century the elements that are at the core of civic
ecosystem of participation. They're creating a hacking. It's citizens who saw things that could be
whole new set of ways for citizens to be working better and they decided to fix them, and
involved, besides voting or signing a petition or through that work, they're creating a 21st-century
protesting. They can actually build government. ecosystem of participation. They're creating a
whole new set of ways for citizens to be
08:12 involved, besides voting or signing a petition or
So back to our friend Ben Franklin, who, one of his protesting. They can actually build government.
lesser-known accomplishments was that in 1736 he
founded the first volunteer firefighting company in 08:12
Philadelphia, called a ___________. And it's So back to our friend Ben Franklin, who, one of
because he and his friends noticed that the city was his lesser-known accomplishments was that in
having trouble keeping up with all the fires that 1736 he founded the first volunteer firefighting
were happening in the city, so in true civic hacker company in Philadelphia, called a brigade. And
fashion, they built a solution. it's because he and his friends noticed that the city
was having trouble keeping up with all the fires
08:39 that were happening in the city, so in true civic
And we have our own brigades at Code for hacker fashion, they built a solution.
America working on the projects that I've just
described, and we want to ask you to follow in Ben 08:39
Franklin's footsteps and come ___________ And we have our own brigades at Code for
us. We have ___________ brigades in the U.S. We America working on the projects that I've just
are ___________ to announce today that we're described, and we want to ask you to follow in
opening up the brigade to international cities for the Ben Franklin's footsteps and come join us. We
first time, starting with cities in Poland and Japan have 31 brigades in the U.S. We are pleased to
and Ireland. You can find out if there's a brigade announce today that we're opening up the brigade
where you live at brigade.codeforamerica.org, and to international cities for the first time, starting
if there's not a brigade where you live, we will help with cities in Poland and Japan and Ireland. You
you. We've created a tool kit which also lives at can find out if there's a brigade where you live at
brigade.codeforamerica.org, and we will support brigade.codeforamerica.org, and if there's not a
you along the way. Our goal is to create a brigade where you live, we will help you. We've
___________ ___________ of civic hackers who created a tool kit which also lives at
are innovating on the existing system in order to brigade.codeforamerica.org, and we will support
build tools that will solve entrenched problems, that you along the way. Our goal is to create a global
will support local government, and that will network of civic hackers who are innovating on
empower citizens. the existing system in order to build tools that will
solve entrenched problems, that will support local
09:30 government, and that will empower citizens.
So please come hack with us. 09:30
So please come hack with us.
09:32
Thank you. 09:32
Thank you.
09:34
(Applause) 09:34
(Applause)