About Open Twin Cities fosters an inclusive community of civic collaboration and champions open government and civic technology for positive social impact. We are a Code for America Brigade partnered with E-Democracy.org

Connect with Open Twin Cities

Connect on Social Media:

Online Discussion Forum- look for twin-cities-brigade

In-person meetup: fourth Tuesday of the month, 6-8pm @UMN Humphrey School; book clubs as scheduled www.meetup.com/OpenTwinCities/

Share Data and Source Code https://github.com/OpenTwinCities

Website: www.OpenTwinCities.org Email: contact@opentwincities.org

@OpenTwinCites

Open Twin Cities

Goals: - To build a welcoming, representative community of technologists, public servants, and civic leaders. - To innovate and experiment in civic technology - To make data more open and raise awareness of the value of open data. - To build civic technology that solves community needs. - To educate ourselves and the public about the value and implementation of open data and civic technology.

What Happens at the Meetups? Meetups start with a round of introductions- everyone shares what they are working on and what (if anything) they might be looking for on their project or what they might be looking to contribute to a project. Sometimes there are presentations, for example:

-Jo Holtan presented about CycleHack, an annual 2-day event aimed at making cities more cycle friendly (look for 8/26/14 meetup)

-Dr. Lanise Block presented about the Digital Empowerment Academy on the Northside of Minneapolis, which focuses on youth, digital divide, digital literacy, empowerment, social justice. (10/10/14 meetup)

There is also an OTC Book Club that meets to discuss books and articles that address society, culture, technology, discrimination, economics, and other relevant topics.

Previous Open Twin Cities Events

Feb. 22, 2014: “a one-day event driven by passionate and engaged citizens given the opportunity to explore and drive solutions using public data from the Office of the Minnesota Secretary of State. Participants are called on to apply existing technologies or build new applications using public data.” http://capitolcode.mn.gov/

June 21-22, 2014: “a two-day event driven by passionate and engaged citizens given the opportunity to explore and drive innovative solutions for local issues. Participants are called on to apply existing technologies or build new applications using their knowledge, ideas, public data, and collaboration. This is a weekend for new ideas, experimentation, and 21st century civic engagement.” http://hackformn.org/

May 25, 2013: “a day-long event to bring together neighborhood leaders, technologists, data visualizers, designers, artists, scientists, civil servants, and anyone else interested in exploring how data can be used for research, analysis, mapping, outreach, engagement, and communication in our neighborhoods. The goals are to start conversations, build community, experiment, and prototype projects for neighborhoods.” http://www.cura.umn.edu/visualizingneighborhoods

Sep. 13, 2014: “The Hack4Good Hack Against Climate Change is a global event happening around Climate Week NYC and the Sept. 24th UN Summit on Climate Change. In Minneapolis, we're using this event as inspiration to explore the potential for environmental groups and activists to collaborate with the civic tech community to create innovative solutions to climate-related problems using technology.” http://opentwincities.org/events/2014/09/03/climate-hack-twin-cities/

Nov. 9, 2013: CityCamp Minnesota was an unconference with the broad theme of “Engaging Community Innovation.” The event aimed to take on the following questions: -In a world of scarce public resources, how do we take advantage of the “2.0” online, social media, and open source world to help build awesome local communities? -How can we connect the interested public with 2.0 skills to work with government, community groups, neighborhood associations, local ethnic associations, and more? -How can our local communities be bold, inclusive, open, accessible, wired and darn right innovative when bottom-up connects with top-down for collaboration?” http://citycampmn.govfresh.com/