Comments for Refresh Savannah

Comment on Startup 101: January’s Refresh by Brady Cannon

Brady Cannon — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:30:54 +0000

Kevin and fellow Refreshers,

Marcus is ready to make the journey south and leave the horrible Atlanta traffic behind, for at least a day or two.

As Kevin mentioned, Marcus is the founder and CEO of Squidbid, a competitive purchasing platform. Squidbid is currently in beta with plans to launch a licensed product version early this year.

I’m looking forward to hearing some of the lessons he’s learned over the years. It should be great.

Comment on Discussion: What Makes a Connected City? by Radford Harrell

Radford Harrell — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 14:56:48 +0000

Spreading the message about features / services is a challenge for all entities so no surprise the City has room to grow their reach. Focus is key. To Chad’s point (and the BIG IDEAS that came out of the discussion), opening data access is a great first step that seems within reach. If we can help direct the City to solve short term needs with technology, perhaps we can affect the overall direction and speed at which we march toward a more wired, tech friendly city government.

Comment on Discussion: What Makes a Connected City? by Chad Warner

Chad Warner — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 17:32:29 +0000

First of all, let me thank Refresh and The Creative Coast for hosting this event. There were some great ideas generated, and I think some simple things to implement.

I think the biggest issue that the city will have to overcome with any sort of “technology enabling” is how to best spread the word of this new technology. If the city suddenly (or slowly) starts a big technology push, what’s the best way to let people know about them? Of the 30 or so people at Refresh, only a handful knew about initiatives that the city was already undertaking…for example the 311 service and the interactive crime mapping. I also think that it’s important to note that the vast majority of the people at the Refresh event were “come heres” (ie, not originally from Savannah), which in my mind means that “from heres” may not be as open to any sort of technological advances that the city makes, and therefore even harder to spread the word about these advances.

With that being said, I think the easiest thing for the city to implement is opening up the data for public consumption. If someone then wants to process this data into usable and useful applications, it only makes sense to do this. It benefits both the general public and the city.

Comment on A Special December Refresh: What Makes a Technology-Enabled City? by Steven Scarborough

Steven Scarborough — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:32:38 +0000

It was so great to see a nice turn out for Refresh. I hope we can follow through and accomplish some of the ideas flowing through the room last night. Thanks to Creative Coast for providing the platform.

Portland, OR was successful in opening their public transit scheduling and arriving data to the public-over 40 projects have been created since on multiple platforms. Android, Braille machines, GPS devices, iOS, Web Browsers.

http://trimet.org/apps/index.htm
http://developer.trimet.org/

The idea about creating APIs for the city and giving citizens the freedom design outlets for that information, combined with an overhaul of the the local government’s web presence, could be a very powerful tool in making Savannah a more tech enabled community. Not to mention the reduction in time and expenses it would take for the city to manage all of these projects individually.

I love this city and would happily volunteer my time to be involved in a project like this if it made Savannah a better place for everyone. Get just a few people in a room together and great things can happen.

Comment on Let’s Get Learning! by Mark Finnern

Mark Finnern — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 01:42:19 +0000

Thanks for putting the links together. The Head First series from O’Reilly is also a great way to get started. http://headfirstlabs.com/ They really try to take you by the hand and make it fun. Check it out, Mark.

Comment on How Do We Get There? by Rad

Rad — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:39:27 +0000

While I’m guilty of usually listening long enough to launch into a mental deep dive about how to scale what I’m hearing, my experience (and perhaps age) has tempered me against this…although I still slip.
People are messy. That is, relationships are messy. Thinking in scale allows me the luxury of not having to think about pesky relationships, as I line up my assumptions as if they were established truths. My challenge is staying motivated by the reality that serving my fellow man, loving my neighbor in my Christian vernacular, is a one-to-one exchange. It simply does not scale well and having tried to scale me, or being on the consuming end of a highly sought after mentor, it’s actually a complete failure IMO.
I love your call to arms Kevin. And I’d point out that YOU are eating your own dog food and engaging your community, your fellow man, at many levels. It is that simple idea, that I have the ability and the duty, to become part of the solution, that made your article ring so true for me.
This is not to discount thinking about scale, and the reach and efficiencies it can offer, simply to say that in my own desire to serve my community, I’ve had to squash my natural tendency to ignore those individuals around me in exchange for a loftier, system-wide, perspective.
There are so many wonderful opportunities to step into an existing organization here in Savannah (and every city really). You can bring your specific skill set with you, and start to serve and get plugged in right now. As in, NOW. Not only does that make you part of the solution RIGHT NOW but it will give you tremendous insight into tangible solutions about our community, should you spend time engaged in scale strategy. Serving now gives you insight into your market (see, I’m falling back into business-think) and how best to serve it.
Thinking that way is great but don’t hide behind it. Put yourself at risk by reaching out now, to a person. For that matter, you don’t need an organization to help you do that. Look around. Our great city has lots of opportunities for people to help people.

A wise younger man once told me that people that need help rarely ask for it. You’ve got to meet them where they are and build relationships to find out how to best serve them. That sounds easy on the surface but it seems to me, hard to implement. Thanks for putting this out there Kevin.

Comment on How Do We Get There? by Jim Goodlett

Jim Goodlett — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 13:50:36 +0000

Kevin, I am in agreement on your thesis which is tangential to feed a hungry person a fish, and all they come back for is the fish, but teach them to fish (and the intricacies thereof), and they’ll fish and probably apply that process to more endeavors…
For most, truly understanding the variables to a growing (or having) a business or business vertical, is really the first step…those variables per say are everything from design/marketing, to sales, to raising capital, to managing growth, to managing expectations, to having founders or execs scale their knowledge as the business outgrows their comfort zone, to the technology needed to run/scale said business, ad infinitum…

The knowledge of managing those bits which are in constant flux, is the more powerful takeaway…

In kind, since I became President at Morris Technology some years back, I enacted what we call an INFOxChange (Information times change, and Information exchange) with other companies 3-5 times a year, under the agreement that neither company will try and poach team members nor steal products…in these sessions, we bring in outside companies’ teams and talk about product, processes and tools (PPT)…each group has a set timeframe to have their discuss in those three verts, with the other side asking questions along the route…successes and failures are to be talked about with equal foci and fervor…Execs are not allowed to run the discussion, but can ask questions within limited quantities…the team members have opportune to showcase their PPT, and that in itself also gives the execs an ability to really listen and learn about what their team members know, do, and have passion for beyond the 10,000ft views…

The only outcome I ask of my teams is to walk away with one thing that will improve our products, processes, or tools…I liken these sessions to my team members going to work for another company for years, but learn about all the smart things (and dumb ones) in a day, and bring that experience back to the fold…

Comment on How Do We Get There? by Kevin Lawver

Kevin Lawver — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:42:55 +0000

I think that’s a good start, but creating web pages for people feels like treating the symptom not the problem. Creating something for someone else doesn’t teach them how to create it for themselves – and that’s the problem. There’s a great program here in Savannah run by a local non-profit that takes at-risk kids and teaches them to take apart donated computers and build usable ones that then get put back into the community with free or discounted internet access.

I’d love to find a way to take that model and apply it to learning (IT, web development, computer science, etc). How do we take folks who can’t afford to go to college, or who’ve been left behind by technology and get them up to speed quickly, for free and without us all having to quit our day jobs and donate 100% of our time to it (because I have two kids I have to send to college at some point)?

Comment on How Do We Get There? by Dr Dzoe

Dr Dzoe — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:38:44 +0000

I had a similar experience recently. My wife just finished training in web design at CDIA in Washington, DC. For a final project, they had students break into teams and do work for various local non-profits. It gave the students a chance to use their new skills on something real. It also gave the non-profits some much needed tech support.

These projects involved various things – design and build websites mostly, but they also had 3D rendering students do an animated walkthrough of a local design for a new history park and there were several photography students who took photos for non-profits. There was a meeting at the end in which the various groups of students presented their projects. It was great stuff, including sites for a number of local education groups and a site set up for a charity that was sponsoring a school in a poor village in Africa. (A side note: WordPress is the CMS of choice for these kind of projects, at least at CDIA.)

The projects ran for three weeks. But these teams were extremely raw – they had just finished their training and they had minimal mentoring from anyone senior. They were still learning the ropes of how to interact with clients and how to work in teams. While the sites were generally terrific, I couldn’t help but think that a skilled team could have built one in a day or two.

That got me to thinking. I would find it extremely satisfying to build a website for a good cause. I’d be willing to do some pro bono work for that. But I don’t know how to find folks who need the help. I’m sure they’re out there – but how to connect to them?

Perhaps that would be a worthwhile endeavor that would help reduce the digital divide. Have some of us techies, the haves in the digital world, set up a program to combine folks who want to do pro bono web work with those who need it. I’m going to give that a little thought.

Comment on Some Light Reading on Libraries by Huey

Huey — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:20:44 +0000

Here's another great article about how the New York Public Library is using technology to it's advantage: What Big Media Can Learn From the New York Public Library