civic tech - New Mexico Technology Council

Community Update 5/12 (Part 2)

Of course most of the events in our wider community are put together by a wide variety of groups and other associations. Here’s a look at what’s going on in the near future and some of the recurring meetups and other events that they have.

IDEAS & COFFEE: PUTTING THE WEB TOGETHER IN YOUR MIND (5/12) )
In this conversation we will discuss how the technology of the web works and how all the pieces fit together in a spectrum ranging from iPhones to Google servers. As an entrepreneur, designer or developer creates a project or a business, questions come up repeatedly about where to begin and what to do next. We will attempt to put together something of a map of the huge world of the internet in order to make answering many of these questions a little easier.
WHEN: Monday, May 12th; 6 – 8:00 PM
WHERE: Ideas & Coffee l Albuquerque
SIGNUP: FREE with pre-registration HERE.

NMBIO: HEALTH, NOT HEALTHCARE AS A NATIONAL STRATEGIC PRIORITY (5/13)
Our nation faces multiple, simultaneous and interrelated epidemic scale crises across many levels – in our systems, our organizations, our communities, our families, and ourselves – that diminish our individual and collective security and capacity. We are caught in a self-fulfilling negative cycle – in which we suffer too much, spend too much, waste too much, and die too young – and the resilience of a nation so conceived cannot long endure. Dr Wayne Rosenkrans, of the Center for Biomedical Innovation at MIT will give us a vision of the future of “health”.
WHEN: Tuesday, May 13th; 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM
WHERE: BioScience Center | Albuquerque
SIGNUP: $35 for non-NMBio members HERE.

SFBI: THE EUREKA EFFECT (5/14)
The Eureka Effect is like speed dating only smarter. Businesses from northern New Mexico will meet and mingle with scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory that can offer free technical and scientific assistance. Each business will spend 5 minutes of one-on- one alone time with each scientist to whisper sweet nothings of nano fibers and materials testing. If there’s a spark there will be plenty of time to kindle it during the open networking section. If that synthesis of data structures, algorithms, numerical analysis, programming methodologies, simulation, visualization, data analysis, and performance optimization applied to the study of complex problems – is a’rocking, don’t come a’knocking. Space is limited. Must Register..
WHEN: Wednesday, May 14th; 4:45 – 7:00 PM
WHERE: Santa Fe Business Incubator | Santa Fe
SIGNUP: FREE with Pre-Registration. Info HERE.

ABQ QUALITY NETWORK: GETTING YOUR ORGANIZATION ENGAGED IN QUALITY (5/22)
Participants will learn the definition, theory, and practice of preventing defects – and have the opportunity to become familiar with an example of how to prevent defects and how to apply it in any organizational setting. Organizations that prevent defects as a matter of everyday business have reached outstanding levels of success.
WHEN: Thursday, May 22nd; 7:30 – 9:00 AM
WHERE: UNM Continuing Education l Albuquerque
SIGNUP: $20; Registration HERE.

NMFO: NEW MEXICO FILM & MEDIA INDUSTRY CONFERENCE (5/30-31)
The New Mexico State Film Office’s annual Film & Media Industry Conference offers a broad range of panels, workshops, vendor exhibitions and networking opportunities that target all areas of film and media from budgeting and attracting investors to post production and emerging media.
WHEN: Friday, May 30th – Saturday May 31st
WHERE: Hotel Albuquerque l Albuquerque
SIGNUP: FREE with pre-registration HERE.

RECURRING COMMUNITY EVENTS

The Albuquerque WordPress Group has several meetups including a monthly session at WESST on the 2nd Thursday evening of the month, weekly Workalong Wednesdays, and Women Working w/WordPress the first Monday of each month. Visit http://www.meetup.com/albuquerque-wordpress/ for more info.

Cocoa Conspiracy is an informal gathering of iOS (and other) developers 9:00 AM Thursday mornings at Winning Coffee (across from UNM). More athttp://cocoaconspiracy.com

The iOS Developers Workshop meets the 1st and 3rd Friday of each month at Ideas & Coffee. Look for Friday events at http://www.meetup.com/Friday-at-Ideas-and-Coffee

Lean Startup Monthly meets the first Tuesday night of each month at Ideas & Coffee. More info at: http://www.meetup.com/Albuquerque-Lean-Startup-Monthly/

The New Mexico .NET Users Group (NMUG) exists to help facilitate education and knowledge exchange among developers, architects and managers with an interest in Microsoft’s .NET technologies. NMUG meets on the first Thursday of each month. More at: http://www.nmug.net/

The New Mexico AIGA chapter produces a handful of events each month, from the S.I.P Social Hours to CoffeeTalks, workshops and more. Find it all at http://newmexico.aiga.org/local-events/

NM Internet Entrepreneurs is for internet entrepreneurs with an existing business or actively working
on a business idea. Meets monthly with info at: http://www.meetup.com/NM-Internet-Entrepreneurs/

The NM Tech Council and other community members post several tech meetups and other events
at: http://www.meetup.com/nmtechscene

New Mexico SolidWorks User Group is a user community for the SolidWorks 3D CAD program dedicated to improving the technical abilities of their members as well as providing a forum for business and employment networking. Their meetings are on the 2nd Wednesday of alternate months (June, August, etc.) at 5:30pm with pre-registration requested at https://nmsug.eventbrite.com

OpenHackABQ meets the third Thursday of each month at Convivium CoWorking, beginning at 6PM. More info at: http://openhack.github.io/albuquerque/

The RubiABQ Meetup Group for Ruby on Rails developers meets the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of each month at Ideas & Coffee. Find them at http://www.meetup.com/Rubyists-in-Albuquerque/

The Sandbox is a new space at the South Valley Economic Development Center for co-working, learning, incubation and more. Join this new and growing community at http://svedc.org/sandbox

To sign up for our e-news letters and other communications, please visit http://www.nmtechcouncil.org/about-nmtc/media-channels

Mia Petersen2014-05-12T13:09:18+00:00May 12th, 2014|

Community Update 5/12 (Part 1)

New Groups & More Events!?

Yep, all the time. We’d like to highlight two groups whose events will appear in the ongoing section toward the bottom – and sometimes in the Community Events section too.

(Note: this is an edited version of our most recent community update. This section includes most events and activities from the NM Technology Council. For community events, visit HERE.)

There’s an ongoing iOS Developers Workshop meeting the 1st and 3rd Friday of each month at Ideas & Coffee – many other good things there as well. (Much) More at http://www.meetup.com/Friday-at-Ideas-and-Coffee

Also at Ideas & Coffee TONIGHT, our friend Bill Bergman demystifies the world of modern web technology with “Putting the Web Together in your Mind” (sign up HERE).

New Mexico SolidWorks User Group is a user community for the SolidWorks 3D CAD program dedicated to improving the technical abilities of their members as well as providing a forum for business and employment networking. Their meetings are on the 2nd Wednesday of alternate months at 5:30pm with pre-registration requested at https://nmsug.eventbrite.com

Can your business recover from data loss? “Don’t get caught with your pants down” is the title for this month’sNM Cybersecurity Lunch on May 21st, addressing issues in business continuity and disaster recovery (Sign up HERE).

On Thursday, May 22nd, join our Women in Techgroup for “The Advantage: is Good Communication Really That Important for Your Business?” A session that translates ‘The Advantage’ model into something you can use to improve your business or organization (Sign up HERE).

Learn more about Open Data and Civic Tech on ABQ Civic Tech Day, May 31st.

Are you getting the emails from us that you want? We send emails to several groups, through they’re primarily lists for NMTC paid members (join here!), those interested in NMTC, and those with a general interest in business development activities around New Mexico (Shandra’s List). Update your preferences HERE.

Is that all a bit much anyway? Check out the NM Innovation Community Calendar!

There’s always a lot going on. Let us know if your tech community event should be on our list. And JOIN US if you’d like to help us grow New Mexico’s tech business community!

And please share!

NM CYBERSECURITY: DON’T GET CAUGHT WITH YOUR PANTS DOWN (5/21)
There is no Business Continuity w/o Disaster Recovery. In 2002, our speaker’s finance company collapsed when it didn’t protect its data when migrating from ACT to Goldmine. After losing all of the company’s data, and an average of 1 million dollars a month, the company closed its doors In just 13 months.
In this session we’ll learn more about how this catastrophe happened and a variety of tools and approaches to ensure this doesn’t happen to you and your company.Join us!
WHEN: Wednesday, May 21st; 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM
WHERE: bigbyte.cc | Albuquerque
SIGNUP: Varied Pricing; Info & Registration here.

ABQ WEB GEEKS: HAPPY HOUR (5/21)
Meet others in web design and development, software and other tech at the area;s longest running tech meetup.
WHEN: Wednesday, May 21st; 6:00 – 8:00 PM
WHERE: ArtBar | Albuquerque
SIGNUP: FREE with pre-registration HERE.

LOBONET CONNECT (5/28)
Connect with the students, faculty and staff of UNM’s School of Engineering & others who are making Albuquerque an up and coming Tech Hub.
WHEN: Wednesday, May 28th; 5:30 – 7:30 PM
WHERE: ArtBar | Albuquerque
SIGNUP: FREE for Students and pre-registration.

ABQ CIVIC TECH DAY (5/31)
ABQ Civic Tech Day is part of the “National Day of Civic Hacking” on May 31st. The day is intended to build awareness around ‘Civic Tech.’ ‘Open Data’ and ways our communities can work together to provide useful tools that not only increase civic engagement and more responsive government, but also improve our experience as we live and work in the Albuquerque area. What ‘app’ or other civic tech tool would you suggest to improve our communities? Share your ideas and vote at: http://bit.ly/abqcivictech_ideas.
WHEN: Saturday, May 31st; 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM
WHERE: UNM City Lab | Albuquerque
SIGNUP: $5 Register HERE.

To sign up for our e-news letters and other communications, please visit http://www.nmtechcouncil.org/about-nmtc/media-channels

Mia Petersen2014-05-12T12:52:17+00:00May 12th, 2014|

Presidential Innovation Fellows Seeks Entrepreneurs, Innovators

The Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) Program launched three years ago by US CTO Todd Park is one of the greatest programs we’ve seen to help transform government by applying some of the knowledge and approaches used by our private sector’s top entrepreneurs and innovators. It’s one of the best examples of large scale “Open Gov” approaches, making public data available and useful in a range of key areas.

What’s particularly interesting – and close to our hearts and minds – is that this year’s announcement includes a specific call to help make the national labs’ technologies and research more available in a user friendly way to US business and entrepreneurs. Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs are actually among the leaders in tech transfer, but we all recognize the process can be improved. While this PIF program will be headquartered in DC with the NNSA, we expect both labs to play key roles in this initiative.

Since many in our communities have already been thinking – and working – on these very issues, we’d love to see some NM applicants to this important program!

I’ve included the basics below, but for the announcement and more information, please visit:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/03/05/presidential-innovation-fellows-round-3-serve-create-innovate

PRESIDENTIAL INNOVATION FELLOWS PROGRAM

The Presidential Innovation Fellows program brings the principles, values, and practices of the innovation economy into government through the most effective agents of change we know: our people. This highly competitive program pairs talented, diverse individuals from the innovation community with top civil servants to tackle many of our Nation’s biggest challenges, and to achieve a profound and lasting social impact. These teams of government experts and private-sector doers are using approaches like design thinking and lean startup to achieve results for the American people in months, not years.

Data Innovation

The Data Innovation projects focus on accelerating and expanding the Federal Government’s efforts to make information resources more accessible and usable for companies, entrepreneurs, citizens, and others to fuel the creation of new products, services, and jobs. Also within this effort are projects that focus on empowering Americans with secure and useful access to their own personal data—such as their own health or energy usage information—as part of the Administration’s MyData initiatives. The Data Innovation Presidential Innovation Fellows will serve in the following agencies for the following projects:

The U.S. Department of Energy
is working to accelerate the commercialization of National Laboratory-generated technologies, in part by making information about those technologies more easy to find and use.

Mia Petersen2014-04-03T10:30:00+00:00April 3rd, 2014|

From Ideas to Reality: ABQ Civic Tech Day

What is Civic Tech?

How can we make Albuquerque – and other cities and regions throughout New Mexico – better platforms for everyone to engage with government more effectively, improve their ability to do business, and get the most out of their lives?

On Saturday, June 1st, NMTC, together with the City of Albuquerque, University of New Mexico, Google Developers Group and other partners are hosting the area’s first “Civic Tech Day” as part of the “National Day of Civic Hacking.” Together, we’ll share some thoughts and information, launch some much-needed discussions and build a few things to make Albuquerque a better place to work and really live.

For more information about the event and registration, please visit us here and the national event page here.

Looking for a challenge? You can view the list of federal/national challenges here.

But what are a few challenges, you might ask…

#WELOVEDATA (Sponsoring Agency: NASA)
“This challenge builds on the popular “We Love Data” challenge from the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. The idea is to leverage NASA’s vast open data resources and to help us think differently about how citizens can engage and use spaceflight data. This is an open ideation challenge to develop software, hardware, or visualizations of space data in order to encourage people to interact with the data in new and meaningful ways.”

FARMERS MARKET DIRECTORY (Sponsoring Agency: USDA)
“USDA has made significant improvements to the Directory over the past few years, culminating most recently in the API release. We recognize that for many, a trip to the Farmers Market is an event worth planning – whether you’re on vacation or exploring a new Market, deciding to take an umbrella or sunblock, or trying to find new ways to prepare the fresh, local goods that are in season. Farmers Markets are extremely social spaces and we believe a mobile app that facilitates social interaction and sharing will make the experience even more worthwhile for vendors, customers and the community.”

HELP STUDENTS THRIVE – THE EDUCATION CHALLENGE (Sponsors: ACT, Intel Corporation)
“An endless amount of data regarding education resources exists on the web – school curriculum, district standards, testing reports, school evaluations, college sites, scholarships, free online courses, etc…. Yet, it is often incredibly difficult to access and easily understand for students, families and even professional educators. Our goal is to harness this data to support key decision points for individuals as they pursue their life-long learning and growth goals.”

Other smart cities/teams around the world have participated in a variety of events to use data to improve the places they live. One example is the Sustainable Neighborhoods initiative from Wallpaper & BMW i:

SUSTAINABLE NEIGHBORHOODS
Wallpaper * and BMW i gave six creative teams the opportunity to help shape the future of their urban environments. The cities of the 20th Century were marked by public and private transport. The great challenge of the 21st Century is the development of megacities.

A common starting point for many of us advocating for Government 2.0, Open Government and Civic Tech is Code for America (an Organizing Partner in the National Day of Civic Hacking) and their CfA “Brigades.” They’re fantastic. One great tool they’ve launched to help communities like ours see and build on the work of other communities is the new “Engagement Commons.”

ENGAGEMENT COMMONS
“Currently civic leaders have to start from scratch when wanting to leverage tech to engage citizens. Engagement Commons aims to be a dynamic resource that both catalogs engagement-focused civic technology and highlights stories of successful use cases”

We’ll revisit some of these and provide more as we approach our Civic Tech Day on June 1st – and continue to build and connect our communities throughout the year. But… part of engagement is sharing, suggesting, discussing and more. We hope to see you on June 1st (sign up HERE), but you can also make suggestions and vote on others ideas at Google Moderator!

Mia Petersen2013-05-18T11:44:49+00:00May 18th, 2013|