Kevin Curry founded CityCamp in 2010 to catalyze innovation in local government. The success of the first camp in Chicago inspired a number of other events in London, San Francisco and St. Petersburg. CityCamp refers to itself as an “open source brand” focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations. The rapid spread of CityCamp’s model might come down to the founder’s main goal to: “create outcomes that participants will act upon after the event is over.” Content for CityCamp is not programmed for a passive audience; instead, content is created and organized by participants and coordinated by facilitators. Participants are expected to play active roles in sessions. This provides an excellent format for creative, open exchange geared toward action. Each City Camp has four goals: bring together local government officials, municipal employees, experts, programmers, designers, citizens and journalists to share perspectives and insights about the cities in which they live; create and maintain use of the Web to facilitate local government transparency and effective local governance; foster communities of practice and advocacy for the Web, mobile communication, online information, and open data in cities; and finally create outcomes that participants will act upon after the event is over. CityCamp explores and documents ideas, lessons learned, effective practices, and patterns that can be implemented within and shared across municipalities throughout the world. It recognizes that local governments and community organizations that have the most impact on our daily lives. The event seeks to create local communities who are dedicated to applications of design, process, and technology that make cities and other local communities more open and “user friendly”. 
Web site: http://citycamp.com/ The role of meetups Chicago
Not for a passive audience
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