In midst of collapse, VCs in Canada get a lesson in community

Recent Bookmarks

• Open 311

  This website is meant to facilitate an international effort to build open interoperable systems that allow citizens to more directly interact with their cities. Many 311 systems provide a broad range of information and services, but currently the primary focus here is coordinating a standardized, open-access, read/write model for citizens to report non-emergency issues.

• BeersForCanada.org

  Get in the spirit of Canada Day and buy your country a beer! Help us connect you to your government. We're building web tools that promote transparency, and encouraging Canadian leaders to share more information with citizens. For the price of a beer, you can help.

• The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All

  Robin Chase considers the future of electricity, the future of cars and the internet three terms in a single equation, even if most of us don’t yet realize they’re on the same chalkboard. Solve the equation correctly, she says, and we create a greener future where innovation thrives. Get it wrong, and our grandchildren will curse our names. Chase thinks big, and she’s got the cred to back it up. She created an improbable network of automobiles called Zipcar. Getting it off the ground required not only buying a fleet of cars, but convincing cities to dedicate precious parking spaces to them. It was a crazy idea, and it worked. Zipcar now has 6,000 cars and 250,000 users in 50 towns. Now she’s moving on to the bigger challenge of integrating a smart grid with our cars – and then everything else. The kicker is how they come together. You can sum it up as a Tweet: The intelligent network we need for electricity can also turn cars into nodes. Interoperability is a multiplier.

• picamp - The Political Innovation Camp

  This site originally supported the Political Innovation Camp, in Belfast, 26th May 2009, and will be used to convene a similar event in London during July 2009. Picamp is a conversational event, designed to promote a more conversational politics. It was originally promoted by Slugger O'Toole. We're looking for people with clever 'gamechanging' ideas - disruptive suggestions that can change the political landscape in a small or a big way. Come along, pitch your idea, ask others to help you finesse it and take it forward with you.

• British Columbia leading on open data and open government

  Maybe it's the clean ocean air, maybe it's the vast mountains, but there's an open government revolution afoot in British Columbia. In May the City of Vancouver passed a motion to open its data to the public. Inspired by Washington D.C.'s open data project, the city hopes to promote civic engagement, improve decision-making, and deepen accountability. Not to be outdone, the British Columbia provincial government has an office whose primary mandate is to improve citizen engagement and public deliberation using the collaborative tools on the Web.