Bonner Gaylord of the Raleigh City Council, an advocate for open government, began by mentioning to Carlson’s
law—innovation that happens from the bottom-up is chaotic and smart while innovation that happens from the
top-down tends to be orderly but dumb. Incremental adjustments and the fail-forward orientation (bottom-up) is more effective that pre-planned and requisitioned (top-down) processes. Government and elected officials are generally risk-adverse, however those in government at City Camp are working against that mentality and bringing innovation to towns, cities and states.
People can get involved and be proactive instead of the usual reaction, which is to be reactive and angry with a government that is seen as not being effective.
CityCamp is partially or fully responsible for some successes in the city of Raleigh:
- Feb 2012 resolution to open up the data and use open source to analyze software procurements
- Launch of OpenRaleigh website and platform for the open data
- Rgreenway uses SeeClickFix is designed for smartphones and functions as a guide to the Raleigh Greenway systems.
- TriangleWiki, a community-centric website Wiki that allows people to enter information about the Triangle.
- Code For America brigade deploying apps from other cities here in the Triangle
- DataPalooza, an open-data competition sponsored by the White House that connects local experts, innovators, and entrepreneurs to relevant, clean data drawn from federal, state, and local resources.
- SeeClickFix launched in 2011 allows users to take photos and report neighborhood issues and see them get fixed
These efforts are collaboration between City of Raleigh employees and early adopters like those at CityCamp these last two years.
Following these and other speakers, ideas were presented and participants voted on the top 20.