On July 20, Annie & Alan of VisGov were pleased to help organize and moderate the Conversation in Civic Innovation: Fiscal Transparency and Citizen Engagement at the Microsoft New England R&D (NERD) Center. The panel included five local experts on open data and government transparency:
- James Milan, producer of Your Arlington Dollar on ACMi (Arlington Community Media Inc.) @acmitv
- Mike Herbert, Ashland Town Manager @AshlandTwnMgr
- Adam Langley, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy , Fiscally Standardized Cities database, @landpolicy
- Christopher Dwelley, Co-Lead & Performance Manager, Citywide Analytics Team at City of Boston @chrisdwelley @cityofboston
- Curt Savoie, Principal Data Scientist at Commonwealth of Massachusetts @CurtSavoie @MassachusettsIT
A main theme of the discussion was that numbers alone aren’t enough, that the data needs to tell a story, whether through meaningful visualizations, providing context, public discussions, and/or good journalism.
Conversations in Civic Innovation is a series of meetups sponsored by Microsoft New England and the Venture Café Foundation, Thank you @cathywissink and @asprung of Microsoft New England for organizing!
