CityCamp

From great people in government, community organizations, and technology start-ups to “everyday citizens” who happen to be software developers, social media experts, open government advocates, and students, everyone was welcome.

Participant Introductions—See who was there!

The broad theme was "Community 2.0" in which participants tried to answer these questions:

• In a world of scarce public resources, how do we take advantage of the “2.0 online, social media, and open source world to help build awesome local communities?
• How can we connect the interested public with 2.0 skills to work with government, community groups, neighborhood associations, local ethnic associations, and more?
• How can our local communities be bold, inclusive, open, accessible, wired and darn right innovative when bottom-up connects with top-down for collaboration?

CityCamp Minnesota: using Community 2.0 to build and leverage trust - Read Griff Wigley's in-depth post about the unconference.

What is an “unconference?”

Simple.

The coffee break becomes the conference.

You introduce yourself at the beginning with your name, organization (if one), and three words.

Via the web in advance and that morning participants shared what they wanted to discover or were inspired to share related to the Community 2.0 theme.

Some magic happened.

And the day was filled with at least 25 different very interactive small and large break-out discussions (~5 to 25 people).

From time-to-time we reported summaries back to the full group and lots of the content was recorded, tweeted, and shared to all.

Learn more about the global CityCamp unconference series with gatherings in cities around the world and watch this short video on how it worked in Chicago.

Get involved in the global CityCamp movement:

Join the global CityCamp Exchange online community

Tune into tweets using the #citycamp hashtag.

Join the online group for the CityCamp Minnesota Committee hosted by E-Democracy.org.

If you thought this CityCamp went well, perhaps you will be the one to lead the next gathering!