Background: The DC government is exposing an API for their 311 call center, to allow application developers to build open source tools to make it easier for citizens to submit issues. As part of it, they and iStrategyLabs have launched a second Apps for Democracy contest. The creative juices are flowing, and I have a few ideas I plan on implementing.

But first things first… in order to make it even easier for myself and for other developers, I built out a ruby gem that interacts with the Open311 and Geolocation API. I know I’m helping out my competition, but it’s all for the better good, right? Here you go:

http://projects.skeevisarts.com/code/DCGOV-0.0.1.gem

You can also grab it from github: http://github.com/skeevis/dcgov/tree/master

Download and install it, and you should be set. It’s fully tested using rspec, so just open up the spec folder and you’ll be able to exavtly how it works. I’ll eventually add this to rubyforge, but for now you can take the extra step

DC OCTO has a ways to go. The API is supposed to launch on July 1st, but they certainly have a lot more to do with the API, both in terms of development and documentation. The Geolocation API seems to be pretty solid. The 311 API has unimplemented (stubbed) functions, spelling mistakes in variable names, no error handling, and no documentation (the “submit” function, the most important, is a total mystery). It’s too bad that people will find this when they head to the CodeJam over the weekend, but oh well.

Good luck to everyone else!

Last weekend, a few dozen developers gathered together at Viget’s beautiful offices in Reston to… talk nerdy. Out of all the conferences I’ve been to, it was one of the best. It was directly honed on developers, and all talks were targeted as such. That meant no talks about marketing, gov 2.0, branding, public relations,  blogging, twitter, or anything else social media/PR, etc. as *camps and other conferences I’ve attended recently have moved towards (I’m not counting language-specific conferences).

I had taken notes, but Peter did a better job, so read his.

A few key takeways:

• Jay Virdy, CEO of Summize, kept repeating Build something simple, let the market pull you in – Brad Burnham . As soon as he accepted that, Summize turned itself into a simple Twitter search engine, and took off.
• HTML5 will likely have standards for push notifications (a la Google Wave). Comet is a current implementation. No more of this polling shit.
• Ruby 1.9 is a huge step ahead, but will pose problems for legacy apps.
• Impromptu, Lily, PureData are pretty cool tools for manipulating sound/visuals, even by reading a website. Much cooler if you want to spring for a Monome

Some link love:

• Aaron Bedra
• Peter Harkins (+ excellent notes)
• Ben Scofield
• @developer_day
• Official Site

Like last year, I woke up at 5 AM to work at a soup kitchen in DC. It’s always fun to drive around DC afterwards, as the streets are empty.

What do Jews usually do on Christmas Day?

Movies. Chinese Food.

Add on Community Service as well.

Last year I participated in the DCJCC’s December 25th Day of Service, and am planning to do it again this year. The earliest slot, 6 AM, is a lot of fun, and the streets of DC are empty! Even if you are observing the holiday, you can be back before everyone else wakes up.

I signed up for Miriam’s Kitchen, 5:50 – 8:30 AM. Are you in? Click here to sign up!

The biggest source of inspiration for me in my entrepreneurial dreams is seeing people who I know personally succeed in building something from the ground up. Last week, Jared launched AwayFind, which aims to curb distraction from e-mail by offering senders a way of getting in touch with you rapidly, thereby lessening the mental need to check e-mail constantly. I think it’s a great idea, and, while I currently have no problem being constantly in touch under normal operating circumstances, I have it in my e-mail signature.

Jared is a real inspiration. He built something from nothing, and took it to a public launch. Congratulations Jared, and I’m so happy you let me play a very very small part in it.

As I have recently moved into downtown Bethesda, and my girlfriend Alex has moved into Dupont Circle, we find ourselves eating out at a restaurant more often than not (even though we both love to cook). We’re always up for trying new things, so we rarely visit a restaurant more than once. For that reason, we spend a lot of time on Yelp, looking for well-recommended restaurants that we think would both suit us.

More recently, I’ve started experimenting with Thummit, now in beta. It’s done to restaurant reviews what Twitter has done to communication; simple, straight to the point. Instead of the standard five star rating system, you’ve got a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or neutral. That’s all I really need, right? It comes down to a binary decision; do I go or do I not go? And while there is not much of a technical barrier between allowing someone to type in a few sentences or a few pages, Thummit keeps reviews to 140 characters or less. Smart. When you ask someone about a restaurant, they’ll give you a few points, not pages.

What I like the best  about Thummit is the interface for it. With an SMS and Twitter interface, you don’t ever have to visit the website. More importantly, this allows you to collect your reviews while you’re at the restaurant (if only Alex would let me use my phone!), rather than trying to remember it later. They hope to have more ways of entering and retrieving reviews in the future.

It’s currently in private beta, but definitely worth checking out. Request an invite or drop me a line!

(Full Disclosure: I work at JESS3, which is helping out with social media PR for Thummit)

BarcampDC2 was this past Saturday. It was an amazing day with a number of great sessions.

Thanks to all the sponsors for making it possible, and CDIA for hosting. The volunteer organizers, primarily Justin, Shaun, Peter, and John, deserve an infinite amount of praise. The DC community has grown by leaps and bounds in the past year, and were it not for the efforts of people like you, we would not be where we are today, myself included. So thank you. I had attended the first planning meeting, but unfortunately I was unable to attend any others or contribute any time, and I’m sorry for that.

Leslie, Bill, and myself gave a presentation on our awesome work for C-SPAN, through our respective companies New Media Strategies and JESS3. We received great feedback, and high praise for our work throughout the rest of the day. I chose to speak on how I leveraged the codebase in a number of open source projects to turn around each of these complex and high-performing sites in a week (no, I was not kidding), and people kept on coming up to me, shocked that I was able to do that  . Slides will be posted soon.

BarcampDC2 is coming up in September/October – are you ready?

We’re just wrapping up a planning meeting for BarcampDC2, here at Murky Coffee. We are looking for sponsors and such, and soon opening it up to people to register. If you have an idea or are interested in sponsoring, check out the wiki here!

BarcampDC was a pretty big turning point for me. Having lived in the DC area for so many years, I had never even thought about reaching out to the tech community in the area – I wasn’t even aware it existed. It was there I met Ann, Justin, Keith, John, (the four of whom are sitting here planning the event with me) and many others, whom I consider mentors, colleagues, business partners, and friends. There is no doubt that where I am today is a direct effect of showing up that morning and talking to people.

If you are in the area, come on out!

I can’t believe I missed it!

I love Craigslist. You see a lot of decent gigs, but there’s also a ton of crap.

And every once in a while, someone lashes out.

Reply to: gigs-585642542@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-02-24, 9:19PM EST

Looking for someone to design a new company logo – the logo will be light-infused, modern, edgy, clean, and professional. Please link to examples/portfolio of past artwork done. Offering $80.

Oh, dear Gaahhhhdd.
Pardon me while I laugh until I wet myself… there, that’s better.

Twenty-five years I’ve been an illustrator, designer and art director — thirty, if you count my college paper — and everytime I think I’ve heard the stupidest, most otherwordly boneheaded requests ever, along comes one to top it.

Is this the same doorknob that wants his Web site redesigned for — what, a hundred bucks? Jeezus Christ on a Segway. Eighty bucks for a logo? I don’t mean to give you a heart attack or anything, pal, but logo/corporate identity/branding design that’s “light-infused, modern, edgy, clean, and professional” runs into the thousands of dollars, easily — sometimes more, depending on the scope of your campaign and how many different ideas you want and how many revisions you go through.

When I see shit like this in here, sometimes, honestly…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry (or stick a shotgun in my mouth).

Somebody drop a piano on this dope, and wake him the hell up.