In October, we announced the opening of applications for our first Entrepreneurship-in-Residence program. We received hundreds of applications from an impressive group of world-class startups. After reviewing the teams and applications, we were able to narrow them down to 11 semi-finalists. In the coming weeks, these semi-finalists below will be invited to City Hall to […] Read On…
San Francisco's Innovation Month Coming October 2013
Last year’s inaugural Innovation Month was a celebration of the people, companies, and institutions that make San Francisco one of the best cities to live and work. This year, we’re continuing the tradition with a month-long celebration that highlights not just the technology companies that make our city hum, but the individuals, civic and private […] Read On…
Open Legislation in San Francisco
As a summer fellow with the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation, I’ve been working with a crew of City Hall agents, Open Government activists, local hackers, and a legal publisher to get a machine-readable, technologist-friendly version of San Francisco Administrative Code released as Open Data. ?While this may not seem terribly exciting to […] Read On…
Safer Streets, Restaurants, and Now Houses, Brought to You By Open Data
Once discussed only by tech-utopians and stat geeks, “open data” has arrived as a real force for addressing urban challenges nationwide. Here in San Francisco, the City’s pioneering Open Data policy is redefining the role of municipal government as a facilitator of transparent, nimble civic projects. Open Data has already allowed developers to create novel […] Read On…
Data Jam, 100 Days to Tackle Housing
On Wednesday, May 29th, the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, and Code for America jointly hosted “San Francisco Housing Data Jam”, an event aimed at bringing together a diverse set of world-class executives, entrepreneurs, technologists, investors, and policy experts to brainstorm new applications, products, services, and product […] Read On…
Cleantech Goes Social: Submit your idea to reduce environmental impact using Facebook
Here @CleantechGroup, we are delighted to partner with @Facebook, @SFMOCI, and the City and County of San Francisco on “Cleantech Goes Social”, a $25,000 contest to find the next great idea to promote cleantech adoption and minimize environmental impact.? The Office of Civic Innovation?has a wealth of open data sets on everything from the […] Read On…
New tech tool makes starting a business in SF easier
Figuring out what permits or licenses you may need to start or expand a business in San Francisco is tough. The overwhelmingly complex process may make even the most passionate entrepreneur hesitate. Aspiring small business owners have to navigate across as many as 10 different city departments, ? not to mention state and federal agencies […] Read On…
Open Data, Real Impact
San Francisco Works with Yelp to Create National Standard for Restaurant Health Scores Many San Franciscans are familiar with restaurant safety scores – the green cards posted in restaurants that publicly display their inspection scores on a scale of 1-100. In 2005, San Francisco’s Health Department implemented a food safety ordinance that required the collection […] Read On…
The civic innovation ecosystem blooms in 2012. What's next?
2012 was quite a year for civic innovation. Still a relatively young field, civic innovation thrived in 2012, thanks in large part to the strengthening of the entire civic innovation ecosystem. It begins with citizens identifying challenges in their cities and being empowered to create solutions to these challenges through hackathons and online engagement platforms […] Read On…
Connecting the Dots
Guest Post by John Cannon, Communications Specialist, swissnex San Francisco It’s something we hear a lot at swissnex San Francisco: “We’ve been to your events, and we keep coming back. But we’re still not quite sure―what exactly is swissnex?” The short answer is that we connect the dots between North America and Switzerland, with the […] Read On…