CivicMeet Sacramento will continue to fill an unmet need this Wednesday at 7 p.m. at The Urban Hive. The traditional public meeting format does not give citizens the opportunity to help solve problems that they are capable of voluntarily tackling. Do you remember the last time you went to a public meeting? Sure, they’re useful for getting information, but not necessarily for incubating new ideas. Public Innovation, one of the organizations behind CivicMeet Sacramento (and Code for Sacramento), is building a civic innovation ecosystem to provide citizens with creative spaces where they can address community issues together. Civic initiatives just like this are spreading across the countr

CivicMeet Sacramento isn't your typical public meeting.  We're a solutions-oriented group of citizens from different backrounds who are working to exploit Sacramento's untapped potential for innovation in the civic space. So what exactly does that mean? Many of us practice citizenship through a consumption model: we elect people to office who design and implement public policy. We re-elect them when we believe they're doing a good job and vote against them when we think we can do better. Civic innovators take citizenship to the next level through a co-creation model. We use non-traditional approaches like design thinking to improve the citizen experience. CivicMeet Sacramento is a commu

In what could only be initially described as an experiment, nearly 40 participants gathered at The Urban Hive on Tuesday evening for CivicMeet Sacramento, an event sponsored by civic startup Public Innovation. Breaking into a new space of civic co-creation, five teams developed innovative proposals to address unmet public needs in under 45 minutes. This proof of concept validates the model Public Innovation has adapted from Bay Area efforts such as Code for America and the San Francisco Urban Prototyping Festival, and given the green light to move forward with future projects. The five teams each designed a poster to describe their idea. Their innovations comprised: (1) Humanizing Homel

What happens when you adapt the concept of a hackathon and invite non-coders to come up with bold ideas for innovation in the public space? You get CivicMeet Sacramento. Tonight, CivicMeet Sacramento will hold its first monthly meetup to begin prototyping creative solutions to challenges that affect us all. More importantly, we're creating a community of civic innovators with diverse backgrounds -- including business, nonprofits, higher education, technology, and, of course, government. Participants are invited to come up with ideas in the issue area of their choice. For example: Ways to improve the experience of riding public transit. Areas where business permitting could be further s

As home to one of the largest sub-national governments in the world, Sacramento's share of public sector employment is nearly double the state average. When local leaders discuss economic growth, you can't avoid hearing about the need to decrease our reliance on government as a dominant employer in our region. What if we could think about that question in a different way? What if being the state's capital was an asset rather than a drag on how we're perceived as a region? What if we were seen as global leader in self-governing? We all know that the pace of change is accelerating. "Innovation" has become a buzz word, yet it's also a disruptive force that's creating the jobs of the future

On November 19, Assemblymember Dickinson, along with Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and U.S. Congresswoman Doris Matsui, is hosting a free Citizenship Fair at Pacific McGeorge School of Law Student Center in Sacramento to assist legal permanent residents in good standing with the citizenship application process. Currently, California has over 2.4 million eligible legal permanent residents. As immigration policies and procedures continue to change, it is increasingly important to apply for and to obtain citizenship. Benefits for legal permanent residents who obtain citizenship include the ability to vote, the opportunity to reunite with family members and the continuance of health care c

The City Management Academy's 3rd weekly Wednesday evening class brought the diverse group of 30 community association, organization and agency leaders together for the first of several off-site meetings this week. Who knew how vast the city's Corporation Yard (on 24th Street south of Fruitridge) actually is: 20+ buildings containing shops, offices, storage, and more are spread across acres abutting the neighboring Executive Airport. Some factoids we learned from city department heads this evening included: Our city owns 2000+ parcels of land, containing more than 400 properties to maintain. The city's amazing 311 Call Center receives 30,000 - 40,000 calls every month. They answer an

A Perspective: 2011 City Management Academy's Class #2: Mayor Johnson Presents with his Initiatives’ Pep Rally Squad The second session of the 2011 City Management Academy (CMA) 12-week classroom for neighborhood association and other community & business leaders began with a 4-minute, professionally-produced video presentation complete w/ pulsing background music and splashy visual edits which highlighted some of Mayor Johnson’s accomplishments while in office. As the video ended, Wednesday evening’s first speaker, the mayor (waiting in the wings -- poised in the doorway shadows of a 5th floor New City Hall conference room, standing very still & quiet, head bowed, anticipating the roo

After a few years of budget-induced hiatus, the city’s Neighborhood Services Department (NSD) revived a noteworthy community program Wednesday night. The City Management Academy (CMA) http://www.cityofsacramento.org/city-management-academy// is an annual 12-week series of classroom presentations designed to educate community organizers to better understand how our city government operates.  Wednesday evening's initial 3-hour session brought 30 eager, newly-appointed members of the "2011 CMA class" to their City Hall conference room home base, and the agenda and process for the next several months of presentations and city facility visits. With substantial support from a core group of ded

When Nancy Swift and husband Tom Chandler adopted 2-year-old Meskerem, Swift met Meskerem’s biological mother, who had one request: that her child be given every possible opportunity. On Tuesday morning, Swift, Chandler and Meskerem made the trip from their home in Mt. Shasta to Sacramento, where Meskerem joined 23 other children aged 12 and under in receiving their citizenship certificates. According to Swift, receiving the certificate is a big part of providing her adopted toddler with the opportunity her biological mother asked for. “She’s been such a blessing to us,” Swift said. “This is finalizing her status here in this country. It’s been a long journey to becoming a family.” Th

We seem to take our citizenship for granted and we expect all the liberties and rights of our constitution. Today a group of 10 children were presented with certificates of U.S. citizenship. The event took place at the Old Sacramento Schoolhouse Museum. The Children’s Oath Ceremony included one child each from the countries of China, Vietnam, Singapore and Poland. Pakistan, Mexico and the Philippines each had two new citizens. The small Schoolhouse Museum was packed with the new young citizens as well as family members and friends. The ceremony began at 10 a.m. and various members of the media were in attendance. The site of the event was chosen by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Ser

One Wednesday every month, if you drive down J Street, you will see hundreds of people lined up outside of Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. New Americans born all around the world are waiting to celebrate one of the proudest days of their lives. Once inside, these patriots will take their oaths and be sworn in as new citizens of our great country. If you look closely, you will also see a number of folks going through the line, carrying clipboards. These hardworking volunteers are helping the new citizens register to vote, so that they can fulfill one of their core civic responsibilities. Engaged citizens taking part in the process, helping to elect our leaders and making decisions on impor