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Forbes names MindMixer CEO an "up and comer"
Forbes
May 10, 2013 By Steven Bertoni
Nick Bowden: Mindmixer
Why confine town hall meetings to the town hall? MindMixer CEO Bowden, 29, created a platform that enables the people in power to crowdsource solutions from their constituents. Via MindMixer, municipalities pose problems for the community to crack. Successful projects have included crosswalks, electric car-charging stations and a redesign of San Francisco’s public library card that received more than 3,400 submissions. Community groups pay subscription fees starting at $49 a month. The Omaha startup raised a Series B round of $4 million in April, bringing total funding to $6.2 million.
How Generation X is shaping government
Governing
May 09, 2013 By Rob Gurwitt
A couple of months ago, the city of San Mateo, Calif., finished a small experiment. Planning to renovate the playground at one of its most popular community parks, it put a set of proposed designs online for a month and invited public comments. Some 130 people from around the city batted ideas back and forth, remarked on what they liked and didn’t like in the designs, and made suggestions. The playground needed shade, they agreed, and water fountains reachable by little kids.
The city’s Parks and Recreation Department was thrilled. Before trying the online approach, it had convened a public meeting to solicit feedback. Eight people had bothered to show up.
What stood out most in the online forum was who the participants turned out to be. Almost 60 percent of them were between the ages of 35 and 45. The average age was just shy of 42 -- noticeably younger than the demographic typically drawn by public hearings in San Mateo. “This was the target audience we’d been trying to get but were not getting” through conventional hearings, says Abby Veeser, a senior management analyst in the parks department.
In other words, Generation X was checking in.
And not just in San Mateo. In Phoenix, the city’s Planning and Development Department has logged thousands of responses to its online request for citizens to contribute their thoughts to a new master plan. The average age of respondents? Again, 42.
Read the May issue of Governing magazine.
Meanwhile, for nearly a year the city of Palo Alto, Calif., has been making its trove of data available online. It began with budget and financial data, expanded to salaries and benefits for all city employees, and is pushing on to specific program data. The idea is to make information that was always public -- but for which residents had to ask -- much more easily available. The initiative has been pushed by a cohort of younger managers who consider transparency vital to citizen engagement. “Nothing against the [baby] boomers,” says Assistant City Manager Pamela Antil, “but I think Gen Xers are way more comfortable with transparency and open data initiatives. We’re learning in government that people are interested in this information and that they’re willing to put it into a meaningful, useful format that benefits other people in the community.”
Local governments are in the midst of a sea change when it comes to public participation and citizen engagement. Forced by the recession and recovery of the last five years to make dramatic cuts to their budgets, they’ve reached out to try to understand better what their residents value most. Presented with a new and ever-evolving array of technological tools -- Facebook, Twitter, text messaging and public-participation
What may be most interesting about all this, however, is that it’s occurring precisely as another momentous shift is taking place: As they go through their 30s and 40s, members of Generation X are moving into more active roles as citizens and into upper management ranks in local government. While it’s too much to say that this generational change is the force driving local governments’ more expansive view of public engagement, the blending of the two trends is no coincidence. It shouldn’t be surprising that this generation, which long ago shook off its disengaged-slacker stereotype to become known for its entrepreneurialism, DIY ethic, skepticism about bureaucracy and comfort with collaborating over far-flung networks, would now be pressing local government to think in new ways about the work of democracy.
“A lot of people in their 30s and 40s now are focused on families and schools and parks and public amenities,” says Matt Bronson, San Mateo’s assistant city manager, who at 38 falls squarely into the demographic. “They want to play a role and not just a one-time listening role. As a generation, they want to have a chance to provide ongoing feedback, and when the time and opportunity are right, to help make collaborative decisions on the direction of their communities.”
For the last two-and-a-half years, ever since the first baby boomers started to hit 65 -- which they will continue to do at a rate of 10,000 a day for another 16 years or so -- media attention on generational change has tended to focus either on them or on the socially tolerant, liberal-leaning politics of 20-somethings, or millennials. Generation X has been an afterthought. Which pretty much figures, given how its members have always viewed their inattentive treatment by society at large. Yet it is members of Generation X who are coming into full maturity and thus leaving their stamp on community life.
Just who makes up Generation X is open to some debate. The typical starting point, based on the commonly agreed-upon end of the baby boom, is 1965. But using cultural markers, renowned generational thinkers Neil Howe and William Strauss put the start date at 1961; so does the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the University of Michigan, which for more than two decades has been studying a cohort of Gen Xers. Ending points vary, too, from 1978 to 1982.
There is little disagreement, however, on the forces that helped shape members of the generation. The short version, says Howe, is that the “first wave” of Xers spent their childhoods watching the country fall apart and their adolescence and early adulthood in the “Morning in America” glow of the Reagan years. “They have no memory of anything before everything started going crazy: long, hot summers and riots and peace movements and the family going to hell and the Me Decade,” he says. “At the same time, they were there at the ground zero of the deregulation, tax-cut, free-agent rebellion against the system, only for them it was in the economy as opposed to the culture. That economic liberation was defining for first-wave Xers.”
So, too, were a variety of social trends. They watched their parents’ marriages struggle and sometimes fall apart -- the divorce rate hit its high in 1981. Their mothers joined the workforce in unprecedented numbers, which meant that many of them had no one waiting at home when they returned from school. “They were latchkey kids, and institutions were crumbling as they came of age,” says Rebecca Ryan, a generational consultant who often works with local governments. “They had to be fighters and learn to speak for themselves.”
And they developed an overwhelming skepticism about large institutions. They sat in the back seat while their parents waited in long gas lines, watched the Challenger shuttle explode and followed the American hostage crisis in Iran. They hit the schools as public education began to fall apart, a fact confirmed for them, as Howe points out, by the 1983 “A Nation At Risk” report and its memorably scorching preamble: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”
In the private sector, the savings and loan crisis began in 1985, just as Gen Xers would have been turning to banks as young adults. The recession of the early 1990s, the dot-com bust, the stuttering engine of lower- and middle-class advancement, the Great Recession -- all have left their mark. A 2007 study by the Economic Mobility Project, spearheaded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, found that people in their 30s in 2004 had a median income on average 12 percent lower than their fathers’ three decades before. “This suggests the up escalator that has historically ensured that each generation would do better than the last may not be working very well,” the report commented. The Census Bureau, measuring the effects of the recession on householders, found that the largest decrease in median net worth between 2005 and 2010 belonged to those 35 to 44. Their net worth dropped by 59 percent, compared to 37 percent for those under 35 and 13 percent for those 65 and older.
So it’s probably no surprise that there is a widespread sense within Generation X that the government structures that worked for earlier generations do not work for them. As with any generational description, it is easy to oversimplify. But it’s notable that some of the most nationally prominent members of the generation -- U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is 43, and Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, 41, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, 45, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, 41, and, if you use Howe’s definition of who’s in Gen X, 50-year-old Chris Christie of New Jersey -- are Republicans who have built their careers on pledges to rewrite how government works. “There is a Reaganite bent to this generation, the idea that government and its rules are often a problem,” Howe says.
In truth, Xers as a whole are divided politically. Exit polls showed those in their 30s going decidedly for President Obama in the 2012 elections, while those born before 1973 leaned toward Republican challenger Mitt Romney. A 2011 Pew Center study found that about 47 percent of Gen Xers favored smaller government, while 45 percent preferred a bigger government. Meanwhile, a study by Florida State University sociologist Elwood Carlson for the Population Reference Bureau found a healthy plurality of Gen Xers -- 43 percent -- identifying as independents, more than any generation before them.
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The streak of self-reliance that marks many Xers has been amplified by a key belief that government won’t always be there to help. “One thing that was really hammered into our heads, going back to the late ’80s and on into today, is that the celebrated, major government programs like Social Security and Medicare would not be around for us,” says Pete Peterson, who runs the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University. “So there’s a feeling that you’d better get this done on your own, that you’re going to have to take care of this yourself.”
That go-it-alone attitude may help explain why Xers have for so long been characterized as disengaged from and cynical about public life. But that is ending, Peterson argues, as they build families and settle into neighborhoods. “If you’ve never believed that government was that important,” he says, “when you have kids is the time you reconnect -- and as you sink in roots and pay taxes and care about things that happen on a more local basis, you become more civically aware.” But the same forces that have pushed Generation X toward self-reliance and questioning the institutions around them, he says, will also produce a younger citizenry filled with “people who believe, ‘I don’t have to put up with this bureaucracy. There’s got to be a better way to do this.’”
In particular, localities have come to understand that if they hope to reflect the concerns and priorities of the public they claim to represent, they have to rethink their entire approach to public participation, says Karen Thoreson, president of the Alliance for Innovation, a joint project of the International City/County Management Association and Arizona State University. “Folks have finally admitted out loud that the ways local governments have traditionally engaged the public don’t work, are broken and are unpleasant for everybody.”
Or as Anne Ambrose, the 43-year-old director of public safety and community relations for Palmdale, Calif., puts it, “The expectation that public life occurs in front of the council dais is a dying concept.”
To get a sense of what might replace it, it’s worth remembering that the hyperconnected, technologically adept, just-do-it world that moves at lightning speed to meet consumers’ needs took shape as Generation Xers were growing up. It has molded their expectations not just of the private sector, but of government, both in their roles as citizens and among those who’ve become government officials. In a society in which you can amass Twitter followers and run your own blog and opine on Facebook and become a YouTube sensation overnight, it stands to reason that Gen Xers don’t have much patience for showing up to a public meeting on a Thursday night where they might get two minutes during a perfunctory “public comments” period -- and that Gen X city officials would be sympathetic. But as the online experience of cities like San Mateo and Phoenix has shown, they’re ready to participate if they’re offered a meaningful way to do so. “It’s part of how Generation X is wired,” Bronson says. “We’re focused on practicing collaborative decision-making.”
So the frontiers of public participation are expanding as Gen Xers move into management roles in government. “There have been some real breakthroughs by managers of all ages, including boomers who said, ‘Let’s try something different,’” says Thoreson. “But the whole electronic side of it, and being able to engage the public through forums or crowdsourcing or whatever, has been led inside local government by 30- and 40-year-olds, been picked up by citizens in that age group and now is being picked up by citizens of all age groups.”
There are about as many different iterations as there are communities interested in exploring new forms of participation. Nadia Rubaii, an associate professor of public administration at Binghamton University in New York, believes that localities are feeling their way through the transition, as younger boomers and older Gen Xers within government find a way to bridge the old and new worlds. “There’s an affinity for Generation X, but also an appreciation for how things get done through structure and bureaucracy,” she says. “So what governments are doing and people in this ‘bridge’ stage are helping facilitate is adding layers to civic engagement, but not necessarily scrapping entirely the older ways of participation, as later members of Gen X might prefer.”
For instance, in Edina, Minn., 49-year-old city manager Scott Neal has for the last decade been writing a blog about his experiences and about the issues the Minneapolis suburb faces. He makes sure his department heads all do the same. “In my own small way I’m trying to build some trust and empathy for government again,” he says. The city still relies mostly on traditional public meetings and hearings, but the blog gives citizens another point of entry. “I’ve had a hundred instances over the years,” he says, “where people have approached me out of nowhere and said, ‘Hey, I read what you wrote about manhole covers and I’d never thought about that.’ It allows people an oblique way to approach someone they might not ordinarily approach.”
In Phoenix, the MindMixer site on the general development plan took shape after the city’s 43-year-old mayor, Greg Stanton, wondered what it would take to get residents to participate in a calm citywide conversation about its future, rather than proposing to put a freeway down the middle of a neighborhood, as he put it, just to get them to turn out. For all its success, though, “it’s just one piece of the puzzle as far as outreach,” says Joshua Bednarek, a city planner who helped create it. “For some people, the site just isn’t the best way to engage them -- so we might be better off having a cup of coffee at a senior center to get feedback.”
Meanwhile, Philadelphia planners have been using a program called Textizen to elicit public comment. Designed with the help of Code for America volunteers, the department uses advertisements on bus shelters and inside public transit to pose questions on which it wants feedback, like how to improve transit, say, or how people use recreation centers, or whether they shop in their own neighborhoods or go elsewhere. Residents then text the department their responses. “We felt that in a city like Philly, where there is wide usage of cellphones but more inconsistent access to the Internet, text messaging would be more equitable and universally understood,” says Clint Randall, the 29-year-old city planner who helped develop the project.
For all the growing interest in finding new ways to engage citizens, there’s still a long way to go. It probably won’t truly take off until there’s a generational change in the top ranks of cities around the country -- which may be a while. Not only are boomers delaying retirement, but their numbers remain overwhelming. In 1971, points out Rob Carty, the International City/County Management Association’s director of career services and next generation initiatives, 71 percent of city managers were 40 or younger. By 2009, 87 percent were older than 40.
There’s also the question of what local governments will do with what they learn from their citizens. “This could go really well if, say, someone shows up with a new app and government says, ‘Wow! Thank you for helping!’” says generational consultant Rebecca Ryan. “But it could go really badly if government pats them on the head and says, ‘That’s very nice, but we know better.’”
To avoid that, local governments have to develop ways of managing citizen input and incorporating it into their own internal processes, says San Mateo’s Bronson. “We’re just feeling our way now.”
Finally, as online engagement takes off, Binghamton University’s Rubaii argues, communities will face a technical challenge. “Given the potential to generate so much more rapid-fire participation,” she says, “they will need to have computer-based ways of sorting through it. Someone will have to come up with how to analyze and interpret all the various [participatory] feeds.”
Millennials, are you listening?
Branson looks for project input on MindMixer site
Branson Tri-Lakes News
May 07, 2013 By Kris Collins
Branson, Missouri Branson officials and the Cook, Flatt & Strobel Engineers team scheduled a public information meeting set for May 14 to encourage residents to be involved in the multi-million dollar revitalization project that will improve more than five miles of 76 Country Boulevard.
Sabin Yanez, senior vice president and business development director for Cook Flatt & Strobel, said public input is crucial in the planning.
“In that meeting, we’re really doing two things,” Yanez said. “A project update in the kickoff and, probably the biggest thing, launching of the public engagement campaign.”
Yanez said the project team has tried to meet as many residents, stakeholders, and business owners as they could, but they still can’t meet every person they would like to. The public engagement campaign will aid that mission.
On May 14, the project website and a web-based community collaborative social media tool, MindMixer, will also be launched. The website, bransonspiritof76.co
The project team had previously been giving monthly updates to the Branson Board of Aldermen, the group overseeing the project, but this is the first public information meeting.
“Based on our strategic plan, this is one of the most important projects we have at this time — 76 (Country Boulevard) is the first thing people see and the last thing they see,” Alderman Rick Todd, project chairman, said in a press release.
The project aims to improve traffic flow, foot traffic, pedestrian promenades, landscaping, streetscaping, utility enhancement and identity enhancement, according a city of Branson press release.
Yanez said the project is still in the planning phases, but hopes the public input from the meeting may help the design team sculpt preliminary designs.
“We’ve been working over the last couple of months gathering existing information specific to the corridor,” Yanez said. “Looking at things like land use, existing traffic patterns, existing intersection operations and also things such as where certain types of development has tended to pattern to. We’re gathering that info and letting it begin to guide us and seeing what characteristics it has and how it could work in the future.”
Yanez said some public input has already had an effect on the planning process.
“We’re constantly hearing folks are willing to see if we can find way to accelerate,” Yanez said of the six- to 10-year projected timeline.
Yanez said residents, business owners and stakeholders may see more definition in the project ideas and concepts in June.
“They certainly won’t be final because we will have just gotten into public engagement,” he said.
The project kickoff event is scheduled for 3 p.m. May 14 at the Clay Cooper Theatre.
Watertown launches website for public feedback
Boston Globe
May 07, 2013 By Jaclyn Reiss
Watertown, Massachusetts Watertown officials announced this month that they have launched a website intended to gather public input on drafting the town's comprehensive plan.
The plan will outline the town’s vision for growth over the next 10 to 20 years, and is the first of its kind in Watertown in the past 25 years, officials said.
Now, Watertown has paired up with MindMixer, a startup that helps organizations and local governments gather ideas from their community. The newly-launched feedback website, envisionwatertowncom
Locals can also submit links, maps, photos and videos to make their point when submitting ideas.
The website can also be accessed in different languages (powered by Google) by clicking “Select Language” in the left hand column.
The next scheduled public forum to discuss the plan is slated for Monday, May 20 at the Watertown Middle School, 68 Waverly Ave.
MindMixer site hopes to "inspire" Columbians
Baltimore Sun
May 03, 2013 By Luke Lavoie
Columbia, Maryland Twice a month, the Columbia Association board meets to discuss policy issues surrounding the $60 million organization, which manages many of Columbia's popular amenities.
And while charged with an important duty, you wouldn't know it judging by attendance at most meetings.
"So many times we host meetings for the general public and you look around and wonder who forgot to send out the wedding invitations," said Celeste Olinger, director of communications for CA.
"It's a little disheartening because you want the public involved in coming up with important ideas and solutions in the community."
And although Olinger might be disheartened, she's not discouraged — thanks to CA's new community interaction tool InspireColumbia.com.
The new website, hosted by the community engagement technology company MindMixer, was officially launched on April 5 and is aimed at fostering interest from the large majority of uninvolved Columbia residents.
"We all lead busy lives, so often it's not possible for a lot of people to attend our public meetings," said Olinger, who said she planned on bringing MindMixer to Columbia when she took the job in October 2012.
"Often we don't hear from a group or audience that lives and works and plays in our community. This is another solution that would allow community engagement for those who do not have the time to attend meetings."
Olinger likened the website, which costs CA $2,000 annually, to a virtual coffee shop, where community members can post ideas, comment on and support other members ideas and share commentary across multiple social media platforms.
The website is free for members to sign up and identifies people by their first name and first initial of their last name. Members of the CA communications team, spearheaded by Communications Specialist Aria Connor, post six topics to the website's homepage. Connor, who was the point person for developing the site, said the topics will rotate monthly.
Currently, the two main topics are "What are your ideas to revitalize the village centers in Columbia?" and "What are your top three preferred ways of receiving communications from Columbia Association?"
Connor said CA monitors the site regularly for comments, as well as inappropriate language, and gives feedback on ideas.
Connor said CA will not review ideas before they are posted, but will monitor the site regularly both to remove obscene posts and give feedback on ideas.
"It's the way we are trying to engage them and let them know we are listening to what they are saying," Connor said. "We want to respond back."
The department plans to prepare weekly and monthly reports to members of senior staff summarizing the ideas proposed on the site, which will then be relayed to members of the CA board, according to Olinger.
'Different voices'
While InspireColumbia.com is a place for all to share community ideas, it favors the younger, more technologically inclined residents, who may be the CA community's most underrepresented.
"It's for tapping those untapped resources that we know nothing about," Olinger said. "All of a sudden you find a gold mine in your community. To me it makes sense to bridge the gap and make sure those solutions are coming from the community."
CA board member Michael Cornell said the more ways CA has to connect with its residents, the better.
"It's a response to an ongoing conversation we've been having around the question, 'How do we engage the community?' " said Cornell, who has served on the board six years.
"There are a lot of people in the community that would like to be more involved and provide more input."
Even though Cornell categorized the interactive website as "a great step forward," he acknowledged it is only part of the answer.
"One thing I've learned over the years, you can never over-communicate," Cornell said. "No matter what we are doing, it's probably never enough."
And while community involvement on the website has been slow — only three people have commented more than twice — Olinger believes it will catch on.
"It's going to take our social media to the next level," Olinger said.
MindMixer CEO Nick Bowden talks about product on Bloomberg TV
Silicon Prairie News
May 02, 2013 By Danny Schreiber
Check out the full Bloomberg TV interview with Pimm Fox here: http://www.bloomberg
The day after MindMixer this week announced its $4 million Series B round, its co-founder and CEO Nick Bowden sat down on Bloomberg TV to talk about his company's product.
"The Washington D.C. school district is using the tool to gather feedback from parents on a controversial issue of school closures," Bowden told Bloomberg's Pimm Fox. "Which actually resulted in a reduction of the number of schools that are going to be closed from 20 to 15."
Whether it's a school district in D.C. or a mobilty plan in Los Angeles, the company Wednesday said it's now helping hundreds of civic, education and health care organizations. By year's end, it expects to reach 1,000 customers. It moved one closer today to that goal with the launch of a site in New Zealand.
"Inspire Porirua" is the second overseas site for the three-year-old startup. Late last year, it faciliated a site in Spain. It's also done five sites in Canada and it's currently in discussions to do a site in Mexico.
"Amsterdam, Stockholm, we got one from France," the company's co-founder Nathan Preheim said today in a phone interview, listing off the countries of incoming inquiries for its online community engagement platform. South Africa, Austrialia and the United Kingdom also are among the group.
Preheim sees the international interest as a sign of "great validation," but said expansion abroad also has meant overcoming some unforeseen issues. In Canada, for example, regulations required the company to store its user data at a facility in the country as opposed to using servers in the U.S.
And of course, there's the foreign language to overcome, first for the sites, and then for Bowden's future Spanish television interview.
New funding round bolsters community engagement for MindMixer
VentureBeat
May 01, 2013 By Christina Farr
Omaha, Nebraska Can a tech startup convince the average American to be more engaged in civic life?
MindMixer’s founders are on a mission to inspire citizen engagement, particularly around important social issues like education and health care. ”We would see only ten or fifteen people attend public meetings, and thought it was an issue of convenience, not apathy,” said cofounder Nick Bowden in an interview.
Today, the startup closed a $4 million funding round to expand its current set of services and tools, as well as hire developers.
The Omaha Nebraska-based founders say the technology is now used by hundreds of clients — primarily civic groups, health organizations, nonprofits and a few corporations — to communicate more effectively with their desired audiences. MindMixer says it has experienced 40 percent growth quarter-over-quarter
The company has come a long way since 2010 when urban planning experts Nathan Preheim and Bowden launched an initial product to connect community members in online forums with municipalities.
To bolster its ability to engage audiences on social media, MindMixer made its first acquisition of VoterTide in March. VoterTide is a social media intelligence startup that engages audiences around hot issues for political campaigns, non-profits, and special interest groups.
Among its most high-profile customers, the team is currently working with city of San Francisco for an initiative dubbed “ImproveSF” (the most recent project is a virtual town hall meeting). MindMixer’s technology is also utilized by the D.C. public school district, Ohio State University and ed-tech startup Coursera.
“The city of San Francisco issues a monthly challenge — to engage locals, they launched a challenge to redesign public library cards, and are looking for ways to provide access to healthy food in the Tenderloin district,” Bowden explained in a phone interview.
The funding round was led by Nelnet with existing investors Dundee Venture Capital and Optimas Group also participating.
MindMixer raises $4 million for its community engagement tools
TechCrunch
May 01, 2013 By Anthony Ha
Omaha, Nebraska MindMixer, a startup that helps organizations like the City of San Francisco gather ideas from their communities, has raised $4 million in Series B funding.
When the company announced its $1.9 million Series A last year, CEO Nick Bowden recalled his work in urban planning, when local governments and agencies would hold public meetings that no one attended. So MindMixer created tools for soliciting ideas and feedback online.
The company says its current customers include the D.C. public school district, Ohio State University, and Coursera. For example, it powers the ImproveSF site, which hosts a number of “challenges” where San Franciscans can contribute suggestions and content around topics that are serious (like food access and the public library) and not (like holiday photos).
Bowden said this week that although he plans to keep focused on “the civic and education markets” in the short-term, MindMixer is also defining those markets broadly — it’s not just for the government. For example, he said there’s definitely an opportunity to use MindMixer in health care, and he has also seen interest that the company could address eventually from nonprofits and businesses.
MindMixer plans to reach 1,000 customers by the end of the year. As its customer base becomes more diverse, the company can do to create “a unified experience,” Bowden said, where it becomes not just a toolset, but also a destination website that people can visit to find ways to engage with a variety of issues that matter to them. In fact, he said the company will be rolling out improvements in that vein in the next couple of months.
The new funding was led by education and financial-planning company Nelnet, with participation from existing investors Dundee Venture Capital and Optimas Group. In the funding press release, Nelnet CEO Mike Dunlap said, the company is “always looking for ways to improve the way we help associates, students and schools reach their goal.”
“It’s a recognition of the fact that there’s absolutely a need for a platform for people to better connect with their constituent base,” Bowden told me.
Since MindMixer recently acquired social media analysis company VoterTide, I also asked if additional money will allow MindMixer to buy more companies. Bowden said that it’s unlikely, and that VoterTide was “a perfect fit for us.”
“I don’t think, on the acquisition front, that we’ll be active,” he said. “That’s not to say that it won’t ever happen.”
MindMixer nabs $4 million in funding from NelNet, Dundee, Optimas and others
Silicon Prairie News
May 01, 2013 By Danny Schreiber
Omaha, Nebraska It's shaping up to be quite the year for MindMixer. Last month, the Omaha startup revealed it acquired a social media analytics company. Today, it announced it closed a $4 million Series B round led by Lincoln, Neb.-based Nelnet, a publicly traded company. Omaha-based investment firms Dundee Venture Capital (the startup's earliest investor) and Optimas Group also participated in the round along with other undisclosed investors.
For the startup that began in 2010 with an aim to boost Omaha's poorly attended town hall meetings, MindMixer says it's now helping hundreds of civic, education and health care organizatons communicate more effectively with their constituents, according to a press release.
The investment from Nelnet, an education products and services company that's backed more than a half-dozen startups, is an affirmation of this growth, MindMixer co-founder and CEO Nick Bowden (right) told Silicon Prairie News on Monday.
The new funds will go toward key developer hires and help the company scale to meet marketplace demand—by year's end, it expects to reach 1,000 customers in the education, health care and civic sectors. With growth in mind, the company this month will finish an office expansion project that doubles its size to about 5,000 square feet. The company also has employees in Kansas City, Mo., and plans to open positions there, as well.
"MindMixer is an innovative approach to collaboration and engagement," said Nelnet CEO Mike Dunlap, who also sits on Hudl's board of directors. Nelnet director Chuck Norris has joined MindMixer's board.
"Nelnet is always looking for ways to improve the way we help associates, students and schools reach their goals, so we are particularly proud to invest in a steadily growing company that engages people to attain the best results possible," Dunlap said.
In the future, Bowden sees collaboration with the education company, which he said already has a small overlap with his company's client base.
For Optimas Group's Doug Wilwerding (left), who's bet on several Omaha startups including MindMixer-acquired VoterTide, the company is an attractive investment because of the duo behind it. "(They're) driven, disciplined, experienced and they have a great idea," Wilberding said Tuesday, adding that their product addresses a problem that is "global and persistent."
"I think the way they're building community through the application of MindMixer creates a very attractive opportunity for strategic alliances with larger capital players and larger service providers in the future," he said.
The next step in that community, Bowden said, is creating a user-experience that allows for an individual to see all the organizations they care about by geography and interest. "That gets us into a little more of an interest-based, geographic-based network," he said.
The startup last year was one of seven companies to participate in Code for America's inaugural four-month accelerator in San Francisco.
For more on Nelnet, see our post: "With local investing approach, Nelnet aims for a ‘better community'".
Staying put
All investors in MindMixer's latest round are local, Bowden said, but that wasn't the case of all those interested.
"We had some opportunities to go outside that would have required us to not be located here anymore," he said, adding the he and his co-founder Nathan Preheim are proud of the fact that their company is from Nebraska. "That's not something that we want to give up," Bowden said.
To date, MindMixer has raised $6.2 million. Its last round, $1.9 million led by Dundee, came one year ago.
"A big, big hire"
MindMixer, which has plans to hire three to four people for product development and potentially another three to four for business development, recently made two key hires. Justin Kemmerling, the former freelancer that helped the startup brand itself, came on board as director of design. Andy Monnich, whom Bowden calls "a big, big hire," is leading the company's strategy and partnership efforts, a role he held at Lincoln-based National Research Corporation for the last seven years.
"(He's) just someone in his career who has been in multiple companies that have grown from $20-100 million in revenue," Bowden said. "He just has a level of maturity on the business side that is an important peice for us as we continue to grow."
Temple launches online forum for planning process
Temple University Communications
Apr 29, 2013 By Vaughn Shinkus
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania This week, Temple will launch a new effort to develop a comprehensive vision for the university driven by input from members of the Temple community.
The initiative, which will be known as Visualize Temple, is one of Neil D. Theobald's top priorities as he enters his fifth month as Temple president.
"This is an opportunity for us to collectively imagine the best of what Temple can become, and to take the first steps toward realizing that future together," said Theobald.
The president explained that with the successful completion of many of the Temple 20/20 initiatives, the time is right to build the next vision for the university future. He stressed that the end result will be much more than a map of future projects.
"Together we can make a bold statement about where Temple is today and where we should be going in the future," he said. "That message is one that will be heard across the city of Philadelphia, throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and beyond."
The university has engaged with SmithGroupJJR, a nationally recognized architecture, engineering and planning firm, to help guide the process. Representatives of the firm are at Temple this week to tour the Main, Ambler, Center City and Health Sciences campuses; meet with faculty, staff and student groups; and conduct the first of a continuing series of focus groups with university representatives.
Key to the effort will be the use of an online community engagement platform known as Mindmixer that will allow faculty, staff, students and alumni to stay involved with the planning process throughout the spring and summer. The system prompts users to provide their perspectives on the university's future vision, strengths, physical assets and desirable campus elements.
"Mindmixer's site will encourage members of the Temple community to share their dreams, concerns and hopes for Temple's tomorrow," said Theobald. "It will be a great way to remain engaged over spring and summer months."
Brainstorming on Temple’s future has already begun. Recently, students and alumni put forth their ideas for what the university can become as part of activities at Spring Fling and Alumni Weekend. Participants were prompted to imagine what they’d like to see on campus and to scrawl or sketch their ideas on a blackboard. Photos of the results were posted to Instagram using the hashtag #VisualizeTemple.
MindMixer: It takes a community
Getting Smart
Apr 29, 2013 By Adam Renfro
The Internet has made the world smaller and our minds larger. As the barrier of geography shrinks, the sharing of ideas increases. Education is starting to reap the benefits of the crowd like the private sector has being doing for some time. Web tools like Twitter and Facebook have helped schools communicate with their surrounding communities. As a school, though, wouldn’t it be great to connect with your community in a systematic way that cultivates ideas and keeps the community engaged?
Meet MindMixer.
Mindmixer, based in Omaha, functions like a virtual town hall. In the early stages of the service, Mindmixer focused on municipalities and civic organizations, but now they have found a great fit with education. MindMixer is a lot like KickStarter, but KickStarter crowdsources for funding. Mindmixer crowdsources for ideas. When budgets shrink, new ideas become paramount.
I had the opportunity to speak with Nick Bowden, the cofounder of MindMixer. Here’s some of our discussion:
Adam: How did MindMixer come about?
Nick: Nathan Preheim and I started the company 2 years ago. We were both urban planning consultants. We were working on urban design projects in cities across the country and in part of the process we were doing a ton of town hall meetings. The interesting thing about that work is we felt like it was really important work as it was changing the physical layout of the cities that we were working in. The discouraging part, though, was these town hall meetings, regardless of the size of the city, tended to attract at most 50 people, but more usually 10 to 15 people. We felt that a lot of these cities were making really important decisions based on a small sample size of participants. That led to us to the question, is there a way that we can build a platform that has the nuisance of engagement built into it but would allow for cities to more broadly engage their citizens in important civic topics and decisions within the realm of community? That was our founding principle.
Adam: I’ve seen similar things in webinars I’ve hosted or attended. We might only have 15 or 20 people attend a live virtual meeting, but 600 people may listen to the archive and leave comments. Why do you think there was such low turnout at the civic meetings?
Nick: It was interesting for us that a lot of cities tended to think that there was citizen apathy around these projects, but we felt like that wasn’t the case. It was an issue of convenience. So fast forward 2 years, and we now work with over 400 organizations in the U.S. and Canada.
Adam: And how did you get in the education space?
Nick: It was about a year ago that community leaders started telling us that we should really talk to the local school districts as they faced a lot of the same challenges that the local governments and civic organizations did. The usual voices always attended the school board meetings and they weren’t getting the really high level of parental engagement that they wanted. So that was our start in the education world. Now we work over 50 schools, districts, and universities. It’s been fascinating for us to watch. It was clear to see that people care more about their children than in civic projects in the city where they lived.
Adam: How has the school response been to MindMixer?
Nick: The popularity of MindMixer forums in school districts has been just overwhelmingly positive. Ultimately, schools are now making more informed decisions because they have a broader set of voices involved and also because they have a set of data around the demographics and locations of participants. This has given them insight to where the participants live in the district or how many kids they have in school. Those demographics impact the kinds of things that end users, parents and the surrounding community, are interested in and the priorities that they have.
For whatever reason both civic and educational organizations have tended to focus their engagement efforts on specific events or in an episodic fashion around a particular project, and the challenge with that is that they would have a heightened level of interest around that project but then they wouldn’t reach back into the community for three, four, five, or even twelve months until the next project came out. So these organizations were spending an enormous amount of time and resources to attract parties to a particular event. Then once the event was over, all those people were gone, and then the next event would come up, and they would have to reacquire an audience again.
Adam: And then the right technology arrived.
Nick: Yes, before they didn’t have tools to have a perpetual conversation with issues that were maybe not super important, but interesting enough keep people engaged over time and to build a group of people who you continually tap back into when you needed feedback on an important issue. Obviously technology allows us to do that now. You don’t have to go get 100 people to show up to a meeting, and then they disperse and you can’t reach back into them. We try to educate organizations on the importance of establishing a relationship and keeping that relationship over time. There are a lot of direct benefits with both time and resources in not having to acquire an audience every single time you do an engagement effort.
Adam: This really shrinks geography and suspends time. Where you the visionary on this? How did the technology get built?
Nick: This is my second business I’ve started. I had a consulting practice in urban planning before MindMixer. Initially Nathan and I worked together at a large engineering firm. He spent six years in the Bay Area during the dot com boom, so his background was half tech and half urban planning. My background was half urban planning and half business, so we are a perfect compliment in the sense that he’s handled the technical pragmatic “how do we make something work” and that allows me to think about how do we make it better than before in an exponential fashion. The neat thing about this is we have very different perspectives on how to achieve a shared vision or outcome.
Adam: Was there an “aha moment” where you realized you had to take on this endeavor together?
Nick: Yes, the breaking point for us happened when we were driving seven hours back from a public meeting in rural Kansas. We were on the fourth meeting in four days we had four people show up, and I said to Nathan that we can’t do this anymore.
Adam: Now that you’re over two years in, what would you say the best features of MindMixer are?
Nick: We have two clients. We have the formal clients who we partner with. That might be a civic organization or a school district, and their experience is quite different than the end user who might be the student or the parent or the faculty member. On the end-user side, the richness and diversity of the types of feedback that you can give is unique. We have topic types that are both very open ended where we are asking for your ideas for the future of the school district and then also topic types that are transactional and are more close ended, which would be the ability to take a survey on something like your opinion of the school calendar. Mixed in with that, we have social features where you can share things like photos of your favorite school events and an interactive budget tool where you can play superintendent for a day and think about how you might allocate the budget based on the constraints that the district might have.
Adam: An interactive budget tool? I’ve not seen that before. Not in a forum type setting. That is unique. How about on the district end?
Nick: From the organization side, we do not allow for anonymous participation on our sites, so end users have to sign up by providing just a little bit of information about themselves, like their age and location. That allows us to provide a glimpse into how geography and age impact people’s priorities, which districts can consume from their MindMixer dashboard. So rather than just seeing that 500 people want a school calendar, they can see that 400 of those 500 are 35-45 year-old parents who live in the south side of the district.
Adam: Can you talk about the rewards feature?
Nick: As much as we hope that people will participate for utopian reasons, there are some things we can do to make it fun. We do use a point system that rewards really good ideas vs. other social tools that reward the volume of content. If you put a good idea out there that receives a lot of support from other parents, you’ll earn a lot more points than if you put up a lot of ideas that don’t earn a lot of support. If districts choose to, they can integrate a rewards store where they can identify a couple of different rewards that tend to be access-based where members from the community get to have lunch with the superintendent or see a new facility that’s being built or a behind-the-scenes look at a school board meeting.
Adam: Do schools or school districts use MindMixer more?
Nick: To date it’s mostly been districts, but recently we’ve received a lot of interest from charter schools, which tend to be more autonomous at the school level, so we are seeing a movement to the individual schools. A lot of our contracts with the districts allow them to create microsites at their schools. Mindmixer is suited for both districts and individual schools. Its use is really determined by the amount of content you have to keep a conversation going, and much of that is driven by size and staffing. Larger schools can do that. For small schools, it would be more appropriate at the district level.
Adam: What can you tell us about your pricing structure?
Nick: Pricing goes from $299 to $899 per month, but that higher end is really reserved for the top 50 to 75 school districts in the nation. Most districts operate in the $299 to $599 range. The individual school level is anywhere from $49 to $149 a month.
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That concluded our conversation. It was refreshing to talk to a service provider in the ed tech space who had transparent pricing. That probably stems from Nick’s business background. It would be great to see those that have a mystery pricing structure follow MindMixer’s lead.
Districts can obviously use MindMixer to connect with parents and the community to solicit ideas and opinions. Check out Iowa City Schools’ and Boulder Valley School District’s MindMixer sites for an idea on how schools are using MindMixer.
Here are two MindMixer uses that I would use right away:
1) Connect with local experts in the community. Seek out the entrepreneurs and innovators who are probably eager to share their knowledge with students. Give these private industry leaders a way to connect with schools.
2) Connect with the community to identify local grand challenges. Wrap curriculum around those local challenges. For example, term papers and senior projects would focus on those challenges (homelessness, traffic congestion, juvenile crime, clean water, etc.). Math courses would use statistics from those local challenges to generate real-world questions. Multimedia classes would document those challenges in the community and promote awareness. Student government classes would coordinate school efforts with civic leaders. And so on and so forth. The community would be available to help students with their projects. In the end, students would study a challenge at school like clean water. They would also hear about it on their local news. They would see it first hand on the way home or at home. This would make learning and school much more relevant to students.
Right now you can create a free account on MindMixer. If you have an expertise, you can visit any of the MindMixer websites across the country and share your expertise when schools are districts are seeking it.
Brilliant minds building Omaha startup scene
KMTV News
Apr 28, 2013 By Lindsey Theis
Omaha, Nebraska There's a new business community rising in the Midwest, and Omaha is right in the heart of the action.
Young Omaha companies, many only a year or two old are in the center of the high tech, start up communities.
"We're trying to change the world," Nathan Prehiem says.
Earlier this year, Kansas City won Google’s super fast Internet connection, Google Fiber. It's is transforming Kansas into an unlikely home for high-tech start ups.
That's setting the course for successful business minds to set their sights on Omaha. For example, MindMixer and Nathan Preheim. Preheim, and Omaha native, left for the Silicon Valley and California coast after college. Fast forward to 2004, when he and his wife moved back to his hometown Omaha. Preheim was set on starting his on company.
"We're actually trying to accomplish great things and that in itself is the Midwest way," he said.
That company would be MindMixer. An online version of a town hall meeting. Forums are set up for community projects, that way citizens can contribute their ideas.
"Too often, great community ideas are lost because residents don't know how or don't feel comfortable getting involved. MindMixer empowers people to improve their community, all from the convenience of their own home," MindMixer's website says.
Jeff Slobotski is a CEO a blogger. In January 2008, began documenting his travel to other creative communities across the U.S. on his blog, Midwest to Manhattan.
It wasn’t long before his focus turned to his home state of Nebraska and the amazing talent he knew was in his own backyard. In July 2008, the two launched Silicon Prairie News to highlight entrepreneurs and creatives in their own backyards.
"Pinterest was developed by a guy in Iowa. Des Moines, Iowa. And the co-founder of Twitter is from a small town, called Clarks, Nebraska. So there's no reason that the next Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, couldn't be developed by the minds in the city," Slobotski says.
The start up community will convene for Silicon Prarie's Big Omaha Conference, May 8-10th.
Global interest in MindMixer TechniCity site
Planetizen
Apr 27, 2013 By Jennifer Evans-Cowley
Back in November I wrote about my adventure to create a free massive open online course, TechniCity. The course officially launches on May 4th. Tom Sanchez and I decided to do a soft launch over the weekend to get people familiar with what we were planning to do with a handful of fun questions. The results have been amazing and I thought Planetizen readers would be interested in learning about what people are saying about technology around the globe in the first 12 hours of this course.
What is TechniCity? The course explores how the increasing availability of networks, sensors and mobile technologies allows for new approaches to address the challenges that our cities face. It will cover how cities are changing, how technology is used to engage with the public to support decision-making, tools for analyzing the city, the infrastructure that makes the real time city possible, and how creativity can spawn technological innovation.
We have more than 17,000 people from more than 60 countries across the globe have signed up for this free course. This is exactly the type of global conversation we hoped to start around technology and cities. I mean how often can you get this many people interested in the same topic participating sharing all kinds of amazing ideas?
We partnered with MindMixer to host our engagement platform for the course. MindMixer does a great job with analytics helping to understand the demographics behind who is participating. Not surprisingly those interested in technology and cities are young, average age of 33. Seventy-four percent of those participating are male. And yes I recognize I'm typically the only woman in the room when people are talking about planning technology. Come on women, technology and planning is super fun and epic. Jump into this niche in planning!
We invited participants to share images of technology across the globe. We were overwhelmed with all the amazing ideas that people have shared.
Four cities show off green ideas on MindMixer sites
Examiner
Apr 18, 2013 By Patti Pietschmann
Cities across the country are making eco and health-conscious changes by doing away with plastic bags and banning smoking. But on Earth Day, April 22, many across the nation are taking the task even farther with some unique ideas thanks to www.MindMixer.com.
MindMixer is actively being used by cities across the U.S. to tap into residents for ideas and solutions. For many cities including Orlando, Boulder and Park City, those ideas concern making their cities healthier and more eco-friendly.
Some recent examples of unique changes these cities have made, or started to make include:
Eating Fresh and Local in Orlando: The City of Orlando posed a question on the MindMixer site asking communities how much more they would be willing to pay to have 50 percent of their foods come from local farms. Most (36 percent) would pay 10 percent more to have their foods come from local farms, followed by 22 percent who would pay 5 percent more.
Installing electrical vehicle charging stations: Through the MindMixer site, the City of Orlando asked the community what types of programs they would support to increase energy efficiency and sustainability. Ideas that surfaced include installing electrical vehicle charging stations and holding an Earth Day event downtown in support of solar power and energy efficiency.
Reusable Bags Designed by the Public: InspireBoulder implemented the public’s designs onto 30,000 new reusable grocery bags which will be distributed in the city of Boulder. The ideas were part of the city’s Reusable Bag Design Competition which were suggested on the MindMixer site and then later implemented by the city.
Community Composting in Park City: Residents of Park City, Utah suggested ideas on their MindMixer site surrounding economic development, quality of life improvements and sustainability. As a result, one resident’s idea to implement a community composting program became real when Park City’s Environmental Sustainability Manager approved the idea, which is very similar to an ordinance passed by the city of San Francisco.
Digital Citizenry: The MindMixer Project
The Good Market
Apr 18, 2013 By Ryan Smith
The app economy is disrupting many different sectors and industries. It promises innovation in our everyday personal, social, and business experiences. One of the areas experiencing change is in citizen participation in local and federal government and politics. We have seen smartphone and web applications that help track local and federal elections, take polls, and push notifications surrounding hot-button issues and topics to subscribers. However, Good Market feels like the most exciting applications in this area are the ones that encourage active citizen engagement in policymaking.
Mindmixer is one such application. Mindmixer is a platform that allows communities, cities, schools, and organizations to organize and communicate with its members. It allows citizens to participate in virtual town halls on issues, which is something they are eager to do according to this ReadWriteWeb article: "According to the 2012 CivicPlus Digital Citizen Engagement survey, 40% of citizens want to provide input on municipal government." The platform works in the following manner:
1. Project: A community or organization turns on a project site and determines goals and objectives.
2. Topics: Community leaders establish topics and ask for ideas.
3. Ideas: Community members add ideas, upload photos, add comments and support ideas.
4. Share: Everyone spreads the world online through their social networks to grow the community and add more people to the discussion.
5. Action: Community leaders review ideas, give feedback, and implement the best ideas.
This platform allows community members to easily come together in a digital space, according to their own schedule and leave feedback or discuss items that may have importance to them or affect their lives. This allows government, community and organization officials to crowd source feedback related to important initiatives. More importantly, through social network viral mechanisms and community encouragement, they can get more citizens participating in local, community politics, which is something desperately needed in an increasingly apathetic society. Younger generations are more likely to participate if it is in a format that is familiar to them.
Countries from Iceland to Zambia are beginning to use applications and crowd sourcing techniques to get their citizens involved in drafting constitutions. Here in the US, projects like Keep the Web Open and Project Madison are looking to get US citizens involved in commenting on federal legislation. Whatever the project, +Good Market encourages these uses of technology to make us more informed and active digital citizens.
Citizens crowdsource eco-friendly cities for Earth Day
EarthTechling
Apr 17, 2013 By Beth Buczynski
I love Earth Day. Well, I love the idea behind Earth Day. Over forty years ago, industrial pollution was virtually unchecked in America. Activists were desperate for a way to make people see how important it was to require polluters, big and small, to clean up their act. So they created a holiday. Now, on April 22nd, people celebrate Earth Day and, allegedly, do kind things for the planet.
The problem with Earth Day is that it lets people off too easy. One day?! One day of even hardcore environmental action can’t account for 364 days of neglect. But around the country, there’s proof that people get the real message of Earth Day. MindMixer is an online engagement tool that helps ordinary citizens crowdsource solutions to problems in their community. In many cities, this means making eco and health-conscious changes.
Eating Fresh and Local in Orlando: The City of Orlando posed a question on the MindMixer site asking communities how much more they would be willing to pay to have 50 percent of their foods come from local farms. Most (36 percent) would pay 10 percent more to have their foods come from local farms, followed by 22 percent who would pay 5 percent more.
Installing electrical vehicle charging stations: Through the MindMixer site, the City of Orlando asked the community what types of programs they would support to increase energy efficiency and sustainability. Ideas that surfaced include installing electrical vehicle charging stations and holding an Earth Day event downtown in support of solar power and energy efficiency.
Reusable Bags Designed by the Public: InspireBoulder implemented the public’s designs onto 30,000 new reusable grocery bags which will be distributed in the city of Boulder. The ideas were part of the city’s Reusable Bag Design Competition which were suggested on the MindMixer site and then later implemented by the city.
Community Composting in Park City: Residents of Park City, Utah suggested ideas on their MindMixer site surrounding economic development, quality of life improvements and sustainability. As a result, one resident’s idea to implement a community composting program became real when Park City’s Environmental Sustainability Manager approved the idea, which is very similar to an ordinance passed by the city of San Francisco.
What eco-problem has been nagging at your conscience? It’s time to stop waiting for someone else to take action, and be the change. Use MindMixer to help organize your neighbors, or just get out there and start talking to people. You’d be surprised how easy change can be when a few dedicated citizens put their mind to it.
MindMixer helps citizens engage with their communities
ReadWrite
Apr 17, 2013 By Michael Tchong
How many times have you had a brainstorm on how to improve your local community? What about that dangerous intersection that needs more warning lights? Or an idea that could help your city become a magnet for fill-in-the-blank activities? Head to MindMixer, a platform that is helping organizations communicate more effectively with their communities.
One of the biggest roadblocks to implementing local community ideas is finding resources in city government or local organizations who might be able to help. More importantly, how can you involve like-minded individuals in the discussion?
MindMixer = A New Type Of Civic Engagement Platform
A new type of civic engagement platform - like MindMixer - can help. MindMixer is in essence a “virtual town hall,” a community forum where constituents can meet to discuss issues and share ideas.
Without time and location constraints, citizens can conveniently share ideas while managers gain community insights. According to the 2012 CivicPlus Digital Citizen Engagement survey, 40% of citizens want to provide input on municipal government.
From Los Angeles To Calgary
MindMixer COO Nathan Preheim tells me that the company has attracted more than 300 communities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, plus its first Canadian client, the city of Calgary. Among civic, education and health care organizations that are using the service to engage their communities, the governor of Colorado is using it to better engage his entire state.
Here are a few examples of how municipals governments are using MindMixer:
Orlando, FL: When residents were asked how much more they would be willing to pay to have half of their food sourced from local farms, 36% of respondents said they would pay 10% more, and 22% said they'd pay 5% more. While the response rate was low, it shows the potential of civic engagement as the use of these platforms increases.
Boulder, CO: InspireBoulder held a Reusable Bag Design Competition on the MindMixer site. The winning design is set to be used on 30,000 reusable grocery bags to be distributed by the city.
Park City, UT: One resident’s idea to implement a community composting program became a reality when Park City’s Environmental Sustainability Manager approved the concept, which is similar to an ordinance passed by the city of San Francisco.
MindMixer Buys VoterTide
MindMixer recently acquired VoterTide, a social media intelligence company that specializes in activating audiences who follow hot topics for political campaigns, non-profits and special-interest groups. Preheim says the company’s thinking was, “How can we use social media to help our clients better engage topics?”
All existing clients will have access to Votertide audiences. Going forward, adds Preheim, “We are in the process of building an application framework, called Community Insights.”
Given the current pressure to shrink governments, the populace will have to take more active roles in the governance of their communities. Platforms like MindMixer could make it easier for people to take on and success in those new roles.
Cities make eco-friendly changes with input from residents online
Green Living Guy
Apr 15, 2013 By Seth Leitman
In celebration of Earth Day, here are the top 5 unique changes cities are making, thanks to suggestions from the residents themselves which are being broadcasted via MindMixer.com:
Eating Fresh and Local in Orlando: The City of Orlando posed a question on the MindMixer site asking communities how much more they would be willing to pay to have 50 percent of their foods come from local farms. Most (36 percent) would pay 10 percent more to have their foods come from local farms, followed by 22 percent who would pay 5 percent more.
Installing electrical vehicle charging stations: Through the MindMixer site, the City of Orlando asked the community what types of programs they would support to increase energy efficiency and sustainability. Ideas that surfaced include installing electrical vehicle charging stations and holding an Earth Day event downtown in support of solar power and energy efficiency.
Reusable Bags Designed by the Public: InspireBoulder implemented the public’s designs onto 30,000 new reusable grocery bags which will be distributed in the city of Boulder. The ideas were part of the city’s Reusable Bag Design Competition which were suggested on the MindMixer site and then later implemented by the city.
Community Composting in Park City: Residents of Park City, Utah suggested ideas on their MindMixer site surrounding economic development, quality of life improvements and sustainability. As a result, one resident’s idea to implement a community composting program became real when Park City’s Environmental Sustainability Manager approved the idea, which is very similar to an ordinance passed by the city of San Francisco.
Increasing Orlando’s Renewable Energy Sources: Currently about 1.8 percent of Orlando’s energy comes from renewable sources, so the City of Orlando posed a question on its MindMixer site asking the community how much more they would pay a month to ensure a significant portion of energy comes from renewable sources. As a result, 29 percent said they would put in $10 a month and 24% percent said they would put in $15 a month to the fund.
MindMixer helping schools get more input
Education Reviews
Apr 14, 2013 By Nora Carr
Standing opportunity and achievement gaps for students, often are a tough sell. Typically designed to better outcomes for disadvantaged or low-performing students, or to update deteriorating facilities and obsolete technology, such efforts rarely reduce opportunities for more affluent or high-performing students in meaningful or significant ways.
Sadly, middle- and upper middle-class parents often oppose equity initiatives, particularly if they perceive any threat to their offspring. Most simply don’t recognize the well-documented fact that their children already enjoy the majority of public school benefits. Since this parent group also represents many school boards’ most vocal, aggressive, and organized constituency, they can derail equity plans or minimize their impact by watering down the project scope — even in minority-majority school systems.
Fear of alienating this powerful constituency and driving more families to charters and other public school alternatives has put equity on the back burner in many communities, especially in today’s divisive political climate. Yet ethical leadership demands that school officials confront the historical as well as current social and educational inequities that continue to benefit some students at the expense of others.
Budget and policy decisions
Located at the intersection of race, class, power, and politics, equity initiatives disrupt the status quo. Schools and districts consistently make inequitable budget and policy decisions, favoring Advanced Placement (AP) classes for a few over academic interventions for the many, spending more on athletics than on the arts, allowing the most qualified and experienced teachers to choose only the most affluent schools, and allocating resources on a flat per-pupil basis rather than differentiating resources based on student needs and learning challenges.
Other common, albeit often unintentional, policy contributions to learning and achievement gaps include: exclusive enrollment criteria and multistep application processes for magnet and choice schools; uneven application of discipline policies; special education referrals; honor society application and selection processes; enrollment criteria; and screening tools for courses such as Algebra I and Honors English that often serve a gatekeeping function for AP, International Baccalaureate, and other college-prep curricula.
Courageously confronting social justice concerns without the backing of a sophisticated communications plan and a well-informed and ready-to-mobilize coalition is a bit like David taking on Goliath with only a rock and a sling shot, but without divine intervention. The end result likely won’t inspire much change, let alone motivate future generations.
New tactics and technologies
Grassroots organizing and coalition building have changed significantly in recent years, thanks primarily to more sophisticated technology and the need to reach more diverse groups and individuals.
Citizens today also are more educated and well-informed than were previous generations, and more suspicious of and sensitive to spin. These new challenges reflect the enduring legacy of Watergate as well as more recent high-profile debacles (think of the fiscal cliff, for example) that have shattered trust in government, institutions, corporations, and leaders in general.
As President Obama’s team aptly demonstrated in 2008 and again in 2012, public officials need to inspire action at the grassroots and the grasstops. State and local conservatives also won decisive victories in 2010 and in 2012 using many of the same strategies and tactics.
These strategies include online fundraising and issue education, greater reliance on social media and mobile phone outreach, and targeting messaging and images to each group’s values and emotions. Others include identifying and saturating true believers with a steady stream of bite-sized tastes of personal and personalized stories, videos, testimonials, news, photos, facts, and graphics.
Coalitions today are less about agreeing on all or even most points than about agreeing on how to move issues forward. Compromise is critical. When it comes to equity, school officials must bridge racial and ethnic divides, as well as socioeconomic gaps.
Most solutions to complex social issues and the most difficult ethical decisions are conflicts of right vs. right, not right vs. wrong. Every side has to give something, but those who historically have had the most power and the most clout likely will have to give more.
Engagement tools are available
To get more diverse voices in the room and engage more individuals and groups in important district discussions and decisions, you should become well versed in the processes and tools provided by the International Institute for Public Participation (IAP2), Deliberative Democracy Consortium (DDC), Public Agenda, and other similar groups.
IAP2, for example, offers a free online public participation toolbox that outlines various options for sharing information, seeking and compiling feedback, and bringing people together. Each option includes a brief summary called “Thinking It Through” that helps users select the right tool, as well as useful “What can go right?” and “What can go wrong?” highlights.
The DDC website offers a good overview of new technology tools that support public involvement as well as links to recent studies and resources. A report by Matt Leighninger, DDC’s executive director, offers 10 tactics for engaging a wired world in a chart format that outlines the most popular techniques for collaboration, surveying, and prioritizing ideas and solutions.
Leighninger outlines possible responses to five typical scenarios, which range from gathering opinions and educating citizens about an issue to making decisions, creating consensus, and encouraging citizens to take more ownership of shared problems — and potential solutions.
Many resources referenced by Leighninger are free and available online. These include tools such as Google Docs, Google Groups, and Dropbox; others are fee-based services such as Ning, BigTent, and Civic Evolution. For participatory budget making, see Budget Allocator, Demos-Budget, and Budget Simulator.
SeeClickFix, which is free at the basic level, offers real possibilities for improving district response times for repairing and replacing broken drinking faucets, window latches, water leaks, and other common facility issues. It helps to identify and address facilities issues, technology repairs, textbook deliveries, late buses, and other operational concerns that can create equity issues over time, especially in larger school districts.
Since these new tools are designed to fit mobile devices like smart phones and work well with existing social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, these technologies are more accessible to a wider range of constituents. As studies from Pew Research Centers show, less-affluent families are more likely to connect digitally via smart phone, texts, and social media than through traditional websites.
Fee-based services like MindMixer, which seeks out local social media conversations and inserts school and district engagement opportunities into the equation, also hold promise for breaking down online participation barriers. Free services like Google Translator, while not perfect, are user-directed and offer a more cost-effective approach for school systems faced with communicating in a dozen or more languages.
Dismantling structural racism
School officials must face and deconstruct their own prejudices and cherished values to combat deeply rooted myths about the undeserving poor, or the racism of public school districts that collectively and consistently sort poor black and brown children, particularly males, into lower-level classes and special education.
This is not easy work. While workshops on dismantling racism, work-group design “charrettes” to address facility concerns, and study groups on barriers impacting children and youth of color all may help move districts and communities forward, tackling often-hidden systems and structures requires moral courage, good data, and attention to detail.
Disaggregated data on AP exam participation, even in minority-majority districts, for example, typically shows that white, middle-, and upper-class students are overrepresented while poor children of color are underrepresented. In some cases, something as seemingly color-blind and innocuous as scheduling, or the district’s selection of predictor tools, may be to blame.
Do middle schools in poor neighborhoods offer as many opportunities as more affluent schools do for students to take gateway courses like Algebra I? Is every student performing at grade level (or above) given the opportunity to try honors-level courses, despite lackluster performance on screening tools and predictor exams?
Given the well-documented, middle-class biases inherent in many of these tools, relying on them as the primary ticket to entry will inevitably sort out many bright and talented students from nondominant cultures and groups. This is one reason why getting more voices to the decision-making table is a key part of successful coalition building, and of successful equity initiatives.
Stop the blame game
Well-meaning principals, teachers, and school counselors will quickly point to poor results on AP aptitude tests, or to a lack of rigor at the middle school level. Middle school teachers may point the finger at elementary school instruction, while elementary school personnel often note school readiness and language differences that already are present when children enroll in prekindergarten, or kindergarten.
Parents, depending on their own circumstances and experiences, may point to the so-called “culture of poverty,” or mistakenly blame individual educator racism rather than systems-oriented barriers like inadequate professional preparation and development, screening procedures for gifted and talented students, inequitable allocations of resources, and chronic funding shortages.
Most school board members, administrators, and educators are mission-driven individuals who believe passionately that all children can learn and achieve at high levels. Belief, while helpful, isn’t enough, however. And hope is not a strategy.
Stopping the blame game, whether it’s “blame the victim” or “blame the victim’s teachers,” requires courageous conversations about history, race, class, gender, and power that few school systems nationally have been willing to tackle. It also requires a shared language and shared experiences, so individuals can listen and learn from each other in more honest, open, and authentic ways.
Facilitating this kind of discussion, and then moving from awareness and analysis to thoughtful and productive action represents a deeper and more skillful understanding of public engagement, strategic planning, and coalition building than many leaders currently possess. Simply hosting a series of informational meetings is likely to make matters worse, while putting more programs in place without first doing a thorough root-cause analysis may waste time, money, and hard-won political capital.
Public education leaders should contribute clearly to civil debate and community building and refuse to engage in the politics of division that characterize and limit so many important policy debates and decisions. At the same time, they can learn a few things from the nation’s recent electoral history.
Ranking among the nation’s hardest-working public servants, school boards, superintendents, principals, and teacher leaders can help their communities, if not the nation, once again find more common ground in support of common schools. Nothing less than the future of public education hangs in the balance.
Change Fullerton at a new online forum
Veggie Biking
Apr 13, 2013 By Robert Mercer
Fullerton, California The City of Fullerton says it wants you to complain, suggest and help change the city’s bicycle routes–or anything else.
The city is rethinking the design of downtown and the corridors leading to downtown as part of the Fullerton College Connector Study, which, of course, includes bicycle routes and facilities.
The Fullerton Planning Forum will host a citizen’s meeting 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, April 27, at the Fullerton Community Center, 340 West Commonwealth Ave., said Fullerton’s Heather Allen, American Institute of Certified Planners (an urban planner). Time and place was on a flier handed out April 11 at the Downtown Farmers’ Market, along with a card directing the Veggie Biker to the website. However, the forum does not appear to be on any city website or Facebook schedule or on the website, http://www.fullerton
To confirm the date, time and place, Allen can be reached at heathera@ci.fullerto
Allen said, if you cannot attend the forum, you can also upload your ideas and participate in discussions and decision-making on the Fullerton Planning Forum website.
According to the website, “The Fullerton Planning Forum, is a fun way to submit your great ideas, help others improve their great ideas, and ultimately determine the best ideas for your community. Too often, great community ideas are lost because residents don’t know how or don’t feel comfortable getting involved. The Fullerton Planning Forum empowers people to improve their community, all from the convenience of their own home.”
Anyone can join the community and submit ideas, the website reads. Access to The Fullerton Planning Forum is free for everyone. (It is not known how much it costs the city to have this website.) While the site reads, “All we ask is that you provide your name, email, date of birth, and zip code,” MindMixer, who hosts the site, firsts asks you to log in using Facebook, and give up personal information from your Facebook account to do so. You can dodge this and fill in the online form.
The forum site asks citizens to submit their own ideas using a “submit an idea button” or to review all the publicly-posted ideas and “second” an idea or suggest modifications to other ideas.
Citizens are strongly encouraged to share and promote their ideas on other social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).”
Community engagement is a key to community happiness
Take Part
Apr 10, 2013 By Frank Kritz
When Ryan Martinez, 24, had finished college he found himself back in Minnesota, where he had gone to school, in a job in public relations. Though he’d also pursued jobs in Chicago and Los Angeles, Martinez says he ultimately picked Minneapolis because of its proximity to so many lakes. “I’m an avid bicyclist and since [Minneapolis] was aptly named the number-one most bike-friendly city in the nation by Bicycling magazine a couple years back, I love it here,” explains Martinez. “I bike to and from work every day. I feel great about it on multiple levels—health, being more environmentally-frie
Martinez says he stops biking during the coldest months of the year, but he doesn’t worry about losing fitness: It’s easy to stay active, he says, with so many gyms all over the city at all price points, plus heated domes for running track or playing soccer. Even better, he says there are a “ton of trails and bike lanes that no city matches.” And Nice Ride, Minneapolis’ bike-share program is, in Martinez’s words “a sweet program that young people love and I know a lot of young professionals who use it to cruise around the lake or go to work.” Even the legendary winters aren’t a big problem for him: “They’re a bit too long, that’s for sure, but you can snowboard or cross-country ski if you’re into that,” he notes.
With the economy what it is (still sucky for many), workers can’t always be choosers like Martinez, but if you do have options for where you want to live when looking for a job, it’s not a bad idea to consider where life might be the healthiest for you. For example, you might opt for a metropolis with less smog and fewer doughtnut shops and more bike trails and a lower obesity rate, to name a few criteria. The sites for a city’s mayor, health department, and its tourism portal are all good places to start your search; these resources make it easy to learn quickly about local options for recreation and public transportation, as well as things like tobacco laws and farmer's markets.
George Flores, M.D, program manager for community health at the California Endowment, a private, statewide health foundation in California, offers these suggestions for finding a place to live that prioritizes health:
· Is the city walk- and bike-friendly? “We’re much better off walking than sitting in a car,” says Dr. Flores, so whether you’re traveling to work, seeing friends, or running errands, you’ll want to check a prospective city’s Walkscore; the site helps you find walkable neighborhoods. (Not surprisingly, New York City gets the highest rating—85.3—followed
· What’s the situation for public transport? If you want to walk and bike as much as you can and/or you don’t have a car, you’ll obviously need a way to get around. Many cities are not only increasing and improving their public transit options, such as apps that let you know the subway schedule in New York City and more covered bus shelters in Kansas City so riders can better avoid a chill. San Francisco and other cities have digital displays that show schedule updates at local train/light rail and bus stations, so you can easily see when the next bus or train is coming.
· Is smoking allowed? Not all cities have smoke-free laws. Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights offers maps to find out the regulations in states and cities across the U.S. New York City just recently celebrated its 10th year of smoke-free bars and restaurants; the law has cut the number of smokers in the city by tens of thousands, according to Thomas Farley, M.D., the city’s health commissioner. “The Smoke-Free Air Act made New York one of the healthiest and safest places in the world to live and work,” Dr. Farley said in a recent press release. In May 2011, New York City expanded smoke-free air to include its parks and beaches.
· Does the city “talk” about health a lot? If you’re looking at various official and local sites about a place you’re considering moving to, look to see if you notice any themes. Perhaps you’re seeing a lot of mentions of good parks or well-maintained trails, or maybe there are ads or mentions for upcoming 5Ks or marathons (Active.com is a great source for finding fitness events in any part of the U.S.). “Finding many healthier ideas, programs, and attitudes makes it more likely that you’ll also be choosing a city with lower stress levels, which can reduce cancer and heart disease,” says Dr. Flores. And it may also indicate “social capital”—a city that’s livable and walkable typically means that its citizens have gotten together on initiatives like neighborhood watches to create social and community activities so people get to know each other, says Dr. Flores.
· How accessible are healthy foods, including farmers’ markets at parks and community centers, and locally-owned food shops, groceries, and restaurants? Ryan Martinez calls himself “an organic-foods type of guy, so all the local coffee shops and sweet trendy shops make it easy to feel like you are doing your body—and the world—a favor by staying healthy and buying sustainably/locally,
· How accessible are places of worship? These can go a long way in adding a feeling of community spirit and a sense of belonging, especially if you’re new to the area and without friends or relatives nearby.
Once you’ve found a great place to live, you’ll want to do your part to make it even better, right? Consider using MindMixer, a community engagement platform that’s helping cities do all kinds of good things—including becoming healthier places for young adults—by connecting city leadership with residents to come up with new ideas and solutions to problems. Denton, Texas, used MindMixer to poll the community about banning smoking; the majority voted for a ban and it passed with overwhelming support in June 2012. And residents of Park City, Utah, suggested ideas via the site to improve economic development, quality of life, and sustainability in their city; one resident’s idea for a community composting program was implemented.
MindMixer helps communities get involved
Econpreneurist
Apr 10, 2013 By Priti Ambani
Are you trying to engage your community in the true sense of the term, but all you get are the same perspectives from a certain section?
Successful community campaigns do just that – involve the community. Good ideas are out there, but so many of those ideas don’t make it to the surface or are drowned out by the volume of usual voices. If it has been impossible to hear from everyone in your community, MindMixer can offer a fresh perspective.
It is an online platform for engagement that helps public and private organizations like towns, cities and university communities to reach their stakeholders effectively. MindMixer has also recently acquired VoterTide, a company that gathers social media data in a non-partisan manner. With insights from VoterTide, clients will now have access to the same real-time social media intelligence tools used by politicians to quickly capture and capitalize on hot topics and issues in order to rally supporters and build momentum.
MindMixer allows you to gather ideas, review and respond to feedback, and find real solutions all in one place. Impossible to hear from everyone? Not anymore.
MindMixer acquires VoterTide, the social platform intelligence company
Right Startups
Apr 09, 2013 By Erin Donovan
Omaha, Nebraska MindMixer is an online platform for engagement that currently helps hundreds of education, health care and civic organizations to communicate more efficiently with audiences. Last month they announced their VoterTide acquisition, a company that gathers social media data in a non-partisan manner. The company has successfully activated audiences surrounding issues and hot topics for non-profits, political campaigns, or special interest groups that use news analysis technologies and social media insights.
Because of the acquisition, MindMixer clients will soon be able to use similar real-time updating social platform intelligence tools that politicians use to rapidly identify, capitalize, and capture issues and hot topics that build community throughout their campaigns. Although the official name is MindMixer Insights, they go by MindMixer. This technology allows organizations to listen to what their communities say with a better medium using intelligent analysis and tracking of traditional and social media activity surrounding community-specific terms and searches. Then, they’ll analyze activities that highlight hot topics and trends that bubble up in the community, insight that they will be able to use in order to focus projects and discussions on topics already resonate with audiences. Lastly, the integration includes report functionality giving their clients tools that gauge the success of every campaign.
MindMixer CEO, Nick Bowden says that when people are talking and writing about specific issues, they often use social networks as an outlet to distribute their opinions, and propose solutions to their gripes. Because social networks are so huge, too many great ideas are unnoticed and unheard by people who most want to know about the issues. A two-way street for communication brings about effective change, however, the challenge lies in activating the community to connect to a conversation that law makers can view, and become part of the dialog. By adding new technologies to their list of services, the company’s clients become more knowledgeable about their audience and better prepared to bring new people into the conversation.
Founder of VoterTide, Jimmy Winter, says that like MindMixer, they created a company under a belief that members of the community have deeper local knowledge, which has the potential to influence change and inform leadership. Winter is the new Product VP of MindMixer. He goes on to note that before any organizations have the ability to tap this knowledge, they have to discover a topic first that creates a buzz and gets people eager to participate. Their intelligence tools, when combined with MindMixer and their engagement platform, ensure that their clients address crucial topics using the correct venue so that audiences keep returning to collaborate and raise their voices.
VoterTide cofounder Matt Barr, the CTO, plans to assume a senior leadership role within the technology and production team. Additionally, Leah Frelinghuysen plans to continue serving as the senior advisor for external affairs and communication for VoterTide through MindMixer.
Fairfax plans park with MindMixer site
Connection Newspapers
Apr 03, 2013 By Victoria Ross
Fairfax, Virginia The City of Fairfax launched a new website Monday — Our Parks, Our Future — where citizens can engage, communicate and collaborate with the Fairfax Parks and Recreation Department and other residents on a new parks master plan for the city.
The community engagement website, developed by MindMixer, is designed to get the community involved in the planning process. Along the way, Our Parks, Our Future will be used as an online tool to generate new ideas and feedback from citizens using this interactive and accessible platform.
Feedback from the engagement website will be used by the city in order to prioritize future projects.
“Our Parks, Our Future gives contributors a chance to share new ideas, second others’ ideas, expand upon existing ideas and give feedback on initiatives, working with Fairfax leaders on a variety of topics online anytime, anywhere,” said Fairfax Mayor Scott Silverthorne.
The site also measures and tracks participation, identifying the most interested citizens and most compelling topics. MindMixer’s tools make it easy for administrations to communicate back with citizens, and they deliver measurable results and invaluable insights for the planning process.
“Our tools go beyond just technology. Our mission is to build community contributors. Ideas, voices and perspectives are shared to facilitate deeper and better conversations that yield actionable insights and a stronger community,” said Nick Bowden, CEO of MindMixer.
As part of its service, MindMixer consults and collaborates with clients to identify issues that are critical to stakeholders in order to update topics and content for their websites.
MindMixer is finalist in Big O! Awards
Omaha World Herald
Mar 29, 2013 By Cindy Gonzalez
Omaha, Nebraska The Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce has announced the nominees selected to move on to the final round of the 2013 Big O! Excellence Awards, which recognize high-achieving individuals and businesses.
Even the winners won't find out who topped their respective categories until the awards luncheon May 20 at the Embassy Suites Omaha La Vista.
Any chamber member was eligible for nomination; a volunteer chamber committee judges the contest.
Finalists
Business Woman of the Year:
Linda Dugan, PayPal
Audrey Hulsey, Pegasus Travel Center/American Express
Beverly Kracher, Business Ethics Alliance
Corporate Citizen:
ConAgra Foods
PayPal
Rybin Plumbing & Heating Co.
Innovator:
MindMixer
Schrock Innovations Computer Co.
WebEquity Solutions LLC
KCPS unveils new online forum
WDAF
Mar 27, 2013 By Staff
Kansas City, Missouri On April 1, 2013, the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) will unveil an innovative new website that revolutionizes the school system’s efforts to gather family and community feedback.
Powered by MindMixer and the ideas of engaged citizens, the new website – www.kcpsforum.org – will allow anyone to directly ask questions, share ideas, and collaborate with neighbors on developing solutions and fresh ideas for supporting student achievement. Contributors will be able to share new ideas, expand upon existing ideas and give feedback on initiatives, working with KCPS on a variety of topics online anytime, anywhere.
The first topics for discussion will be the project to re-open Hale Cook school and the development of a shared vision for a future KCPS middle school. Information from this forum will be used by the superintendent and school leaders to make informed decisions about the community’s needs.
This website will supplement the school system’s successful www.kcpublicschools.
“KCPS is determined to find new, fresh, and innovative ways to collaborate with its families,” said Eileen Houston-Stewart, Chief Communications and Community Engagement Officer. “KCPS Forum will present our community with the best possible tool for instant, meaningful collaboration.”
MindMixer acquires VoterTide, bets social tech can save democratic process
Forbes
Mar 26, 2013 By Meghan Casserly
Omaha, Nebraska Two years ago, Nick Bowden and Nathan Preheim built MindMixer on the premise that there was an opportunity to use technology—specifica
Today the Omaha-based company announced its acquisition of VoterTide, a social media intelligence company that has been successfully activating audiences around hot topics and issues for political campaigns, non-profits and special interest groups. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
By analyzing key words and trending topics of communities online, the acquisition will help MindMixer users to predict conversations, hot-button issues and action items within their constituencies. “If you’re in LA, for example, you’ll see conversations populated on transportation, the 405 or congestion,” says Nick Bowden, MindMixer’s CEO and cofounder. “Questions will be generated on these topics to drive conversation on the right issues and to help them filter up to the authorities.”
“It became really clear that there were a lot of people who wanted to be involved in politics or decision-making in their communities but couldn’t make it,” Bowden says of MindMixer’s birth. “Either the time was wrong or the location was inconvenient.” By taking the physical out of the equation, MindMixer has managed to onboard 350 organizations and facilitated real change in communities and organizations from San Francisco to Cape Cod.
Virtual meetings have accomplished a lot. In just two years more than 2,000 constituents have submitted ideas to their cities, school districts and organizations that have bubbled up into action. Bowden says projects range from the small–a city that redid the streets and forgot to paint the cross-walks—to large—like downtown Barnstable Masachusetts where a citizen submitted the idea for electric car charging stations that were installed. A San Francisco call for citizen redesigns of the public library card received over 5,000 submissions through the site.
When meetings are asynchronous—but more importantly online—people are showing up in droves. “It’s been a really cool affirmation that there isn’t an apathy issue in engagement with our communities,” Bowden says, pointing to low income school districts as a shining example of engagement. “We knew that in terms of real-life meetings the baseline number of participants was really, really low,” he says. “But we now have school districts where more than 8,500 out of 16,000 parents have signed up for the site and are engaging.”
Like many socially-conscious startups it’s easy to forget that there’s a bottom line amid all of the feel-good community facilitating going on in the MindMixer story. But Bowden is quick to point out that acquiring the VoterTide technology will make his offering even more attractive to clients, who currently pay subscription fees that range from $99 to several thousands of dollars a month (the site also takes revenue from advertising on each page).
VoterTide, founded by Jimmy Winter and Shannon Schlappi in March of 2011, also happens to be based on Omaha, where it built the social media analytics platform so valued by MindMixer. “Like MindMixer, we created our company with the belief that community members have deep local knowledge that can inform leadership and influence change,” says Winter, now the new VP of Product at MindMixer. “But before any organization can tap into this knowledge, you have to first find a topic that will create buzz and get people excited to participate. Our intelligence tools, combined with MindMixer’s engagement platform will ensure clients address the right topics in the right venue so audiences will keep coming back to collaborate.”
“When people have something to say about a specific issue, they often turn to social networks to share their opinions, proposed solutions or gripes,” Bowden says. “But, with social networks being as large as they are, many good ideas go unheard and unnoticed by the people who need to know about them,” says Bowden. By mixing the social smarts of VoterTide with the two-way conversations built by MindMixer, they hope to affect change at a much faster rate than they’ve been able to in the past. “By adding this new technology to our services, our clients will be more informed about their audiences and better equipped to bring them into the fold.”
And what clients are they looking to next? “Mayor Boomberg is doing some really cool stuff with technology,” Bowden says. “And there’s a lot more that could be done; we would love to be a part of that action.”
MindMixer acquires VoterTide to add social media tools, tech team
Silicon Prairie News
Mar 26, 2013 By Danny Schreiber
Omaha, Nebraska One Omaha Gov 2.0 startup has purchased another.
MindMixer today announced it has acquired VoterTide, a social media analytics startup that gives politicians and special interest groups insight into their online audience.
As a result, VoterTide's technology will be integrated into MindMixer's online community engagement platform as MindMixer Insights, which aims to bring additional value to what the profitable two-year-old startup can offer its clients. The new offering will allow organizations to listen to their communities through real-time tracking and analysis of social and traditional media activity.
"I think there's 67 percent of the U.S. adult population on social media," MindMixer co-founder and CEO Nick Bowden said. "We feel like being able to understand and analyze what those people are talking about is fundamental to asking great questions and engaging people in a more effective way."
With the VoterTide integration, Bowden foresees MindMixer clients picking up on what their audience is saying elsewhere and bringing that conversation to its platform.
"Two-way communication is the key to effecting change, but the challenge is activating them to join a conversation the decision makers can see," he said. "By adding this new technology to our services, our clients will be more informed about their audiences and better equipped to bring them into the fold."
The new technology, however, isn't the highlight of this acquisition. More importantly, Bowden said, MindMixer gets "great additions" to its team. VoterTide co-founder and CEO Jimmy Winter and CTO Matt Barr have assumed senior leadership roles on MindMixer's product and technology teams, respectively. Leah Frelinghuysen, who's based in Washington, D.C., has kept her communications role, and current programming intern Paul Graff will join the team full-time later this year.
Until now, the 20-person startup has relied on its four-person Los Angeles-based development team for its product updates. It's had developers in its Omaha headquarters, but never those focused on its back-end.
"(My co-founder Nathan Preheim) and I have always had a list of people we'd love to have on our team and Jimmy's always been on the list," Bowden said.
But before this past January the entrepreneurs had only met once, even though they ran two of a handful of Gov 2.0 companies in the area. It was a perspective MindMixer investor—the startup is currently raising a round of funding—that played a role in getting them in the same room to talk about ways to collaborate.
"I think our first discussion with Nick and Nathan was on January 23 and the deal officially closed on February 22—paper work done," said Winter, who co-founded the company in 2011 with Shannon Schlappi. "Basically, there's a good synergy."
Bowden echoed Winter, noting it was a "fantastic" opportunity from a cultural and team standpoint as well as a product standpoint. The two founders declined to disclose the terms of the acquisition, but both called it "good for everybody."
This is MindMixer's first acquisition, though Bowden, who said it would have cost more in terms of time and opportunity to build VoterTide's product in-house than to acquire the startup, has looked at other deals.
"I think as a company it's a responsibility of ours to always be looking for opportunities to grow the business and add talented people," Bowden said.
So what did he think about finding that opportunity in his own back yard?
"The fact that two Gov 2.0 companies were in Omaha is probably more chance than something in the water here," Bowden said, "but I think it's good for the Omaha area that we can kind of be a little bit of a pedestal for this movement of sorts."
MindMixer brings the town hall to the voters
Fast Company
Mar 26, 2013 By Zak Stone
Omaha, Nebraska The startup, which just acquired a political social media insight firm called VoterTide, helps local governments connect with and understand the needs of their constituents.
Town-hall-style meetings, a cornerstone of American democracy, are a wonderful idea--in theory. Concerned citizens show up to defend a cause, engage with their representatives, and let their voice be heard in the decision-making process.
But they also presume that anyone who’s passionate about an issue has the time and privilege to escape family and work obligations to show up in one place at a set time. The result is that “important policy decisions can be based on a really small sample size,” says Nick Bowden.
For the past two years his Nebraska-based startup MindMixer has tried to bring the town-hall experience online, through an interactive platform that lets cities and other institutions (including hospitals, universities, and school districts) define topical areas and open up a conversation to the public to receive feedback. The platform is now in use in 300 cities around the country--anchoring a discussion in Los Angeles about the future of the city’s public transportation system, for example, or helping the city of Sacramento solicit feedback about a proposed arena that would keep the city’s NBA team there.
“Cities have back-end access to the content, the demographics around the participant, and how something like location might impact someone’s interest and priorities,” says Bowden. This lets cities make more informed, localized decisions: “We had a city where they had a ton of support for longer library hours. When they looked at the [data], they found that 90% of the people who supported the idea lived in the downtown zip code.” The data-driven decision, should the city adopt it, would be to allocate resources to extend just the downtown library’s hours.
MindMixer will make it even easier for governments and organizations to take into consideration a diversity of opinions and know where they’re coming form. It’s acquired the social media insights firm VoterTide, which gleans and analyzes social media data around news topics to let politicians--or in MindMixer’s case, cities and institutions--know what constituents are talking about and how they feel about the matter.
With the VoterTide technology brought into the fold, MindMixer clients will have access to a new tool, which aggregates what their communities are saying on social media using "community-specific search terms" and highlights trends "which they can use to focus discussions and projects on the topics that are already resonating with audiences," MindMixer said in a statement.
For MindMixer clients, this means a more direct line with community members, and the ability to gauge what conversations are worth having. And for citizens, this could mean the sense of satisfaction that when you tweet at your mayor, he’s actually getting the message.
Winnebago hosts MindMixer site on future of waterways
WBAY
Mar 25, 2013 By Emily Matesic
Lake Winnebago, Wisconsin The counties that surround the Lake Winnebago water system are hoping there is strength in numbers.
Calumet, Fond du Lac, Outagamie, Waushara, and Winnebago counties are beginning what they hope will be a multi-phase project for improvements to the Winnebago chain.
The Lake Winnebago water system brings in $220 million of economic development to the region each year.
Understanding the importance of that financial boost, and with the help of a $50,000 DNR grant, the counties that surround Lake Winnebago and the other waterways in its system have teamed up to try and identify key issues that need to be dealt with and changed for its betterment. And they're asking for input to help get the ball rolling.
"We really are spending a lot of time on the front end making sure we're not just getting input from local elected officials but that we're getting input from business owners, business leaders, citizens and so forth," Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson says about the project.
In addition to public meetings scheduled during the next few weeks, the group has created a "Weigh in on the Winnebago Waterways" website, WinnebagoWaterways.c
The group believes by working together it will be able to make real changes.
Calumet County Administrator Jay Shambeau says, "By reaching out and collaborating across county lines within many municipalities is something that we can truly accomplish much greater things and looking out for the taxpayer dollar and accomplishing that in a cost-effective manner is why we're reaching out collaboratively across the region."
Public input will be accepted through May before the group decides what projects to tackle first.
In Boulder, online engagement is just one step
Boulder Daily Camera
Mar 23, 2013 By Claire Chase
Boulder, Colorado City officials know that one of the most complex elements of public involvement in local issues revolve around its defining characteristic: civic participation. The reality of engaging citizens is complex not only because you have to figure out how to get citizens interested and involved, but also because the mindful selection (and fear of unintentional exclusion) of relevant community stakeholders can make or break an initiative. When it comes to designing and deliberating about a civic space, it seems obvious that citizens are significant stakeholders but how do you gauge the success of a civic engagement effort? The number of citizens involved? The ideas submitted?
Beginning last summer, Boulder officials started inviting citizens to participate in the initial phase of design for the civic area that spans 9th to 17th streets between Canyon Boulevard and Arapahoe Avenue. The Boulder Civic Area Project (BCAP) was framed as an emergent and experimental process that would not only shape the design of the civic area but also provide a framework for community involvement in design processes of future Boulder public spaces. Today, BCAP also appears to serve as an example for how online tools can be used to engage community members in conversations across civic matters. An online component of the project stemming from a MindMixer website, InspireBoulder.com, expanded the number of citizen stakeholders in the public deliberation of BCAP. The website provides a means for informally submitting ideas without the necessity of physically attending a public meeting or event.
Communication research has recognized the role of stakeholders particularly focusing on how perceived participation in decision-making processes impacts buy-in of a new idea. Researcher Laurie Lewis finds that stakeholder perception is particularly important when distinguishing between an authentic invitation to participate and an obligatory invitation. Metadesign models in other disciplines also point to the importance of engaging the end-user, or the citizen park-goer in the case of BCAP, as a co-designer in the process. Engaging community members as stakeholders and co-designers makes strategic sense for long-term buy-in for the future civic area design. Including as many people as possible on an issue also contributes to the initiative as a democratic process, but has citizen participation on the Inspire Boulder website contributed to the design process or is its success in the open invitation to participate?
Identifying and effectively involving stakeholders in a given public project is never an easy task, even in an active community environment like Boulder. Adding an online dimension to the public deliberation of the civic area has eliminated boundaries previously prohibiting engagement, and yet it will remain important for Boulder officials to actively reflect on whether online engagement has benefited the project in regard to the quality of content or the value of perceived civic participation. Yes, Boulder city officials should be applauded for their outreach efforts online. However, allowing more opportunities for a larger number of people to speak about a particular issue doesn't drastically change the reality of civic participation nor does it mean that effective public deliberation is more likely online.
Statistically speaking, over 1,500 interactions have taken place on the BCAP category of the Inspire Boulder website. The numbers suggest that even if a unique individual submitted each comment or idea, less than 2 percent of Boulder citizens responded to the invitation to engage in the design process online. But the low percentage might not matter in the long run, as long as citizens interpreted Inspire Boulder as an authentic invitation to contribute to the public matter. To assess public perception in this regard, it will be important for public officials to reflect on the use of online civic engagement when the public deliberation phase of BCAP concludes. According to communication theory focusing on change processes in organizations, the perception of stakeholder participation may be more important than the actual contributions of stakeholders. In other words, the positive impact of Inspire Boulder is more likely to be found in how citizens perceived their role in the design process of the civic area rather than the number of users who logged-in or how many comments were posted on the Inspire Boulder website.
Arvada goes online for community input
Our Colorado News
Mar 19, 2013 By Staff
Arvada, Colorado The city of Arvada recently launched Arvada Listens, a new website where the community can engage, communicate and collaborate with the city on issues and opportunities with the city.
The website, www.ArvadaListens.co
The site will be a way for the city to communicate ideas with residents and give them a chance to provide feedback anytime and anywhere.
MindMixer makes it possible for city administrators to track hot topics on the site and makes it easy to communicate with citizens.
Improve Dorsett Road on MindMixer site in Maryland Heights
Maryland Heights Patch
Mar 19, 2013 By Candace Jarrett
Maryland Heights, Missouri If you are tired of lacking sidewalks, ready to ride your bike in its own lane on Dorsett Road, or ready for a traffic free drive home at night, voice it to the City of Maryland Heights on March 27.
Your ideas will be heard and help with planning for improvements to the corridor to make it more pedestrian and cyclist friendly.
The meeting will be from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Maryland Heights Centre. Input from those that live and work in the city is wanted.
According to the City of Maryland Heights website, those in attendance will be asked to provide input on:
-The addition of “Main Street” centers or other land uses to the corridor Changes that would encourage residents to bicycle or walk
-Ideas for improving the overall look and “feel” of Dorsett
-Ways to improve traffic safety and flow along the road
-“Wish lists” for additional businesses or shops along Dorsett
-Their least favorite aspect of Dorsett Road
The city is also engaging public input via its project page on an online community engagement social media site called MindMixer.
The East-West Gateway Council of Governments is conducting the study as part of the St. Louis Great Streets Initiative grant program.
There is $500,000 of federal grant money allotted to dig deep and study what will be most effective for the Dorsett Road corridor.
Green Mountain College students team up on MindMixer site
The Rope Swing
Mar 15, 2013 By Andrew O'Neill
Poultney, Vermont Today, March 15th, 2013, Mindmixer officially launched! This is one of the largest student initiated projects to occur this year! The launch was celebrated in the Gorge, downstairs in Withey. An impressive showing of about 70 students were in attendance at one point. The student team encouraged each person who strolled through the doors into the party to sign up and create an account.
About half way through the party, more than 80 students had already signed up. Also at the party were plenty of orange and white colored treats from cupcakes to carrots and from chips to juice. The party served as an introduction to what the student initiators hope will bring a better GMC down the road.
You can visit MindMixer on Facebook or ask any of the students involved in the project if you have more questions. I would encourage all the students to sign up for this service since the potential applications for MindMixer are just about endless! Bring your ideas and share them with the GMC and Poultney community.
MindMixer launches in Fort Collins
Northern Colorado Business Report
Mar 15, 2013 By Staff
Fort Collins, Colorado The City of Fort Collins has launched Fort Collins Idea Lab, a community engagement website where residents can engage with city leaders and other community members on different issues.
Residents can use the tool to share their ideas for Fort Collins and support or expand upon the ideas of others. Ideas shared in Idea Lab will been seen and considered by city staff, according to a release from the city.
The Idea Lab offers an alternative to city council meetings, project open houses or other traditional types of forums.
Idea Lab will also measure participation, helping to identify topics that users find most compelling.
The tool was developed by MindMixer and is funded through Keep Fort Collins Great sales tax revenue.
Mountain Village uses MindMixer for public feedback
Telluride Daily Planet
Mar 15, 2013 By Collin McRann
Mountain Village, Colorado The town of Mountain Village has unveiled a new feature on its website aimed at gathering feedback and making it easier for the public to engage with the town government.
The Mountain Village iForum went live last week. The aim of the forum is to gather the public’s input on what the town is up to as well as spark conversations. While the forum has only been up for a week, town officials say they’ve already seen some traffic. They expect things will pick up exponentially once word gets out.
The idea behind iForum goes back to the town’s former community surveys, which it stopped utilizing in 2010 due to budget constraints. Nichole Zangara Riley, the community relations manager for Mountain Village, said the new online platform costs about the same as the surveys and is a more versatile way of gathering public opinion.
“The town constantly wants to be engaged with its citizens,” Riley said. “We know that everyone is super busy, and it’s really hard to stay connected with your local governments. So we want to make it as easy and painless as possible.”
The forum requires a user to start a profile and from there the user is presented with a number of town topics. Users can answer survey questions and even write some of their own about different issues. Navigating the menus also reveals links to the town’s Twitter and Facebook pages. Users can also see who is reading the forum’s results by clicking on the Who’s Listening option under the project details option.
So far a few topics listed for input and discussion on the forum include: weed management, town council, a town website review and a pick a theme song for the town, among others. As of Thursday afternoon two theme songs have risen to the top, “Rocky Mountain High” by John Denver and “Misty Mountain Hop” by Led Zeppelin.
To get the service up and running, the town entered into a yearlong contract with a company called Mindmixer. In the past, Riley said the town spent around $20,000 a year to conduct its old mail-out surveys, while the new service cost around $22,000 to implement this year. While Riley was not sure how much it would cost to renew the contract with Mindmixer when it expires, she said it will likely be around the same amount. But this avenue allows the town to keep its surveys up year round rather than putting them out one at a time.
“In the past the cost was for a one-time survey, and we just all agreed that that seemed to be a lot of money for one survey,” Riley said. “For that reason I started exploring other online platforms. Not only could we survey our residents and businesses, but also be able to survey them at anytime. There’s questions that come up that we can now post anytime.”
The town first started work on the iForum site early this year, and it is part of the town’s redesign of its website.
While the forum might be run by the town, Riley said anyone with an interest in the area or Mountain Village is welcome to start a profile and submit their input. In fact, Riley said, there is going to be a concerted effort to raise awareness of the forum and its purpose.
“I’m pleased with our response thus far, but we’re going to do a big push to get people to the see what’s going on and get things to grow,” Riley said.
TBARTA launches online engagement site
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Mar 14, 2013 By Staff
Tampa Bay, Florida The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority launched TellTBARTA, a new comprehensive community engagement website.
The website, developed by MindMixer, allows citizens to engage, communicate and collaborate with transportation officials and other residents on the update of the TBARTA Master Plan, according to a written statement.
The site also measures and tracks participation and can identity the most engaged citizens and the most compelling topics, the statement said.
New council member praises use of MindMixer in neighboring community
Tampa Bay Times
Mar 13, 2013 By Danielle Paquette
Oldsmar Voters on Tuesday may have elected the youngest City Council member ever to serve in Oldsmar.
Gabby McGee, 26, won Seat 3 with 60 percent of the vote, outpacing Dan Saracki, 53, and Suda Yantiss-Colon, 50. Nearly 1,700 people cast ballots.
"I always say, 'It's not about how long you've lived somewhere,' " she said on the campaign trail. "It's what you've done.'"
Though Oldsmar kept no record of council members' ages before 1950, City Clerk Ann Stephan said McGee is the youngest council member reflected in those records, and maybe ever.
McGee's election also created, for the first time, a female majority on the council. The five-member council already has two other female members, Janice Miller and Linda Norris.
"It'd be sexist to say that's something significant," said Vice Mayor Jerry Beverland. "Women deserve a seat on the council as much as men. That's obvious."
Beverland, who was twice mayor and first elected to council at age 35, said McGee's age shouldn't help or hinder her success.
"It depends on the individual," he said. "Experience says a lot. But experience isn't always right. As long as you don't bring agendas to the council, I welcome you. As long as you bring good, fresh ideas, I don't care if you're 25 or 65."
McGee, who grew up in Palm Harbor and moved to Oldsmar about six years ago, is an information technology account manager for Cisco Systems who loves gourmet cooking and vintage houses.
She fully renovated her first home, a 1918 bungalow on Buckingham Avenue W, and now gives tours of the house. She is working with state officials to establish an official historic district in Oldsmar.
"I am completely elated and exhausted at the same time," she said Wednesday. "I am completely humbled and honored by the number of people that showed their support for me."
Moving forward, the University of Tampa graduate said she wants to work with council members to create more pedestrian-friendly streets, attract more major retailers (through site proposals, which she writes in her spare time) and increase interactions between city officials and residents using a city-funded "MindMixer" account — a "virtual city hall" website also used by Tampa.
McGee will make a solid addition to the city's current leaders, Beverland said. She'll serve the two years remaining in Mayor-elect Doug Bevis' term.
"She does her homework — I know she does—and she doesn't seem to go off on a tangent," Beverland said. "You ask her a question and she readily answers. She's prepared."
McGee was the only candidate who got formal endorsements during the campaign, winning them from the Palm Harbor/Oldsmar Professional Firefighters, the Pinellas Realtor Organization, the Fraternal Order of Police Pinellas Lodge 43 and the Fraternal Order of Police Clearwater Lodge 10.
Jason Schwabe, district vice president of the Palm Harbor/Oldsmar Professional Firefighters Local 2980, said McGee impressed the group with her knowledge of the city. "She already actively does so much for the city. We thought she'd bring a fresh perspective."
Joe Farrell of the Pinellas Realtor Organization said he was impressed by McGee's energy and drive.
"It's evident to anyone who meets her: She has unbridled enthusiasm for her community," he said.
WMATA uses input from MindMixer site to shape new Metro map
Greater Greater Washington
Mar 13, 2013 By David Alpert
Washington WMATA has been rolling out information about what will happen once the Silver Line opens. One part: a new map. The agency posted a draft for comments on its MindMixer site.
When the Silver Line joins with Orange and Blue, it will inevitably force some changes to the map. That's because the current map has small station circles and thick lines, which works for two lines together but not three.
In our map contest, designers tried a number of different approaches: much thinner lines like in most cities' subway maps, larger circle symbols, double symbols, or "pill"-shaped station symbols that could span more lines.
WMATA has taken a different approach with this draft. Each line got just a bit thinner, so that the station circles are slightly wider than a line instead of slightly narrower. For the 3-line segments, "whiskers" extend on either side of the station circles to tell riders that all trains stop there.
The map also abbreviates some stations which aren't abbreviated today, like "Metro Ctr" or "Capitol Hgts," and removes the cross streets.
Details emerge on Silver Line frequencies, endpoints
In addition, WMATA has released more operational details about planned Silver Line service.
As was previously reported, Silver trains will go to Largo; the original plan was to turn them at Stadium-Armory, but Metro determined that the existing pocket track is not adequate.
To use the pocket in rush service, Metro needs to be able to pull trains of up to 8 cars in pretty quickly. If the switches have a wide radius and the pocket track is long, the trains can go in at higher speeds, but the pocket has smaller switches and a short pocket, which means pulling trains in will likely slow down other trains behind.
Since the pocket is on an aerial structure, there's not room to expand it without massive expense, so Metro will send the trains to Largo (which gives Blue Line riders east of the river and in Prince George's more frequent service as well).
Silver Line trains will run every 6 minutes during peak, 12 minutes off-peak, 20 minutes after 10 pm, and 12-15 minutes weeknights. This will combine with the Orange's frequency from East Falls Church to Rosslyn and both Orange and Blue beyond that, but outside rush hours, people riding the line will likely have to do a fair amount of waiting.
Also, as we knew (but which won't please riders hurt by Rush Plus), there will be even more Rush Plus. 2 Blue Line trains per hour during the peak will become Yellow Line trains from Franconia to Greenbelt. That makes room at Rosslyn for the Silver Line.
Riders north of Mount Vernon Square on the Green Line will see more service, but Blue Line riders from southern Fairfax, Alexandria, and Arlington going to Rosslyn, Tysons, or Foggy Bottom will have to wait longer for Blue trains or ride through downtown DC.
The only solution to this problem is a new terminal or wye at Rosslyn, so that more trains can come in from the south without taking away capacity from trains from the west. WMATA has proposed this as part of its "Metro 2025" plan, but there's no funding yet for these important projects.
Got ideas? Crowdsourcing for innovation and community engagement
Nonprofit Technology Network
Mar 11, 2013 By Nick Bowden
Omaha, Nebraska Nonprofits' struggle to engage the public has been going on long before the Internet came around--offering its myriad distractions into the mix. But without the input of their community and stake-holders, organizations may struggle to meet their missions and realize their potential. That’s why nonprofits have started to embrace the power of the Internet to help harness large groups in an efficient way. Nonprofits are making use of crowdsourcing and social media and email lists to spread their message, mobilize volunteers, and get down to what’s important to their communities.
Early adopters have taken advantage of electronic media to broadcast their message, but at the end of the day deeper engagement doesn’t come from more talking; it comes from better listening. My company, MindMixer, is an online crowdsourcing product that offers nonprofits, cities, schools, universities, churches, and hospitals a place to listen to what matters most to their members and constituents. Relationships are built based on an accessible and convenient two-way conversation. With nearly half-a-million participants across 250 sites, the online conversation is growing every day. Working with nonprofits and organizations in community engagement initiatives and campaigns has helped us identify some key characteristics of successful crowdsourcing.
Here are some examples of organizations working with their communities to achieve their mission:
The City of Omaha is one of the Midwest’s most connected communities. Hub of the so-called Silicon Prairie, the City is embracing its tech culture to inspire engagement among residents. The City's website was one of MindMixer’s first sites. More than 100 topics into the life of the EngageOmaha project, the dialogue is still simmering, spanning a variety of subjects that elicit the opinions and ideas of residents and improve the city.
Nearly 1,000 ideas have been submitted on the site, and already the City has implemented 12 of them. From implementing credit card payments for metered parking to incorporating more fuel-efficient vehicles into the City’s fleet, Omaha’s ideas are becoming Omaha’s reality. City leaders are taking an active role in the conversation at EngageOmaha, showing residents that suggestions are not falling on deaf ears but are being reviewed and implemented -- an integral part of the decision-making process.
MyHistoricLA is part of SurveyLA, a collaboration of the Getty Trust and the City’s Office of Historic Resources to find the buildings and sites in Los Angeles residents deem architecturally and culturally historic. The online forum at MyHistoricLA has empowered citizens to share these special places with city leaders, and input has been overwhelming.
Not only did LA residents identify known historic spots; they also unearthed sites the City had not previously identified: the Corralitas Red Car property, Eagle Rock City Hall, the old Route 66 tunnels along Figueroa Street, for example. The results of this interactive survey are guiding field research. Once historic sites are studied and archived, SurveyLA releases a report and publishes a blog on the SurveyLA website, bringing the engagement process full circle.
The Great Plains United Methodist Church (GPUMC) wanted to better connect its 1,000 congregations across two states in preparation for its district-wide conference. The larger task at hand: Get church leaders’ input on ways to combine the current three conferences into one larger event. The GPUMC launched their crowdsourcing platform with a few simple questions about communication preferences. After finding out how best to reach church members and share important information, GPUMC mobilized those communication channels to expand the conversation and move on to more specific, in-depth questions about its annual conference. The Church has garnered more than 100 ideas in just a few short months. That input will help shape the transition to a new phase for the Church.
These three projects each show the usefulness of crowdsourcing -- and the work it takes to make crowdsourcing successful.
There is no online conversation without outreach. Getting the word out via social and traditional media outlets is essential to getting the kind of engagement you want.
Not every conversation is worth joining. Great content -- questions that are compelling, inspiring, and concise -- is key to keeping community members coming back to your site.
Your community can sense when its ideas are going to die in the water. Be sure to ask questions you can respond to or act upon, and then do so on the site whenever possible.
The Internet makes the world a smaller place. Crowdsourcing makes it possible to hear and reconcile the ideas of many in a convenient and interactive way. If we can sift through the distractions of the online age, we might not only be able to build community; we might just find new ways to solve some of our society’s biggest challenges.
Nick Bowden is the CEO and co-founder of MindMixer, an Omaha, Neb., based crowdsourcing platform currently in use in more than 250 engaged communities.
New civic tech jobs on the horizon
Huffington Post
Mar 01, 2013 By Code for America
San Francisco An incredible opportunity exists for local, state, and federal government to tap into the energy of technology startups to work more collaboratively and effectively, and you can get involved!
At Code for America, we've been supporting startups focusing on servicing the government sector with mentorship, $25k in seed funding, funder connections and more through our Accelerator program. Previously in this series, we discussed about the work of startup Recovers.org and the work they're doing to help communities and local governments like the Lower East Side in Manhattan during Hurricane Sandy better manage resources before and during a disaster. Shortly, we'll be accepting new applications for startups, like Recovers, looking to make a difference in how government engages with citizens.
Sign up here to turbo-charge the growth of your civic startup, refer a friend, and/or receive the application when it's released.
And donate today to Code for America in the JobRaising Challenge to support this effort.
When we support startups, not only do we forward our vision of a more collaborative, transparent government, but we also support an incredible source of jobs and economic stability across the United States, as shared by a recent report by Engine Advocacy. In the case of civic startups, these high-value technology jobs not only pay well, but contribute back to communities through helping better government services.
Creating High-value, High Impact Jobs
Mindmixer, another participant in our inaugural Accelerator class, provides a citizen engagement platform that acts as a "virtual town hall" for citizen participation and feedback. Mindmixer is currently implemented in over 260 cities across the United States and has over $2 million in venture capital investments.
Chief Engagement Officer, Nick Bowden, shares that, "MindMixer is very proud to a growing company in an industry, civic tech, that offers people an opportunity to work on important and meaningful challenges, like improving communication between citizens and government."
Multi-Regional Tech Job Growth
Not only is Mindmixer creating jobs, but since its Inception in March 2011, Mindmixer has increased from the 2 founders to a total of 23 staff in Omaha, Nebraska, Los Angeles, California, Boulder Colorado, and Kansas City, Missouri. Omaha, Nebraska doesn't exactly come across as a tech startup mecca, and that's a good thing. As evidenced by the geographic diversity of the startups on our Accelerator, civic startups are creating high-value tech jobs across the country. Wherever there is government, there is a need for tech talent to service that municipality, which can add to the regional growth of a community's startup sector.
We at Code for America have every confidence that we are at the beginning of an incredible era of job growth in the civic tech space and hope you'll join us in supporting this budding industry. Together, we can create good jobs with incredible impact in helping our governments work better with the power of the web.
Follow Code for America on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@cod
Hey, Omahans. We're meeting today. In your living room.
Omaha World Herald
Feb 28, 2013 By Erin Grace
Omaha, Nebraska You are cordially invited to a town hall meeting today in your living room.
Or at your cubicle. Or in your idling car, waiting for the kids to get out of school.
This public meeting for the citizens of Omaha is being held wherever you are.
It starts today. But you can come tomorrow. Or the next day or the day after.
Simply get on the Internet. Then go to engageomaha.com, type, click. ...
Voila! You're participating in democracy without hiring a baby sitter, plugging a parking meter or waiting in line to speak.
Voila! Bureaucrats have more ideas from more people.
Voila! Mindmixer, an Omaha technology startup, just added more eyes to its virtual town hall.
Think Facebook for government. You go to the website, click on the topic du jour and add your ideas, photographs or comments. You can see how many others are participating. You can see who's listening: Mayor Jim Suttle and city department heads.
A pair of young men named Nick and Nate run this operation for about 350 civic entities.
Working out of an old furniture warehouse north of downtown, they and their staff of 20 create, essentially, a giant online suggestion box with a technological bean-counting feature. Whoever chimes in on parks, policy or the State of the City address must give enough bare-bones information about themselves that clients can glean basic demographics: Gender. Age. ZIP code.
“Our app,” says Nick Bowden, “can tell you what percentage of people who supported more bike lanes lived in Dundee.”
That's just one example of the myriad topics Mindmixer has managed for the City of Omaha since launching in April 2011. Since then, it has counted more than 50,100 unique users, who generated 1,200 ideas and left 4,500 comments. In the past 30 days, 7,638 people have gone to engageomaha's “town hall.”
They come from every ZIP code, though midtowners predominantly participate. Six out of 10 are men. Average age: 40.
Nick and Nate hope, as word gets out, that more Omahans, from suburbanites to inner-city dwellers, check out the site and add their voices.
They say their role is to enhance community involvement by drawing more people in, first online, then hopefully in person.
They well know what happens when people don't show up.
Four years ago, best friends Nick Bowden and Nate Preheim were urban planners working for a Lincoln firm. Their job was to drive to cities and small towns from Denver to Chicago to drum up support for civic projects through town hall meetings.
But the meetings typically drew a small, narrow audience: retirees, mostly men and almost always white.
They tried a number of gimmicks to draw people and enliven the sessions. They offered free food, played mayor-for-the-day games with Monopoly money and took outdoor walking tours, giving participants disposable cameras. Idealists Nick and Nate saw that, beyond voting, the town halls were one of the most democratic things citizens could do.
“This one,” they'd tell each other hopefully before each meeting, “will be different!”
Nothing seemed to work. The breaking point came as Nick and Nate packed up a rental car after a meeting in Garden City, Kan.
In went the unused Monopoly money, the half-used disposable cameras, three uneaten pizzas.
Nick and Nate headed home, dejected.
“You'd just bang your head against the wall,” said Nate.
“We were like the DJs at a wedding that forgot to send the invitations,” said Nick.
Nate, a 39-year-old Westside High and University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate who has worked in Silicon Valley, quit for a job at PayPal.
Nick Bowden, a 29-year-old Creighton Prep and UNL grad, left soon after and started his own urban planning firm.
But they kept talking about what had failed in their former jobs, and they realized it's mostly retirees who have or take time to attend public meetings. One study showed that half the U.S. adult population has never attended a public meeting, and just 15 percent go to more than one a year.
In 2010, they pooled their money, took out loans, built a prototype of their virtual town-hall app and sold it to Omaha by Design and the City of Lincoln. Nate moonlighted, managing the website. Nick spent his lunch breaks trying to sell it to others. Cities like Nashville, Tenn., which needed citizen input on a flood recovery plan, bought in.
In March 2011, Nate quit PayPal. Nick sold his business. Both went full-throttle into Mindmixer.
By last March, they had 102 clients. By July, Code for America selected Nick and Nate's company over some 230 others for a prestigious opportunity to fast-grow their business. By November, their client load had tripled.
They're helping Sacramento, Calif., name a train station; South Florida seek input on a trail through the Everglades; Lincoln Public Schools better connect with parents; Denton, Texas, weigh a smoking ban.
At today's Omaha town hall “meeting,” there will be no free pizza, no PowerPoints, no charismatic young consultants bouncing around the room.
But Nick and Nate will be there. Online.
Waiting for you.
Sacramento uses MindMixer to rename train station
The Sacramento Bee
Feb 21, 2013 By Tony Bizjak
Sacramento, California Quick, do you know the official name of Sacramento's downtown train station?
Therein lies a problem. Ten years ago, city officials renamed the old depot at Fifth and I streets the Sacramento Valley Station. But hardly anyone calls it that. Some call it the Amtrak depot. Some use its former name, the SP Depot. Some simply say downtown train station.
The lack of a catchy, go-to name is bothering some at City Hall. The city, which owns the old depot, has begun a major expansion at the site.
Eventually, that will include new ticketing areas and concourses to handle an eventual 10 million-plus travelers annually on Amtrak trains, streetcars, light rail, buses and possibly bullet trains.
There will be restaurants, shops, offices, entertainment spaces, potentially a farmers market, and possibly an arena, spread out over several acres.
It's time, officials say, to think about rebranding the site.
The city launched a short online public questionnaire Wednesday at www.envisionsacramen
Four of the nominations from residents taking the survey on Wednesday: Sacramento Metro Area Regional Transportation Station (SMARTS), The Big Four Station (pays tribute to the four men who were part of the development of the transcontinental railroad), Sacramento Metro Exchange Station and Sacramento Transportation Center.
City architect Greg Taylor said the name Sacramento Valley Station is still in the running. But officials are asking for other ideas.
"I've had people say Sac Valley Station sounds like it is out in Redding somewhere," Councilman Steve Cohn said. "It doesn't conjure up downtown Sacramento much."
It's possible the historic depot building can have one name, and the surrounding center another name, architect Taylor said.
City officials for years have been calling the planned expanded center the Sacramento Intermodal Transportation Facility.
But, "that is just not a catchy name," city spokeswoman Linda Tucker said. "We need something that is stickier, something that resonates."
The city moved the rail tracks last year to make room for development, and built new platforms and tunnels there.
Officials recently launched a $30 million rehabilitation project on the old depot. Eventually the city will build new facilities just north of the depot.
Architect Taylor said the city also is looking for help in finding historic photos of the old depot.
LPS launches website to generate conversation with community
Lincoln Journal Star
Feb 12, 2013 By Margaret Reist
Lincoln, Nebraska Lincoln Public Schools officials want to hear from you, and they’ve created a website to make that easier.
ConnectLPS was created by MindMixer, an Omaha-based developer that creates websites for citizens to interact with public officials.
LPS officials will pick topics weekly to be posed as open-ended questions, surveys and poll questions.
Comments go online immediately and the public can comment and converse, and if there’s a particular suggestion or question, LPS officials will respond.
This week’s topics include: "Your Big Ideas for Lincoln Public Schools," "Lessons Learned from Graduates" and "Input on Future Conversation Topics."
Upcoming topics will include school priorities, school safety and an LPS Lunch Madness challenge, where the district will pick 32 school lunches, put them in a bracket form -- and let participants decide which meals advance to the next round and which lunch eventually wins first place.
Finding ways to engage the community in conversation about LPS is one of the district’s strategic goals, and ConnectLPS is the latest effort to do that.
“Little by little we’re adding different tools in our public engagement toolbox,” said Mary Kay Roth, LPS communications director.
District officials also are planning to start a Citizen’s Academy to let residents get a more in-depth look at LPS and has hosted one live-streamed conversation with Superintendent Steve Joel. In March, they’ll do another with Edith Zumwalt, who heads the LPS nutrition department, in conjunction with their Lunch Madness challenge.
The Lincoln Board of Education considered hiring a Virginia-based firm to do surveys for the distinct but opted instead to find other ways to increase communication.
The goal of ConnectLPS is collaboration and involvement. Joel and the school board will use feedback in their planning process, according to a news release.
“We would like LPS staff to participate -- we would like LPS parents to participate -- we would like the entire community to participate,” the news release said.
Rancho Cucamonga pairs meetings with engagement site
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Feb 12, 2013 By Neil Nisperos
Rancho Cucamonga, California The city of Rancho Cucamonga Community Services Department is conducting a city-wide community recreational needs assessment. This workshop is part of a comprehensive community input process to identify areas of need for parks, recreations, cultural arts, open spaces, trail facilities, programs and services.
The city invites the public to a workshop on Feb. 19 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Goldy S. Lewis Community Center at Central Park.
The feedback will help develop a 10 to 15 year vision for Rancho Cucamonga Park & Recreation Programs and Services.
Community services is also surveying the public about recreation needs through a new website: www.RCCommunityIdeas
Far from San Francisco and New York, Silicon Prairie emerges
CNBC.com
Feb 05, 2013 By Laura Schreier
Omaha, Nebraska With cities like Boston and San Francisco jam packed with entrepreneurs and investors, there are plenty of networking events to connect upstarts with deep-pocketed investors. But what if you're trying to innovate in, say, Omaha, Neb.? Or Des Moines, Iowa?
Physically far from the financial and startup hubs on the East and West coasts, entrepreneurs in between the two regions have to work harder to create the vital connections that often lead to funding, say regional startup experts including Nick Bowden. He's co-founder of Omaha-based startup MindMixer, which promotes online communities and engagement on topics ranging from better schools to improving local parks.
Despite the distance from California's Silicon Valley and New York's Silicon Alley, a small startup scene is emerging in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas. Welcome to Silicon Prairie.
Silicon Prairie: A Tight-Knit Startup Scene
A key conference for Midwest entrepreneurs — "Big Omaha" — is now entering its fifth year. The next conference there is scheduled for May. Instead of heading to San Francisco or New York City, entrepreneurs from across the U.S. will fly into Omaha's Eppley Airfield and head to the Old Market neighborhood downtown to mingle with other upstarts and network.
The Midwest has been slowly gaining momentum as a startup region, said Jeff Slobotski, co-founder of Silicon Prairie — a news source, and also event producer for the "Big Omaha" conference and its sister conferences in Des Moines and Kansas City, Mo. About 700 attended 2012's "Big Omaha" event compared to 430 during the conference's debuted in 2009.
While startup scenes are common among larger cities, a community devoted to upstarts and creative innovators remains something of a novelty in the Midwest. Most people don't expect it, Silicon Prairie's Slobotski said. And in an area far better known for old-school industries such as agriculture and insurance, local entrepreneurs have something to prove.
The Midwest offers a tight-knit startup scene, and its small, manageable size makes it easier to participate in a meaningful way — instead of being swallowed up by the much larger companies and crowded ranks of upstarts, as is the case on both coasts.
"There's a unique sense of pride and ownership to what we're doing," Slobotski said. "You can make a mark and make a change, on a bigger scale," he said.
Success Stories
Because local entrepreneur groups are smaller and the pool of investors is relatively fewer compared to bigger cities, conferences such as "Big Omaha" offer a unique opportunity to make a splash with potential investors.
And as recent success stories show, networking and bootstrapping small operations in the Midwest can work. Slobotski cites several successful startups, whose origins can be traced to connections made at prior "Big Omaha" conferences.
Examples include Iowa's online payment system Dwolla, which snagged attention from investor Mark Ecko of EckoUnlimited/Artist
Bowdon of Omaha-based startup MindMixer connected with a key investor, Omaha-based Dundee Capital Ventures, and got a boost for their online platform, and is now in its second round of funding. MindMixer is tapping more distant investors for this round, he said, and savvy startups will do the work to create a broader web all year – not just at annual events.
Innovation, Midwestern Style
Far removed from Silicon Valley and New York City, working in the Midwest startup community presents unique challenges.
The pool of tech specialists and overall talent to build websites and other ventures is smaller. And fewer entrepreneurs are likely to take the riskier path of launching a new business in the Midwest rather than accept, say, a safer job at a Fortune 500 company, where their tech skills would be welcome, said Slobotski of Silicon Prairie.
Local investors also tend to be more conservative and gun shy about investing in small tech companies with a short track record, said Bowden of MindMixer.
So why stick it out here, so far from traditional startup hot spots?
The Midwest as an outpost for startups is certainly thinner. SeedTable,a website that tracks startup companies by city, lists 47 startups in Omaha, 13 in Des Moines and 26 in Kansas City. It sounds like a healthy crop, but it's far fewer than the 350 listed in Boston, or the 1,840 in San Francisco.
But Slobotstki of Silicon Prairie adds companies here enjoy more visibility than they otherwise might have in larger cities. And then there's the cost of doing business in larger urban areas.
Compared to Omaha, the cost of moving and setting up shop in Boston, New York or San Francisco is brutal. Bowden said his company MindMixer — briefly — considered a San Francisco move, but suffered some serious sticker shock.
Employment costs would have jumped up by 20-30 percent in a move from Omaha to San Francisco, he estimated. Real estate, too, would have spiked, from roughly $7 to $10 per square foot in Omaha to a range of $25 to $40 per square foot in the San Francisco area.
Sure, moving to California would have brought some intangible benefits such as access to a greater talent pool and closer proximity to more investor groups. But whatever money they raised would have flown out the door at a much faster pace, Bowden said. Coupled with the founders' desire to stay rooted in their hometown, a move just didn't make sense for MindMixer.
Slobotski said MindMixer's startup journey is a fairly typical experience. Entrepreneurs have personal ties to the area, and believe its strengths outweigh its weaknesses. Midwestern cities may have a smaller talent pool, but locals insist they have the resources needed to make startups thrive.
Omaha's tech scene, as an example, also offers fewer distractions and the ability to focus on the business. The region seems to attract more entrepreneurs and fewer hipsters dabbling as innovators. "You don't have time to focus on the hype," said Slobotski of MindMixer.
Networking Is Key
But no matter where you are, entrepreneurs and researchers said networking — not physical location — is a key part of startup success.
"If you don't have that, it becomes much more lonely and very difficult to get things started," said Heidi Neck, professor of entrepreneurial studies at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass.
Neck's recent report, "Elements of the Entrepreneur Experience" examined the experiences of startups in major tech centers as well as smaller areas such as Omaha, Providence, R.I. and the South's Gulf Coast region.
No matter where she interviewed entrepreneurs, Neck said, they reaffirmed the idea that in-person networking was essential, and not just to woo investors. Face-to-face conversations were essential to boosting their confidence as emerging entrepreneurs and the sense that they were contributing in a meaningful way to their communities.
As MindMixer's Bowden put it — revealing his Midwestern pragmatism — a good idea backed by diligent work is going to succeed, regardless of location.
South Florida counties launch MindMixer site about paved trail through Everglades
BrowardNet
Jan 25, 2013 By Staff
Miami, Florida The Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Department in partnership with the National Park Service (Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program), the Naples Pathways Coalition and multiple cities and agencies across south Florida are seeking public input to create a feasibility study and master plan for the River of Grass Greenway (ROGG)—a proposed 75-mile multi-use, non-motorized, paved pathway across the Florida Everglades, between Miami and Naples. The Greenway will provide a recreational and alternative transportation corridor for cycling, walking, wildlife viewing and experiencing the natural beauty of the Everglades like never before. A series of three five-day regional community workshops, geographically distributed at locations along the corridor, are being held to allow for broad-based citizen participation.
ROGG West
(From 6 L’s Road to S.R. 29)
January 29 – February 2
Edison State College Collier Campus
Building J – Conference Room J-103 /J-104
7007 Lely Cultural Parkway, Naples, FL 34113
ROGG Central
(From S.R. 29 to Miami-Dade County Line)
February 26 – March 2
Everglades City Hall
102 Broadway E., Everglades City, FL 34139
ROGG East
(From Collier County Line to Krome Avenue)
March 12 – March 16
Miami-Dade County-location TBA
Each five-day workshop will include a public kick-off and briefing on Tuesday from 6-8 p.m., open working sessions Wednesday and Thursday from 1-4 p.m., a closed work session for the consultant team on Friday and an open house on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be multiple opportunities for stakeholder interviews and discussions with Consultant Team and Project Team, mapping exercises and information gathering, and plan presentations.
In addition to these series of community workshops, a comprehensive community engagement website for the project, developed by MindMixer, is now available for public interaction and feedback at: www.RiverofGrassGree
This project is funded through a Paul S. Sarbanes Transit in Parks grant to the National Park Service (NPS) and is managed by Miami-Dade County Parks through a cooperative agreement with NPS.
LA turns to MindMixer to communicate with large constituency
Westwood-Century City Patch
Jan 16, 2013 By Matthew Sanderson
Los Angeles Attention truck drivers, motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians on the Westside: Los Angeles' planning and transportation departments want to know what city surface streets are your go-to for travel.
The departments' project LA2b seeks feedback in this online survey about transit upgrades to specific thoroughfares most needed over the next 25 years. The survey links to other LA2b transit-enhancement surveys for other L.A. regions, and is garnering feedback through March 30.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa introduces the project in a short video.
"We did it because we find, as a city this large, it's really challenging to get in touch with 4 million people, especially spread out over 460 plus square miles," said City Planner Claire Bowin, who's spearheading the project and its outreach. "It asks how streets should be used in L.A. - what's working and what's not."
Bowin said they are also trying traditional methods of outreach to solicit feedback, and did four thinklabs across L.A. in the spring of 2012 in the San Fernando Valley and central L.A. About 700 people turned out in total of the four meetings. The online survey, powered by MindMixer, expands to not only more geographic diversity but also age structure, Bowin said.
"We were seeing a lot of common ground that people cared about," she said.
Given L.A.'s high rate of accidents, safety is the biggest trending concern from residents about traveling city street and planning their weekly commutes.
With all the transportation projects lining up to help residents not use their car, Bowin said it's likely in 25 years, Angelenos will still be getting around by making a drive.
"One day you drive and the next day you're taking the train or bus," she said, noting that some residents do not know where to find where to get on the bus, some fearful of riding in a certain bike lane and pedestrians concerned about walking in a bike lane.
"We talked to Metro about what streets make the most sense," Bowin added. "Which streets have lay problems, which streets have a dedicated lay for transit and improve transit reliability on those streets."
Bowin hypothesized one aggressive solution would be to allow dedicated transit lanes on certain streets, or a moderate approach of offering "preboarding payment platforms" to help move buses along faster.
"Wilshire [Boulevard's] an important corridor," she said. "Does it get a bus hour-only lane during peak hours?"
Other trending feedback received by LA2b so far are making main arteries more public places, including increasing bike connectivity and developing more "parkways" and "parklets." Discouraging cut-through streets to traffic and better maintaining streets and sidewalks were also discussed.
MindMixer featured in toolkit for community change, inspired by Promised Land
Yahoo! Finance
Jan 03, 2013 By Business Wire Staff
Los Angeles Inspired by Focus Features and Participant Media's Promised Land, Participant's Social Action campaign, "Champion Community Change," propels individuals to create change in their communities through an immersive, three-stage digital program that includes a first-ever, pro-social Facebook connect experience, a TakePart series highlighting everyday changemakers and a toolkit for community action. The campaign launches tomorrow, January 4, at takepart.com/promise
In a first-ever, pro-social Facebook Connect experience, Participant Media puts individuals in the shoes of a changemaker, tracking their personal journey of identifying a local issue by leveraging social media with the help of their friends to create real change in their communities and being celebrated through hero-like coverage. TakePart's Changemakers Series highlights the stories of everyday people who are taking small steps to create big change in communities all over the country, including Mama Hill, who started a home learning center for youth living in South Central Los Angeles; Alabama Chanin, who helped to revive her small town by starting a home-sewn apparel line that attracted the attention of some of today's biggest fashion labels; Malik Yakini, who started an urban farm in Detroit when his community hit a downturn; and Ruth Lande Shuman, an architect/designer who is putting her skills to use in reimagining New York City classrooms with color. Finally, a community action toolkit provides information about and links to all of the digital platforms that exist to heighten community engagement and involvement, with versions for both citizens and elected officials.
Chad Boettcher, Participant's Executive Vice President of Social Action & Advocacy, said, "In Promised Land, the arrival of Matt Damon's salesman character in a small town dramatizes a situation taking place all over America today in which communities, facing difficult decisions, are forced to come together to collectively determine their futures.
Yet, through research we know that there's a large number of Americans who would like to participate in organized community work, but don't know how or where to start. In an independent study commissioned by TakePart, 84% of cause-interested adults said they wished they could do more, and 69% said that they wish it were easier to get involved. Our Social Action campaign is designed to give people the virtual experience of what it's like to be a community changemaker, along with the resources they need to get started in their home towns."
In assembling the various tools for the campaign, Participant has brought together a broad consortium of associates, including MindMixer, which allows citizens to provide valuable input on important community decisions; POPVOX, which enables individuals to sound off with their elected officials in Congress -- and see in real time what others in their community are saying; and All for Good, an open source search engine powered by the largest database of in-person and volunteer opportunities on the internet.
Nick Bowden, Co-Founder of MindMixer said, "MindMixer is very proud to be associated with Participant's Social Action program for Promised Land, which has organized the tools for public engagement into a user-friendly package so that anyone can take an active role."
Added Rachna Choudhry, Founder of POPVOX, "The POPVOX team is excited to be part of the Promised Land Social Action campaign. As the movie shows so effectively, a single voice can change the public discourse. POPVOX can provide citizens with the awareness of whether they've reached a critical mass on a community issue—information which can move mountains when people know they're speaking as one."
“When people are inspired to get involved – as they will be after seeing Promised Land – that first step needs to be an easy and meaningful one,” said Michelle Nunn, CEO of Points of Light, the largest organization in the world dedicated to volunteer service. “With its link to All for Good, Participant Media's terrific toolkit provides a great first step – and stop -- for people who want to build strong communities through volunteer service.”
In Promised Land, which Focus Features releases nationwide tomorrow, January 4, Matt Damon stars as Steve Butler, a corporate salesman whose journey from farm boy to big-time player takes an unexpected detour when he lands in a small town, where he grapples with a surprising array of both open hearts and closed doors. Gus Van Sant helms the film from an original screenplay written by John Krasinski & Matt Damon, from a story by Dave Eggers. Promised Land is MPAA-rated “R” (for language).
Participant Media (participantmedia.co
Focus Features and Focus Features International (focusfeatures.com) comprise a singular global company. This worldwide studio makes original and daring films that challenge the mainstream to embrace and enjoy voices and visions from around the world that deliver global commercial success. The company operates as Focus Features in North America, and as Focus Features International (FFI) in the rest of the world. Focus Features and Focus Features International are part of NBCUniversal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience. NBCUniversal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, and world-renowned theme parks. Comcast Corporation owns a controlling 51% interest in NBCUniversal, with GE holding a 49% stake.
Five issues for 2013
Huffington Post
Jan 02, 2013 By Daniel Moulthrop
During the holidays, I invariably wind up feeling far behind on every to-do list. It's all I can do to take in everybody else's end of the year sum-ups and lists. So, I wait until the day I'm back at my desk to add my two cents. Here goes, five things you should care about in 2013 (but you probably do already).
1. I was pleased to hear the news this morning that the death penalty is losing favor, even in states we think of as being devoted to capital punishment. This development seems sensible to me, but it's only recently become common sense to many. That's because states are beginning to recognize how expensive it is and what a poor deterrent it is, and that's just when the state isn't involved in executing innocent people. Despite what advocates of an eye for an eye approach argue, few people can justify the costs in government dollars and innocent lives lost. Perhaps as a nation of sensible citizens, we can all begin to look at gun violence in the same way--that our strict adherence to a specific interpretation of the second amendment isn't worth the cost. When cars were unsafe, we passed laws to protect drivers and passengers from their dangers. Now, fewer people die in car accidents. When the HIV/AIDS epidemic took hold, we rallied as a nation to find treatments and extend people's lives. If people were dying at this rate from anything we typically think of as a health issue, we'd fund research to treat it and cure it. It's not just the tragedy of Newtown. People are dying every day since from guns and people who use them. This is the moment for the right and left to rethink entrenched positions on guns and think about the safety of our children and our communities. And while you're at it, if you're on twitter, follow @gundeaths.
2. Last year at this time, I mentioned redistricting reform, and it hasn't ceased being important. On election night, I remember being really surprised when CNN made a big deal in announcing that the US House of Representatives would remain in GOP control. You're kidding. You didn't have to be Nate Silver to predict that: a year earlier, every state was busily gerrymandering safety for partisan incumbents and creating stiff competition for the opposing caucus. Of 435 races in the House, barely 25 were actually competitive. In Ohio, redistricting left a state that voted in favor of President Obama with a congressional caucus 75 percent Republican. On top of that voters rejected a redistricting reform proposal mostly, I believe, because it was poorly understood and even more poorly explained by advocates. There's still hope, however. GOP leaders, likely all too aware of how a pendulum operates, have promised to make redistricting reform part of the agenda for the obscure Constitutional Modernization Commission. A prediction: What Ohioans get out of that will be in direct proportion to the amount of attention the populace pays to it.
3. If you haven't yet read David Denby's profile of Diane Ravitch from November, it's worth your time, if only to remind you how long we've been talking about fixing public education. Over some four decades, Ravitch has been on just about every side of efforts to reform and improve public education. It struck me that while we are always trying to improve these systems in every city and hamlet throughout the nation, we're at a real inflection point right now, one that could contain the seeds of either a great rebirth of the American Public Education system or its ultimate demise in favor of private alternatives. I'm hopeful for the former, but in order for that to happen, everybody will have to get involved and move out of entrenched positions (is that my new theme here?). What happened in Chicago in 2012 was largely a failure of imagination. When administrators and teachers argue over the length of the contract day, they're not talking about the best ways to help students learn. I'm looking forward to a moment when contract negotiations are about innovation and research-based pedagogies and not about whether the school day should end at 3 or 3:15. In Cleveland, local leaders, convinced of the importance of this moment, told the new CEO he would either be the district's best leader or its last. The point is that we're all paying attention and deeply engaged. All of that attention shouldn't be squandered.
4. And speaking of engagement, our public officials are starting to get it, but I continue to wish more of them would realize how easy it has become to engage with constituents through social media. Right now, congress seems to have a pretty good track record in terms of at least establishing twitter accounts, but it all comes down to how well you use the tool. Most of those accounts, I fear, are little more than campaign tools. What we should all be demanding is that our local government entities and reps develop new habits of connecting with constituents and stakeholders about decisions of consequence. The blue ribbon panel isn't dead, and neither is the public meeting. But Facebook is already an adolescent and new tech like The Civic Commons and MindMixer are available, sometimes for free. These social technologies have the power to strengthen democracy and bring us all closer to those who represent us. It's high time we ask our governments to embrace them.
5. Finally, for almost two years, we've been watching a transformation in Arab nations in the Middle East that is by turns astonishing, disappointing, and confusing. We musn't stop paying attention. Syria's path is as unclear today as it was a year ago, but it's doubtful the current state cannot continue for much longer. Meanwhile, Egypt under Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood hasn't turned out to be what democracy looks like. As Rami Khouri of the Daily Star reminds us in a recent column, as similar as the grievances of Arab people may be from nation to nation, the Arab world is neither monoloithic nor cohesive. These new forms of citizen activism are just that--new--and contributing to inchoate democracies. We should watch, ready to help when asked.
And because you read to the end, here's a bonus.
+1. The changes, innovation and growing pains in the news industry continue to remake the media landscape. The local daily I subscribe to--The Plain Dealer--isn't expected to be a daily paper by the end of 2013. That means the biggest newspaper in Ohio will stop being the biggest newspaper in Ohio. There's a major opportunity for someone.
City of Monrovia goes high-tech
GovTech
Dec 19, 2012 By Sarah Rich
Monrovia, California For a city faced with budget cuts, like most across the nation, Monrovia, Calif., decided to become more inventive when soliciting feedback from the community on how to improve the city.
Since 2008, Monrovia has seen a 17 percent reduction in staffing positions and $2 million in cuts to some of the city’s key programs. Despite this, the city is working to develop a communitywide strategic plan to help decide the most important items for the city to focus on over the next five years.
“That will establish our strategic actions and prioritize our goals for the next several years,” said Monrovia City Manager Laurie Lile. “The city of Monrovia, like most cities in California, has had to reduce revenue for about the past five years, and we’re at a point where we need to be more focused and thoughtful about the services we provide and the programs we undertake.”
To help carry out Monrovia’s strategic plan, the city is utilizing both low- and high-tech solutions for collecting feedback from its residents. Lile said that through a combination of a crowdsourcing website, workshops, phone calls and questionnaires in residents' water bills, the city is compiling the feedback it needs to make improvements down the road.
Lile said one strategy for hearing back from citizens was to deploy "Plan Monrovia," a crowdsourcing website hosted on a website called MindMixer that serves as a virtual town hall for cities.
"It's inevitable that cities will regularly use the Internet to solicit feedback from citizens about all kinds of issues in the near future," said Jed Sundwall, president of Measured Voice, an Internet communications consultancy for the public and private sectors. "The trick is creating systems that are easy to use and help citizens realize that they can have a real impact on their community over the long term."
According to MindMixer, ideas submitted to the website receive feedback from those in the online community, who also can “second” ideas that they particularly like. MindMixer websites have been deployed across the U.S. in cities such as Greensboro, N.C.; Lubbock, Texas; and Kansas City, Mo.; with more than 25,000 ideas submitted.
Plan Monrovia was launched on MindMixer in November, and already 38 ideas have been submitted. One idea, submitted on Nov. 27 by “Ron H” suggests that Monrovia should provide food and water for bears.
“… My idea is probably controversial, but I hope it, or a variation of it, will be considered,” Ron H posted on MindMixer. “A location in the mountains, accessible using one of the fire roads, could be used to provide food and water for the bears. This should keep them in the mountains and out of the local neighborhoods …”
Other ideas on Plan Monrovia suggest addressing the city’s depreciated infrastructure, improving city parks and creating a volunteer liaison between schools and businesses.
By mid-January of 2013, Lile said the ideas submitted from MindMixer, the workshops and the other input will be brought to the City Council to determine the top priorities for improving the city.
“All of the ideas and community voices expressed go into how the City Council makes decisions about programs and services in our upcoming 2013-2015 budget,” Monrovia Mayor Mary Ann Lutz said in a statement.
MindMixer, other Omaha startups team up to help shelter
Silicon Prairie News
Dec 13, 2012 By Danny Schreiber
Omaha, Nebraska About five blocks from The Mastercraft, a building that houses more than a half-dozen Omaha startups, sits the Siena/Francis House, Nebraska's largest homeless shelter.
In an effort to lend a hand to their neighbor, several companies based in The Mastercraft – and a handful of companies located elsewhere – are aiming to raise $2,000 for the shelter. They're calling the fundraiser Startups for Siena.
"Organizers wanted to pool resources and do something nice this holiday season, and Startups for Siena was an obvious choice," Pat Lazure, an entrepreneur involved in the effort, said in an email interview. In addition to raising money, Lazure said, the effort seeks to raise awareness for the Siena/Francis House, which provided meals and overnight shelter to more than 4,000 homeless men, women and children in 2011.
Silicon Prairie News has contributed, along with companies that include Flywheel, MindMixer and PeggyBank. The group also invites non-startups to participate as well.
To learn more about Startups for Sienna or contribute, visit http://causes.com.
Social media will only get bigger in 2013
Inc. Magazine
Dec 12, 2012 By Adam Bluestein
Burlington, Vermont Facebook just hit 1 billion users. Brace yourself for the backlash.
Remember everything you've learned about the power of Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media sites to promote your business? It remains true, with one caveat: In 2013, expect to see a backlash to the sheer massiveness of these sites--as well as the emergence of smaller-scale, niche networks. "In 2013, we'll see more users start to expect, if not demand, some tangible benefits in exchange for all the time they spend online and the personal information they're sharing," says Trendwatching.com's David Mattin.
Adds Howard Tullman, CEO of Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, partner at Chicago High Tech Investors, and columnist for Inc.com: "Consumers are starting to understand the value of their information and asking to be compensated, whether with badges, rewards, preferred pricing, or discounts and perks." Tullman's prediction for 2013: "We'll increasingly see new kinds of virtual currencies and services--like Ticketmaster's Facebook app that lets you see where your friends are sitting at an event."
At the same time, the sheer massiveness of Facebook is creating opportunities for smaller-scale, niche networks. People aren't likely to flee Facebook outright, Tullman says, but they will increasingly augment their online social experience by using other networks whose size, privacy, and more customized parameters are better suited to specific tasks and goals.
Some good examples are Path, a free personal-social-netw
The emergence of more and varied social networks will present a challenge to businesses accustomed to Facebook and Twitter. For one thing, many people use such networks specifically to avoid the increasingly commercial aspects of Facebook; in that case, you would be smart to start by limiting your presence to participation and listening, rather than selling. Eventually, however, smaller networks could become effective ways to reach specific geographic areas or professional groups, or build communities around a brand. The goal here, says Tullman, is less to attract new customers than to build deeper, longer-lasting, and more lucrative relationships with the ones you have. When you have that, word of mouth will naturally bring in the new business.
MindMixer poll results lead to action by Denton City Council
Denton Record-Chronicle
Dec 05, 2012 By Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe
Denton, Texas The city of Denton polled users of its new website, Engage Denton, on a proposed smoking ban in the city back in January, February and March. A wide majority of the site’s users (60 percent to nearly 80 percent, depending on how the data is grouped) favored such a ban.
The company that powers the website, Mind Mixer, took the data and created some graphics for the city. The council’s new committee on citizen engagement looked at the charts yesterday, the task force studying the measure saw the tables last week.
The council is expected to take up the matter during its regular meeting next week.
Civic startups like MindMixer make 2012 Top Ten for GovLoop president
GovTech
Nov 28, 2012 By Steve Ressler
Washington Every year, the pandemonium begins now around Oprah’s favorite things.
I’m no Oprah, but I thought I would take the time to reflect on my favorite government things from 2012.
There’s no TV launch party, so let’s just jump into my list:
1. Tablets as Input Devices. I love the idea of using tablets as a way for government employees in the field to collect information. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ran a pilot using tablets to make inspection reporting easier and quicker. Instead of employees manually taking notes and inputting them once they get back into the office, they can pretty much complete the report by the time they leave the inspection site.
2. Clipperz. Do you always forget your passwords? Do you feel uncomfortable sharing passwords across your team (but waste time when you don’t)? This year, I’ve moved to using Clipperz to manage my personal and team passwords — all you need to remember is one password and then it has direct logins.
3. Government-Focused TED Talks. I love TED Talks, and I was so excited this year that there were three government-focused TED talks from Clay Shirky (author), Beth Noveck (former White House deputy CTO), and Jennifer Pahlka (Code for America). The more attention paid to solving government problems, the better.
4 . Responsive Design. Government information should fit every screen — mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop. That’s why it’s great to see the push toward responsive design where content automatically adjusts to the screen — MorrisHumanServices.
5. Civic Accelerator. I’m excited about the Code for America Accelerator program for civic startups, especially its focus on sustainability. While hackathons are great, we need more individuals focused on building great innovative companies for government services such as accelerator companies like MindMixer and Measured Voice. This is a start.
6. BYOD. Bring your own device became a huge trend in 2012. At the most basic level, I love the push to make sure our enterprise technology can match what we have at home. And, if it’s not, let’s just bring it in and secure it.
7. Unique Mobile Services. My favorite mobile projects in 2012 are not just bringing Web content to mobile, but also delivering unique services that people only can do with mobile devices. I love Textizen where you text in survey responses while in public areas and the Chicago Transit Authority’s Bus Tracker that uses texts to get estimated arrival times for buses.
8. Census. I’m a sucker for census data, so it was great to see the U.S. Census Bureau launch a mobile app that provides updated economic indicators. The bureau also launched an awesome application programming interface that brings this data, which has been widely used by academics for decades, into the hands of developers.
9. HootSuite. Social media studies found that the best time to post on Facebook is between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m., yet most government employees aren’t working then. But there’s a solution — I love using HootSuite to manage my social media accounts and automate my posting times.
10. Rethinking Forms. We still spend too much time with hard-copy forms, signing and sending scanned PDFs. That’s why I’m a fan of the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows MyGov project that tackled online form submissions as well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s e-NEPA, an online system for users to electronically submit environmental impact statements versus hard copies.
Unfortunately, there’s no studio audience so I can’t give all of you my favorite things like Oprah. But I encourage you to check out my favorite things and share yours on Govtech.com.
Code For America reinvents government one step at a time
ReadWrite
Nov 05, 2012 By Michael Tchong
San Francisco, California The U.S. public sector employs some 21 million people, the vast majority at state and local governments. That makes the public sector ripe for innovation and reinvention, a task being tackled head-on by Code for America, a San Francisco-based incubator that aims to help “government work better for everyone.”
Startups Attacking A Giant Market
Last week, I attended a Code for America demo day where seven startups, billed as the “inaugural class of the first-ever civic startup accelerator,” showed off their wares. The Code for America accelerator program hopes to disrupt the $170 billion government IT market, while providing new and improved services to U.S. citizens.
One of the startups, MindMixer, had already shown up on my radar. MindMixer helps local government and civic entities create instant online communities. The company has so far set up more than 250 organizations around the country.
MindMixer helps organizations collect ideas and perspectives and lets visitors vote on them, much the same way that I’m using Spigit to ideate solutions for America. One MindMixer community is ImproveSF, which is working to create a better San Francisco. Its “Design a New Library Card” challenge racked up 14,529 interactions.
Handwriting To Digital Isn't Easy
Another startup that drew much attention is Berkeley, Calif.-based Captricity. Co-Founder Kuang Chen reiterated how difficult it was to transform handwritten or other paper-based data into digital form.
Captricity uses real people for data entry but you do need either have a scanner or camera to upload text originals to the Web. The company currently has an offer you can’t refuse: the first 25 pages for new customers are digitized for free. It’s $0.20 per page after that.
As Code for America Director of Strategy and Communications Abhi Nemani tells me, “Captricity is one of the clearly compelling startups, it’s a problem we can all relate to.” The company already has received investments from Mitch Kapor’s Kapor Capital and others.
Social media startups were well represented by Measured Voice and Revelstone, both promising to improve civic engagement supported by analytics to track social engagement.
The Start Of Something Bigger?
Three other startups, Aunt Bertha, LeanSprout and Recovers are described on Code America’s site. As Nemani says, “This is the first accelerator class. The whole ecosystem needs to be built up, but this is the start of something bigger.”
I agree. Code for America has definitely struck the right tech chord. If you need more persuasive evidence that America needs to innovate, please see Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers General Partner Mary Meeker’s presentation “USA, Inc.” Key Points, which brilliantly articulates trends we should all be familiar with.
Code on.
MindMixer praised as leader in Omaha's tech scene
The Atlantic Cities
Nov 01, 2012 By Anna Spinner
New York City San Francisco, Boulder, Boston, Austin are all well-known start-up hubs. Why shouldn’t Omaha, Nebraska, be on that list?
That’s the question that nagged Jeff Slobotski, an Omaha native who spent years working in a sales position that brought him to these hubs across the country. He was always impressed by the concentration and recognition of creativity and talent in these other towns. "I get back home and I realized, well wait a minute we have those individuals here," Slobotski says. "But nobody was really telling their story."
Not even the entrepreneurs themselves, who might have venture capital-backed software development companies or successful web design firms working for global brands.
"Lots of people here are just super humble, heads-down working on their own projects," he says. "[But] there’s this balance of being prideful and just being proud of what we’re doing."
While all this single-minded determination may be a good work ethic, it’s bad for building the business community Slobotski wanted to foster. So he teamed up with Dusty Davidson, a friend who co-founded a tech start-up, to blog about the entrepreneurs, creative talents, and investors they could find around Omaha. They named their blog — somewhat optimistically — Silicon Prairie News.
"I felt like we kind of mapped who was in the scene or the space," Slobotski says, noting that one connection always helped uncover another. "I knew there was some sort of entrepreneurial or creative community, but I didn’t realize the depths."
The website consumed Slobotski and Davidson, but it also filled a niche in the community. What started as a hobby in 2008 quickly grew into a full-time job. The initial blog about a few local talents became a full-fledged news and networking organization for entrepreneurs in the region. Within months, Silicon Prairie News began organizing small meet-ups, then larger ones. Then covering other cities. Today, the website has staff in three states writing about entrepreneurs and investors throughout the region, hosts conferences, and works to build community. The company also hosts job fairs and awards ceremonies. The website that saw 40,000 visitors in its first year got 600,000 last year.
The site met an untapped need: entrepreneurs craved community to collaborate, share ideas, and build business. But in a town and region where self-promotion was rare and often read as brash, nobody was championing their projects.
"We often say our job at Silicon Prairie News is to shout from the rooftops about what people are working on because of their modesty," Davidson says. "We spend a lot of time trying to tell people it’s not a bad thing or an immodest thing to talk about what you’re working on."
While Omaha natives struggle to talk about themselves and nobody does their own so-called elevator pitch, everyone seems enthusiastic about promoting each other. As local venture capitalist Mark Hasebroock puts it, if someone asks directly about a person's business, they will just as often deflect the question and talk about someone else's successes.
"It’s just, 'How you guys doing?' 'Oh I’m fine but boy how about ABC company. Those guys are just knocking it out!' " Hasebroock says.
While this may seem counter-intuitive, praising others is actually one of the behaviors common to the most innovative cultures, says professor Jack McGourty, the director of global and community entrepreneurship at the Columbia Business School. "It’s not just that you come up with new ideas but that you’re willing to advocate for the ideas of others," he says. "You become almost like a selfless champion. And when you see really innovative places, you see that behavior."
And that’s what’s happened in Omaha and the surrounding region: greater connectivity is helping entrepreneurs overcome their reticence at self-promotion, and helping them work together and promote each other. While the connections start with Silicon Prairie News, they also go further.
Take MindMixer, the interactive software platform developed by a couple of Omaha natives, which found the funding it needed by tapping into connections through Silicon Prairie News. In 2010, the blog highlighted Nick Bowden, the chief engagement officer and co-founder of MindMixer. Months before, the website had profiled a then-new venture capitalist, Hasebroock.
When Bowden was looking for funding, he knew to call Hasebroock, who already knew about Bowden and MindMixer. The two got together. Hasebroock’s firm, Dundee Venture Capital, helped raise $2.2 million for the company and Hasebroock became a co-founder. The software, an online civic engagement platform, is profitable as of March 2012, and is now used by more than 275 organizations, including the city governments of San Francisco and Omaha, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, and the Republican National Committee.
While Bowden recognizes — and praises — the role Slobotski and Silicon Prairie News played in helping build his success, he also believes his success stems from a larger community of mutual support and promotion beyond the news website. And that community is part of what led him and his co-founders to decide to keep their company based in Omaha, rather than relocate their headquarters to a more established hub where capital flows more freely and there is a broader talent pool.
"I think there’s a collective 'We' about building the community here and feeling like you’re part of something that’s a little bigger than you but its early enough that you can have a tangible impact," he says.
MindMixer is one of three companies making politics cool again
Entrepreneur.com
Aug 22, 2012 By Jennifer Wang
Irvine, California On occasion, we are reminded that politics can be cool--take, for example, MTV's Rock the Vote campaign. But these days, cool is about more than the youth vote--it's about technology. At this year's South by Southwest (SXSW) conference, Al Gore and Sean Parker took to the stage to discuss how the internet is at long last having a quantifiable impact on the political process. Parker even referred to this year's web-driven mass protests of the controversial SOPA and PIPA internet piracy acts as the "Nerd Spring."
"Politics has lagged because it was all about door-knocking and handshaking, but lawn signs and bumper stickers won't do it anymore," says Lou Aronson, founder and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based mobile polling and social networking company Votifi. "And the sooner we start recognizing the power of data, the faster we can unlock our potential as a nation." Here's a look at what he and some fellow high-tech political junkies are up to.
Votifi
In the fall of 2008, presidential campaigns--and the accompanying robo-dials to land lines--were in full swing. Aronson, a lawyer and longtime political activist, realized that many mobile-savvy voters were avoiding those calls. Last year he launched Votifi, which uses a peer-to-peer network and surveys delivered via e-mail to raise political awareness by uniting people through issues they care about.
Problem: Believe it or not, nearly as many people cast votes for the American Idol finals in May as voted in the 2008 presidential election. How can social media and polling be used to get disenfranchised citizens--especially
Solution: Make it personal, and make it digital. Votifi users create online profiles by answering multiple-choice questions on issues ranging from food to foreign politics. They can then build out a network to discuss issues with like-minded voters--or debate those with opposing viewpoints. For campaigns and organizations, Votifi surveys offer a glimpse into users' political identities over time, offering far greater detail than a simple split down party lines. The surveys can be answered through a browser or mobile app, which appeals to groups difficult to reach on land lines.
Early success: Votifi has sent out roughly 1.8 million e-mail surveys and gotten a 65 percent completion rate. (Old-school robo-dials had an average 3 percent response rate.) The company, which has 5,600 members, claimed a finalist spot at the 2012 SXSW accelerator competition and completed major research campaigns for organizations like the 2012 Charlotte Democratic Convention.
MindMixer
Tired of planning public local-government meetings attended solely by NIMBY windbags, Nick Bowden parlayed his experience as an urban-planning consultant into MindMixer, an incentivized online platform that aims to increase engagement in local and city politics.
Problem: Civic leaders do not engage effectively with young voters, who demonstrate little interest in local issues. Community-minded citizens face bureaucracy and delays when attempting to deal with local governments.
Solution: Focus on the people. MindMixer is a convenient forum for citizens to contribute ideas about what they want and need in their communities. Users sign up--crucially, with their real names--pick personal interests and locations, then can raise issues on the forum or respond to posts by elected officials, city departments and school districts. The best ideas earn points when they are "seconded"; these can be redeemed for prizes like lunch with the mayor of San Francisco or a birthday party at the local fire station. Civic leaders and organizations, meanwhile, get inside information to make more informed decisions. Everybody wins.
In a typical scenario, an Omaha, Neb., citizen noticed that a crosswalk needed repainting. Rather than having to research which city department was responsible, submitting a request and hoping to get a response, he raised the issue on MindMixer. The post was pushed directly to the public works department, an employee followed up, and within two weeks the job was done.
Early success: In just 15 months, the 17-person company has landed $2.2 million in funding and more than 200 clients, including the city of Los Angeles and the Republican National Committee.
VoterTide
Jimmy Winter went to SXSW 2009 to promote his music company. But the social media analytics engine he'd built as a weekend side project got all the attention. In November 2011, he and Shannon Schlappi co-founded VoterTide, which uses the technology to help campaigns figure out who is talking about them and why.
Problem: How can campaigns harness the endless amounts of data, news and opinions available on the web and use it to their advantage?
Solution: Pinpoint the relevant stuff--in real time. Working on behalf of campaigns, advocacy groups, lobbying firms, news outlets and "anyone else with an interest in social data," VoterTide mines Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, blogs and news sites and displays top tweets and phrases, videos and other social media mentions of politicians and advocacy groups. A real-time "alert" function notifies a user when there's a noticeable spike in mentions, giving campaigns more time to strategize.
Early success: VoterTide users following Newt Gingrich knew he was dropping out of the Republican presidential primary five minutes before The Washington Post broke the news. The Omaha, Neb., company has scored $500,000 in funding, gained a partner in tech veteran Gordon Whitten and has 12 employees, including a seasoned hire who worked for the George W. Bush and John McCain presidential campaigns.
MindMixer launches RNC site, continues to expand client base
Silicon Prairie News
Jul 20, 2012 By Michael Stacy
Omaha, Nebraska With November elections fewer than four months away and the Democratic and Republican conventions less than two months out, political conversation in the United States is beginning to reach a fever pitch. And as of this week, one Omaha startup's platform is being used to help bring more order to some of that conversation.
The Republican National Committee on Thursday went live with GOPPlatform2012.com,
So says the site's header:
The GOP wants to know how you feel about important policy issues. We hope you will use this site to share ideas you support, propose ideas and supply constructive feedback.
It's the second political entity that has enlisted MindMixer's services, following the July 2011 launch of "Lee Listens," a U.S. Rep. Lee Terry, a Republican from Nebraska's second district.
Most importantly, the RNC relationship is illustrative of the continued expansion of MindMixer's client base. When MindMixer raised $300,000 from Dundee Venture Capital In February 2011, the startup had fewer than 10 clients. Today, the company boasts more than 200 clients, including cities, school districts, universities, companies and those political entities.
Regarding those political clients, MindMixer co-founder and CEO Nick Bowden (left) said in an interview last month that his company is apolitical, "kind of (like) Switzerland."
"Our mission is to build better communities," Bowden said. "It's not to build Republican communities or Democratic communities. It's to build more informed citizens, electorate, parents."
Cities still remain MindMixer's bread and butter, accounting for about 180 of its clients. This spring, MindMixer finalized an agreement with its first community outside of the United States, bringing the Spanish city of Sant Cugat into the fold. Bowden said legal and regulatory issues can make working with international clients a challenge but that MindMixer continues to field other inquiries from cities overseas.
"I don't think it's necessarily a huge focus area," he said. "But if things come in, we’re certainly willing to entertain those."
One area that Bowden said will receive considerable emphasis is school districts. "From a business standpoint, there's a need for it in school districts," he said. "They face many of the same challenges as cities do."
What's more, MindMixer has found in its work with suburban Omaha's Millard School District that school district site's users — that is, parents — are more actively engaged than users of other MindMixer sites and produce high-quality ideas and feedback.
"That has been a focus area for us," he said, "largely because people care about their kids, and so participation is significantly different."
To support the expansion of its client base and help ensure continued growth, MindMixer now has 22 employees. That includes 16 in an Omaha office that, Bowden says with a look around the space, is starting to feel a bit cramped.
Of course, a startup could have worse problems.
Bowden said MindMixer officially became profitable in March, just before the April announcement of $1.9 million in funding, again led by Dundee VC. Those funds, he said, will be used in part to aggressively increase MindMixer's collection of clients.
"We've actually gotten to the point where we're profitable," Bowden said. "So the funding really for us is about how do you go from 200 to 1,000, not how do you incrementally go from 200 to 300. So it's deploying capital kind of strategically towards new market growth.
Five startups to watch
Entrepreneur.com
Jul 20, 2012 By Antonio Neves
Omaha, Nebraska With Instagram being acquired by Facebook for a whopping billion dollars, the sky seems to be the limit for startups in 2012. So which rising business could be the next big thing?
Here are five companies -- all enjoying ample media and investor attention -- that are on the verge of startup success.
Viddy
With 26 million registered users, and more than 500,000 new ones being added daily, Viddy is hardly struggling for attention. That's why this Los Angeles-based startup seems prime for an acquisition.
The Viddy iPhone app allows users to capture, "beautify" and share video content in 15-second "moments" that users can follow in a Twitter-style feed.
"We've built a community unlike any other, with passionate ‘Viddyographers' that are engaged with us and each other," said CEO and co-founder Brett O'Brien. "People sign up with Viddy and they stay."
Also sticking around are top venture capitalists and celebrity backers like Grammy Award-winner Shakira, Roc Nation (founded by Jay-Z) and Overbrook Entertainment (founded by Will Smith), as reported in The New York Times.
Moving forward, Viddy "will definitely look at moving onto other platforms" beyond the iPhone and continue to develop new features and filters, said O'Brien.
Tikly
Built from an artist and venue-owner perspective, Des Moines, Iowa-based Tikly is challenging the traditional ticket-selling model established by the likes of Ticketmaster.
The ticketing platform creates a "direct to fan" experience and offers open revenue streams that place the power back into the hands of venues, bands and event organizers.
"Our fees are low and respectful," said CEO Emma Peterson, who previously has toured nationally with major bands. "We believe the artists' do-it-yourself culture will continue to emerge, and utilities like Tikly will make them very happy."
Tikly is the first and only ticketing company to fully integrate with startup darling Dwolla -- a PayPal competitor -- as a payment option at checkout. After bootstrapping its first year, Tikly has begun the process of bringing in its first round of outside investors.
Kickboard
Built by teachers, New Orleans-based Kickboard helps educators efficiently capture, analyze and share student academic and behavioral data for increased student performance.
"There are a lot of companies that make software for classroom management, measuring academic progress and maintaining relationships with parents," said marketing head and former teacher Stew Stout. "What makes Kickboard unique is that it does all three."
One of Kickboard's biggest goals is to help create a culture of analytical teaching. What started with a three-school beta test in 2009 has now spread to more than 70 schools and teacher preparation organizations.
After raising an angel round of funding in 2011, Kickboard is currently focused on accelerating its customer acquisition and providing continuous improvements to its product.
HootSuite
"Social media has gone from dorm room to boardroom pretty much overnight," said HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes. "But the tools to manage it have lagged behind."
That's where HootSuite, a social media dashboard that manages and measures social networks, comes in. HootSuite users all have one thing in common: "Wanting to get the most value out of social media in real time," Holmes said.
HootSuite has grabbed massive market share using a "freemium" business model. While it offers a free product, the most active users -- particularly large companies -- end up upgrading to more powerful tools and becoming paying customers. Seventy-nine Fortune 100 companies use HootSuite.
In 2011, HootSuite brought in $11 million in revenue, and since 2009, the company has regularly acquired funding. In March, it secured an additional $20 million through a secondary venture capital transaction. Efforts now focus on building industrial-grade tools for managing social media in a range of workplace environments, from small businesses to large enterprises.
MindMixer
This "virtual town hall" is dedicated to municipal and government projects. MindMixer, an Omaha, Nebraska-based company, has a mission to build stronger communities by promoting action.
Founded by former urban planners, the MindMixer platform has attracted more than 20,000 registered users nationwide by creating opportunities for people to take ownership of projects in their respective communities.
"Our mission isn't to use technology [just] to create efficiencies in governments, education and business," said CEO Nick Bowden. "Our background gives us the ability to build and deploy our technology through a lens of community building, not [just] technological efficiency."
MindMixer recently closed out a Series A round of funding that raised $1.9 million, which comes on the heels of an earlier seed round from last year. With its infusion of capital, the company plans to double down on efforts to link communities together across the U.S.
MindMixer raises $1.9M for virtual town halls, launches ImproveSF website
TechCrunch
Apr 04, 2012 By Anthony Ha
San Francisco, California If you live in San Francisco, you probably spend a lot of time complaining about the lackluster public transportation. I’m no exception — so today, I was really excited to see a new government website called ImproveSF, where residents can submit and vote on suggestions about how to make Muni better, faster, and more reliable.
Not surprisingly, there’s a cool startup behind the effort. It’s called MindMixer, and it just announced that it raised a $1.9 million seed round from Dundee Venture Capital.
CEO Nick Bowden says that he and his co-founder Nathan Preheim both come from an urban planning background. The idea came from their experiences holding public meetings that no one would attend. The Web seemed like an obvious way to solve that problem, but when they explored existing services for crowdsourcing ideas, but Bowden says none had the “nuance” that was needed.
“Most of those products are idea-oriented — they solicit ideas,” Bowden says. “But in a government or city process, ideas are like the first element of decision-making.”
In other words, it’s not just about submitting and voting on ideas, but also channeling those ideas into specific strategies that are affordable on a government budget. So they created MindMixer to manage that process, keeping citizens involved every step of the way.
MindMixer now claims to work with more than 125 government organizations, including the City of Los Angeles, the National Park Service, and yes, the City of San Francisco. In San Francisco, the Muni survey is just the beginning — the city plans to post a new challenge every month asking for new ideas and offering rewards to participants.
The company is starting to expand beyond the initial model, Bowden adds, by serving some schools and enterprise companies. Moving forward, he wants to add tools that allow citizens to become more involved in making the plans a reality, for example by crowdfunding a project or volunteering.
Social media to the rescue
AIArchitect
Dec 02, 2011 By Mike Singer
Tuscaloosa, Alabama Andy Grace, a documentary filmmaker who teaches at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, lives two blocks from the path of the deadly April 27 tornado that sliced through his city, killing 46 and destroying nearly 5,000 homes. His home was spared.
Following the storm, Grace and hundreds of his fellow citizens in the town of 83,000 went online to the social media website Tuscaloosa Forward to share their ideas and visions for rebuilding. In less than six weeks, more than 4,000 visitors provided more than 300 ideas in over 8,600 separate site visits. Grace, a leader of the local community garden and produce nonprofit Druid City Garden Project, suggested an urban farm. Other residents suggested increasing biking and walking trails, adopting clean-energy solutions, and repurposing existing buildings. Citizens commented on and rated dozens of similar suggestions, creating a level of public involvement and dialogue that far exceeded what would have been possible through traditional town hall meetings alone.
“There’s something very harried about disasters—you need to talk to lots of people quickly due to trauma and displacement,” says Stephen Hardy, director of planning at BNIM, the architecture firm commissioned to develop a post-tornado rebuilding proposal for Tuscaloosa in only six weeks. “I know of no other mechanism than this new online technology that lets you get so much wide participation in so short a period of time.”
Increasing input and lowering barriers
Online input into Tuscaloosa Forward is grouped by key themes, including housing, neighborhoods, economic development, infrastructure, and sustainability. Big ideas that have gained critical mass include the development of a greenway that runs throughout the city along the path of the storm, affordable and mixed-income housing within connected and preserved neighborhoods, and new village centers with more walking and bike trails.
Design concepts endorsed by the online community gave BNIM, the Kansas City–based AIA 2011 Architecture Firm Award recipient, enough confidence to include them in its master plan. All the online commentary appears as a 600-page appendix to the master plan presented on Aug. 30 to the Tuscaloosa City Council, which unanimously adopted it at its Sept. 7 meeting. The city is now working with the community on detailed plans for the public infrastructure identified in the plan.
“With online participation, we not only captured ideas and organized them around themes, we actually used the online words of city residents to help write the plan,” Hardy says. “And the thing that most surprised me was how the online tools actually improved attendance at the in-person community meetings.”
MindMixer, a 17-month old company based in Omaha, Neb., developed the technology behind the Tuscaloosa website. It now has 40 similar projects nationally, including online town hall meetings for disaster recovery efforts in tornado-ravaged Joplin, Mo. MindMixer’s goal? To increase the amount of community input in the civic-planning process and decrease the costs and barriers to incorporating those ideas. One of those obstacles are the assumptions about who is and who isn’t a social media user. “The perception is we get a lot of 20-to-30 year-olds, yet the demographic across all 40 sites we have developed shows an average age of 49,” says Nick Bowden, cofounder and CEO of MindMixer. “Participants across all the sites we have developed have ranged from 14 to 97.”
Where broadband Internet isn’t readily available, MindMixer offers call-in options as a way to allow all residents to participate. When calling or logging in online, participants provide a level of personal information (age, e-mail, zip code, gender) that ensures authenticity and allows for meaningful aggregated data sorts. Google Translator is now used in new MindMixer sites as a way to accommodate more non-English speakers.
“I held some concerns in a rural state like Alabama, with many older residents, that people wouldn’t go online unless you already participated in social media,” says Grace, a six-year resident of Tuscaloosa. “But the wide amount of participation showed how interested people are in improving the community.”
Own the debate
But while online media can help form and unite communities, they can also create rifts. After an outpouring of positive public empowerment at the beginning of Tuscaloosa’s planning process, tensions have risen. Key business and property owners have spoken out against the proposed plan in recent city council meetings. Some have claimed that plans for sustainable development will come at the cost of private property rights.
For some, time spent dreaming up nontraditional redevelopment plans online is an excuse for more delays and continued loss of business. “People do not understand what the city's direction is,” says Tuscaloosa developer Stan Pate, who owns multiple buildings within the tornado-affected zone. “Dreams are free, but we're sitting out there watching time pass, and it's costing us money.”
This classic tension between rebuilding after a disaster as quickly and simply as possible, and using the opportunity to envision a better and stronger (and possibly very different) community, isn’t lessened by social media tools. However, social media does force this natural conflict to play out much more transparently, allowing more people on each side to take ownership of the debate. In urban planning, where disassociation with one’s built environment is an unparalleled killer of communities on par with any natural disaster, community ownership of whatever is rebuilt is a raw necessity.
A new kind of ROI: Using social media to identify, win and execute city planning projects
BNIM
Sep 21, 2011 By Erin Gehle
Kansas City, Missouri When it was time to get down to business, it only seemed appropriate to turn again to social media to create the same rapid-fire interaction and response that would be needed to create community engagement at all levels. It was critical to gather input from the full community. At the beginning of the project, Bob Berkebile told the Tuscaloosa City Council that the process for constructing a plan to rebuild Tuscaloosa will require a “full, robust community dialogue. Allowing the whole community to be a part of the dialogue will contribute greatly to your success.”
Mindmixer, a crowdsourcing tool for community planning, was a logical fit to create an interactive environment for feedback and, ultimately, success. BNIM had previously teamed with Mindmixer on the Fargo Comprehensive Plan, Nashville Recovery Plan, and Kansas City Area Plans work, so the planning team knew what to expect and how to launch the site effectively.
MindMixer acts as a virtual town hall, allowing community conversations about the vision for the city to happen online 24 hours a day. At the onset, BNIM’s planning team identified themes that are common to livable and vibrant cities. These included infrastructure, housing and neighborhoods, sustainability, vision, economic development, streamline processes, partnerships and collaborations — and more.
When you visit the homepage of Tuscaloosa’s MindMixer site you are greeted with a message, “Welcome to the Tuscaloosa Forward MindMixer. Think of this site as an online town hall meeting. We're looking for practical, creative and resourceful ideas that will help rebuild this community”, along with a list of topics that are open for discussion.
The topics become portals to facilitate meaningful dialogue and input on topics that are valuable to each resident. As these ideas build on each other, they become cornerstones of the draft community plan. The first draft plan heavily quoted over 50 of the best ideas from the site and used the community’s exact words to support the many strategies being promoted in the plan. Not only did this make a direct connection from community participation to actual endorsed recommendations, it happened at a pace that built trust and transparency in the planning process.
The Tuscaloosa MindMixer site got an amazing response:
9,426 visits
74,562 pageviews
6:10 average time on site
275 original ideas
Online community collaboration tool brings town hall meetings into the 21st century
This Big City
Sep 06, 2011 By Joe Peach and Kasey Klimes
Omaha, Nebraska Town Hall meetings are a nice idea. Invite the community to share their opinions, and hopefully improve the local area based on their suggestions. Unfortunately, status and who-can-shout-the-lo
Enter MindMixer – a new organisation based in Omaha, Nebraska. Founded by a small team of urban planners that saw major problems with traditional town hall and charrette models, MindMixer.com allows users to submit ideas within a series of given topics like Transportation, Public Safety, or Community Vision. This idea then remains open for ‘support’ (think Facebook’s ‘like’ button for urban design) and feedback, with the comment system allowing for collaborative refining of ideas.
In order to incentivise users, MindMixer rewards points for submitting ideas, commenting, and receiving supports. Those with the most points score small civic rewards like bus passes, and ideas created within MindMixer that end up being implemented in the real city are proudly displayed.
MindMixer is currently partnered with Omaha, Burbank, Joplin, Tuscaloosa and Kansas City, with future US launches planned (and clear potential for global expansion). Hundreds of ideas have been submitted within MindMixer, including innovative public space concepts, enhancements to transportation networks, and creative new housing policies. The tool has also proven to be a particularly adept model in the disaster recovery efforts of Nashville, Tuscaloosa, and Joplin, in the aftermath of floods and tornados. And the city of Omaha recently made major adjustments to their city budget based on input from MindMixer – the first time in history an online civic engagement platform has been used to create a city budget.
For a web tool only a year old, MindMixer has seen some pretty impressive success stories. As the service expands across the US it will be interesting to see whether the traditional pitfalls of town hall meeting creep into the process. If not, MindMixer is an exciting service to keep an eye on, with a lot of potential for positive community engagement.
With 'Lee Listens' launch, MindMixer debuts first legislator-specific site
Silicon Prairie News
Jul 22, 2011 By Michael Stacy
Omaha, Nebraska The expansion that the MindMixer team hinted was imminent when we checked in with them last month became official today, as U.S. Rep. Lee Terry, a Republican from Nebraska's second district, announced the launch of the website Lee Listens in collaboration with MindMixer.
Terry is the first legislator to have an individual page powered by MindMixer, an Omaha-based company that creates and manages virtual town halls. Until now, MindMixer has worked with cities and special causes, but the move to legislator-specific pages was always part of the company's plan, according to co-founder and CEO Nick Bowden.
"MindMixer was designed to be a way for elected officials to better connect, listen, and communicate with their constituents," said Bowden (left, photo from mindmixer.com), "so this new market is really an extension of that vision."
Terry's site has the same basic features and functionality as MindMixer's city- and cause-centric sites, but with different topics for discussion. Bowden said Terry's office expressed excitement over the site's ability to help the congressman communicate with his constituents in a town hall setting despite the physical distance separating them.
"Federal legislators have a unique challenge connecting with folks locally given they spend a significant amount of time in Washington," Bowden said, "so having an 'always-on' option for people to suggest ideas about improving our district and our country is something he is particularly anxious to explore."
Bowden said that Terry is the only legislator utilizing a web-based feedback platform like MindMixer. Currently, Bowden said, telephone town halls are the most common form of interaction between legislators and their constituents.
"I believe three years ago, only a handful of legislators were using telephone town halls," Bowden said, "now over 400 are using them on a regular basis. We are hopeful that a similar trend occurs with virtual town halls."
Bowden declined to comment on other legislator sites MindMixer has in the works, but he said the company has other big announcements about new MindMixer clients coming soon and is planning "several major features upgrades" in the next 60 days.
MindMixer revamps homepage, announces launch of seven more sites
Silicon Prairie News
Jun 03, 2011 By Michael Stacy
Omaha, Nebraska When I reached out to Nick Bowden for a phone interview Thursday morning, the MindMixer co-founder and CEO was happy to oblige. But it soon became clear that Bowden's a busy man.
"Nathan (Preheim, MindMixer's co-founder and COO) and I are at a conference in Madison (Wis.) this whole week presenting the concept and showing people that it's out there," Bowden explained. "We were at a conference in Boston awhile back.
"There’s a lot of legwork that’s going into making people aware. Cities don’t tend to be proactively in the market for alternative technologies, so you’ve gotta kind of take it to them. And so, for us, it's a lot of legwork." (Below: Bowden, left, and Preheim. Photos from mindmixer.com.)
Fortunately for the MindMixer team, that legwork means their product will soon be popping up in far more cities than they are. On Thursday, MindMixer rolled out a revamped version of its website and announced the impending launch of seven new MindMixer city sites: Des Moines (for a regional planning effort); Norwalk, Iowa; Wichita, Kan.; Tuscaloosa, Ala. (for tornado recovery efforts); Burbank and Fullerton, Calif. and Federal Way, Wash.
With those sites set to launch within the next two weeks, the cities will be able to utilize upgrades that include an ability to search all MindMixer sites for ideas on a particular subject — say, for instance, parks. With that new capability, a MindMixer user in Omaha can search for parks-related ideas across all MindMixer sites and, if an idea proposed by a user in Fargo is appealing, suggest the same idea in Omaha.
"By having more sharing across cities that are spread out geographically, you can bring better ideas to the community that you live in just by broadening the perspective," Bowden said, comparing the new capability to a Twitter retweet.
MindMixer's homepage aims to offer more than just information for potential clients. It also strives to be an idea repository for citizens. Said Bowden: "It’s a move from an independent city type model to more hub and spoke, where everything can be facilitated through one point."
MindMixer's revamped site includes a search window that enables users to search all MindMixer sites for ideas on specific subjects. Screenshot from mindmixer.com.
If all goes as planned in the coming weeks, that's not the only noteworthy shift MindMixer will be making. Bowden said the company currently is in talks with legislators to create pages through which the lawmakers can communicate with and solicit suggestions from their constituents.
And, at home in Omaha, MindMixer just opened a new chapter in its work with the city government. Engage Omaha, MindMixer's site for the city of Omaha, introduced a new set of topics on Wednesday. Those topics will remain active until mid-July. Engage Omaha saw more than 12,000 visits in its first six weeks, which Bowden said was "hands down" the highest level of participation any of MindMixer's city sites have seen.
"It was a great kind of learning lab for us," Bowden said, "to be able to see how people interact with the new site and the integration of things like video introductions."
The three startups you must know from Big Omaha
Inc. Magazine
May 23, 2011 By Nathaniel Whittemore
Omaha, Nebraska Nebraska. The land of steak and cornhuskers is, for a small but passionate and fast growing community, also a land of start-ups. In the last few years, the Silicon Prarie has gone from basically no venture backed start-ups to a couple dozen pioneers who are starting to make waves in the Midwest and beyond. The ranks of attendees at the Big Omaha conference are thick with these companies, but here are three you won’t be able to ignore for long.
Zaarly: Coming out of Kansas City by way of Startup Weekend LA, Zaarly has announced it’s presence in the startup world like a shot from a cannon. Co-founded by former vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation Bo Fishback, the company is a sort of reverse Craigslist. Users can post what they need – whether it’s tickets to a game or an exit row seat on a plane – and name the price they’re willing to pay. Other users responded if they are able and willing to fulfill the request. While some of the earliest uses were things like $100 burgers delivered late at night at SXSW, the team believes that the potential is not just novelty but an entire alternative economy where students, the unemployed and others can use the service to find and create new business opportunities for themselves. The app, which has raised seed funding from investors like Felicis Ventures, Lightbank, and Ashton Kutcher, will be available imminently.
Dwolla: One of the great entrepreneurial frontiers is mobile payments. For many, the fact that we continue to carry around plastic cards and the fact that we still need to use cash to cover bills you share with friends are examples of the inefficiency in how we access our money. Dwolla is a mobile payments startup that both reduces transaction fees (which are a flat $0.25 per received payment) and has a variety of features that allow you to integrate and pay for things via social networks. It even has a check-in app that allows you to exchange money with people you don’t know, making it an alternative to Square.
MindMixer: People care about the issues that impact their lives, from local schools to crime to property taxes and beyond. Unfortunately, the model of civic participation in America is still anchored in community meetings that require busy people from diverse locations to convene in one space at one time, and wade through lots of issues they may not care about to get to those they do. MindMixer updates that model by giving city officials and citizens a platform where they can come together anytime, from anywhere, to discuss and aggregate ideas around the most important topics affecting their community. After a successful prototype in Omaha, the company, which has seed funding from local venture firm Dundee Capital, has signed up more than a dozen new cities around the country.
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