Life in Board Shorts Day One – Outer Banks Style

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heading to Norfolk

Heading to Norfolk

Our 10-day vacation on the Outer Banks started last night when the family flew to Norfolk after a week in Boston for the Red Hat Summit and JBoss World. We landed just in time to experience some 5-o’clock traffic in Hampton Roads area of Virginia. We took our time and eventually made our way to Kill Devil Hills, NC for the evening.

Along the way, we stopped in Currituck at a local produce stand to get some fresh fruit and veggies. We walked out with blueberries, peaches, plums, squash, zucchini, and sweet corn. On the way towards KDH, we wanted to grab dinner at Weeping Radish, but they were closed when we passed. Bummer! Instead, we got some Mexican at La Fogata in Kitty Hawk. Continue reading →

City Council Has Perfect Attendance at CityCamp Raleigh

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Originally posted on opensource.com and licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA.

What started with a unanimous vote to adopt an open source resolution eventually became a long-term commitment to the open source way. How many of you have had an elected official attend a citizen-lead event? Probably some of you. But how many of you have had your entire city or town council attend an unconference?

At a recent open government unconference, all city council members—including the mayor of Raleigh, North Carolina—attended some or all of the event. Their attendance wasn’t a requirement—and it wasn’t a political drive-by. It was genuine, natural. And some of them got knee-deep in the “code,” competing in the civic hackathon. Continue reading →

Ten Teams Compete for CityCamp Raleigh $5000 Prize

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The unconference at CityCamp Raleigh on June 2 was amazing. The ideas. The passion. The people. For those of you unfamiliar with the unconference format, we gathered at 9:00 am  on Saturday. The coffee was a little late, so we didn’t start until 9:15 am. We explained the process for the day…which went something like this: Continue reading →

A Preview of the CityCamp Raleigh Agenda

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Here’s a peak at the agenda for Friday, June 1. Lunch will be provided from 12-1pm. There will also be a chance to network during this time. You should register so we know you’re coming.

On Saturday, June 2, we will kick off our unconference at 9am–where the agenda will be determined by those in attendance. Folks will pitch ideas to start off the morning, several workshops will be hosted, and teams will start to form around ideas on how to improve civic engagement or other civic-minded needs in the City of Raleigh.

On Sunday, June 3, starting at 9am, teams will collaborate on solving a civic issue that can improve the quality of life in Raleigh. Simultaneously, CityCamp Raleigh will host a Triangle Wiki content sprint to add pages, images, and ideas to trianglewiki.org. At 3pm, teams will present and CityCamp Raleigh will award one winning team with a cash reward at 4pm. Continue reading →

Do you name your GPS?

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A few summers ago, when Merri Beth and I were on a trip to New York City we rented a car and got a GPS navigation system. We thought it would be fun to name the GPS–we wanted to yell at it when it gave us bad directions. We continued the tradition on a trip to Boston two years ago when we drove to Westford for the day.

I’ve had my VW Jetta for just over a year now and still hadn’t given my GPS an official name. I toyed around with some German names. I even did some research on names related to guides, explorers, and navigators. Nothing really jumped out. I almost crowdsourced naming my GPS over social media but that sounded like a lot of work. Then this past weekend, it happened. Continue reading →

The 2012 Salsa Garden

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I finally got the vegetable garden going. With the wacky weather we’ve been having, I decided to wait until after April 15th to get this years garden in the ground. I took Friday off of work and got the green thumb going.

After a few errands, I made my way to Logan’s Trading Company. My default location for the vegetable garden. They sell a flat of vegetables for $18. I inspected the large selection of peppers and tomatoes. I ended up getting two flats. More plants than I’ve ever gotten for a season. Continue reading →

The Code for America “brigade effect” with TriangleWiki

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Originally posted on opensource.com and licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA.

Have you ever seen results from your community engagement and realized the impact of your efforts? We recently told you about the LocalWiki project and shared some of the results from the Triangle Wiki day event. But then our friends at Code for America took it a step further.

The co-founders of LocalWiki were in the Code for America offices last week to see how they could build on the success of the Code Across America event. They took the data–633 page edits, 100 maps, and 138 new photos–and amplified it. Continue reading →

How SPARKcon uses open source

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Originally posted on opensource.com and licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA.

Image credits: h0tgrits, opensource.com - Licensed CC-BY-SA

Process over content. Aly Khalifa from Gamil Design and Designbox used this mantra to instill open source roots at SPARKcon—an annual event that showcases, celebrates, and influences the creative momentum naturally found in North Carolina’s Triangle region.

“I think at first it was hard for people to understand—it was hard for us to describe. Sometimes it was embarrassing—this commitment to process over content,” Continue reading →