My colleague Sarah Washburn recently shared a post by Tess Wilson on our team slack: “I’m a public librarian. This is why I’m also a civic-tech advocate”. Sarah wrote, “You’ll love it.” She was right. — My love of libraries is not secret. And our commitment to collaborating with libraries is longstanding. It is a challenge, though, to articulate the connection as well as Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Tess Wilson did in her post.

Pessoas da comunidade alimentam aplicativo de transporte no Brasil. — [Read the post in English, here.] Você não precisa ser um expert em TI para criar uma solução tecnológica inteligente. Às vezes, o mais difícil do nosso trabalho na Caravan Studios é convencer as pessoas da comunidade que o seu expertise, inteligência e compromisso com uma causa os equipa com…

Locals power a transit app in Brazil. — [Para lêr isto em portugues, clique aqui.] You don’t have to be a techie to design a smart tech solution. …

Recently, we asked, “Do we need to establish Public Good Technology as a field?” In that post, we talked about what we see as the benefits of having a field and the characteristics of public good technology. Here’s the thing: we don’t know if we are right. This idea surfaced…

This is a topic we’ve been trying to sort out one project at a time, in our own practice and in what we’ve seen of others. It shows up in different places, in different ways: Through conversations in which we find ourselves describing public good technology. And in list-making when…

At Caravan Studios, our participatory methodology fuels everything we do. It’s the how behind our work, and public engagement and ownership is a big part of that how. Recently, I shared a concept note that described the first part of this methodology. The note was geared toward people who might…

What we have is a process, a methodology. — It might seem strange to admit what we don’t have. It’s our methodology that gives us that confidence. We believe that knowledgeable and engaged community members have many answers. We use the first phase of our methodology to facilitate discussions that turn those answers into actionable design questions and technology…

There is work to be done. — According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, shelter is a persistent need that is often unavailable to survivors seeking immediate assistance. Caravan Studios works with domestic violence and anti-trafficking agencies to develop tools to ease this problem. We developed the Safe Shelter Collaborative (SSC) to help domestic violence…

Over 21.5 million youth under the age of 18 in the United States receive free or reduced-cost lunches every day at school. But when classes end and summer begins, these students must turn elsewhere to find meals. This year, the USDA planned to serve over 200 million free meals to…