#CitiesSummit, SXSW, and the future of govtech
A couple of days ago, our team at CityGrows was thrilled when we were featured in this Reboot article about some of the great local government-focused panels that have been submitted into the SXSW PanelPicker process this year.

We couldn’t agree more with this perspective:
“Cities have the power and proximity to design (and redesign) services in close collaboration with the people who live there. Everyone should be paying attention to how cities are working to solve challenges we face worldwide. “ Laura Freschi
Of course, we want you to VOTE FOR OUR PANEL (http://bit.ly/SXSWHTB) and for all the great concepts listed in the article. But we also are thrilled that South by Southwest is doubling down on cities by creating this new Cities Summit program, and recognizing that local government is the best laboratory for solving community challenges.
Our panel is about the collaboration between our company and the City of Santa Monica that came about because of Hack the Beach. The City of Santa Monica started Hack the Beach to build and surface new technologies to support better constituent services and internal processes. CityGrows was incredibly lucky to be the winner of the first 2016 Hack the Beach program- and we’re continuing to collaborate with the City to improve its processes and transparency. If this panel gets accepted, we’ll share insights about what it took for city staff and startups to create a functional collaboration, and highlight results that include increased efficiency, automatic open data, happier constituents, and better internal and external transparency. We’ll workshop developing local co-creation initiatives for techologists and government leaders, and hopefully inspire more in-depth collaboration between local governments and their local startup and technology communities. And we’ll be able to share updates from the second round of the Hack the Beach program, which is currently accepting applications.
In our work with large cities, small towns, counties, and states we feel a new sense of the potential of local governments to combine newly accessible technologies — things like CityGrows’ “open process” platform, as well as new tools for civic engagement and public participation (like CityFlag and chatbots) and efficiency (like RideAlong). We can’t wait to see all this — and more — showcased and at the same place to spark new collaborations at SXSW 2018.
