Hi,
I just wanted to share with the team a success story what SCaLE 15x enabled.
While it is a small start, it is a significant strategic win for SCaLE and the pro-Open Source and pro-Open Data community.
1) Code for America Brigades had a booth on the expo floor, mostly populated by volunteers from the local LA Chapter ( Hack for LA, thus if you visited the booth you would have seen their banner ) Note, some of the volunteers also work in the local government agencies.
We plan to invite and encourage the participation of additional brigades for the next SCaLE.
2) On Sunday we had the Open Data: Cities Panel. http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale/15x/presentations/open-data-cities-panel
During that event we had 4 presenting panelists: Phillip LeClair, CIO City of Pasadena; Jeanne Holm, Assistant General Manager/ Deputy CIO of City of Los Angeles; Behrang Abadi, Sr IT Manager City of Santa Monica. Jasmine Frost, Business Information Systems Bureau Manager City of Long Beach
Jasmine also brought with her Bryan M. Sastokas, CIO of the City of Long Beach.
This was the first time that some of these civic leaders had meet each other, a significant event according to many of those participating.
3) As a result of this we just had an inquiry with regards to sponsorship options from one of the local cities.
Considering the ability for SCaLE to be a venue and community which assists in furthering the results of connecting those interested in Open Data and Open Source in civics I would like to encourage you to reach out to their local Code for America Brigades and invite them to join us at SCaLE in 2018.
List of Brigades are here ( note there are a number of international ones - so maybe it should be Code for the World Brigades ) http://brigade.codeforamerica.org/brigade/list
Thank You Matti