Vancouver Change Camp

What is Vancouver ChangeCamp?

Vancouver ChangeCamp is a participatory web-enabled face-to-face event that brings together citizens, technologists, designers, academics, social entrepreneurs, policy wonks, political players, change-makers and government employees to answer these questions:

How can we help government become more open and responsive?
How do we as citizens organize to get better outcomes ourselves?

ChangeCamp addresses the demand for a renewed relationship among citizens and government. We seek to create connections, knowledge, tools and policies that drive transparency, civic engagement and democratic empowerment.

The conference will be participant-driven, with the agenda created collaboratively at the start of the event, allowing participants to share their experiences and expertise.

Nonprofits have a strained relationship with government. It seems like we're always yelling at them to open up their data. "Release the fisheries report!" "Publish the grizzly mortality counts!"

Wouldn't it be great if nonprofits, community activists, policy wonks and government all got into a room and discussed our differences? What if government data defaulted to open, rather than closed?

Sounds kumbayah? Well, it isn't. In fact, it happened last year. Community activists and nonprofits sat down with representatives from the provincial and municipal government (including Vancouver's Mayor and BC's Director of Citizen Engagement). And amazing things came from it, like:

http://openparliament.... a radical mixup of Hansard. Easy tracking of ANY MP and Bill
http://data.vancouver.ca/ - a directory of free and open data sources from the City of Vancouver, which was used to map the effects of rising sea levels on Vancouver
The Province of BC's Apps 4 Climate Action contest

At the very core of this event is public participation. Ultimately, it's the people who involved that really make this all possible. Whether you're a technologist, creative, marketer, business person, innovator, public policy expert, civil servant, immigrant, parent, non-profit worker, student, social media guru, past participant or just an everyday citizen who wants to be more engaged, we'd love to have you involved.

Low income free entry:
If the $20 fee presents a real barrier to you, don't let it! Simply email our Event Coordinator Elijah van der Giessen at eli@vandergiessen.ca to register for free. But be warned: he may try to recruit you as a volunteer! :-)