Christopher Wink

Civic Innovation: my answers to 7 questions I asked this Mayors’ Innovation Summit panel

Textizen CEO Michelle Lee giving her lightning talk before our panel on civic innovation, which featued, from left, Michael Brennan of SecondMuse, Brigitte Daniel of Wilco Electronic Systems, Keya Dannenbaum of ElectNext, Alex Hillman of Indy Hall and myself. Photo lovingly stolen from Aaron Ogle.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors held its annual Mayors’ Innovation Summit in Philadelphia last week, and I moderated a panel Friday morning focused on ‘civic innovation,’ a fancy phrasing for a new era of groundswell public-private partnerships growing out of technology and creative communities across the country.

As is custom, I shared beforehand some questions I wanted to ask the group, and while we didn’t get to all of them because we got into some good conversations, I figured I’d share my perspective on those questions.

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Fairhill Square Park Pay it Forward Project

My Leadership Philadelphia class prompted the work, and I’m so happy I got the encouragement.

Asked to do a ‘Pay it Forward’ project in which we committed some volunteer time to a neighborhood in Philadelphia that none of our team members lived, worked or already volunteered in, we ended up cleaning, mulching, picking up trash and other work in Fairhill Square Park near Kensington ahead of a rededication for a beautiful piece of art.

Puerto Rican artist Rafael Ferrer dedicated his “El Gran Teatro de la Luna” in the park at 4th and Lehigh after 14 years of it being in storage.

I asked a friend at the city’s Parks and Rec department, who put me in touch with another staffer who directed me to a community leader who had been organizing a friends group for the newly updated park. Some of my teammates and I went to one of their community meetings, then helped with the park’s clean up day and then were a part of the park’s big art re-dedication yesterday, complete with more than 100 kids from various youth groups.

See our project notes here, and below find our presentation back to our other classmates.

Why this reporter agreed to be in a digital divide ad campaign

KEYSPOT is the branded network of computer literacy centers in Philadelphia, including city-backed rec centers, Free Library branches and private nonprofit efforts.

Since their federal stimulus-backed launch in 2011, we at Technically Philly have reported on the effort, including the impact, small numbers and celebrated successes. That’s presumably why I was asked to be one of a handful of people included in a public awareness advertising campaign — which also included rapper Freeway and has run on a few outdoor billboards, on SEPTA subway cars and in some train stations.

I’ve had a few questions privately and publicly about the appropriateness of a reporter/editor to be involved in such a campaign, so I thought it was worth sharing my logic.

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5 Instagram photos from Philly Tech Week 2013

The third annual Philly Tech Week was the largest yet, and its impact was clear.

Rather than recite the more than 80 events and 150 partners, I thought I’d share a few Instagram photos I saw that helped me feel the week was growing and proud about my involvement. That’s mostly because the photos were taken by people I didn’t know.

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Intern syndrome

intern-syndrome

When you worked under someone who will never be able to see as you as anything more than subordinate: intern syndrome.

Like many industries facing a disruption, experienced leaders that have earned their leadership through seniority rightly question a newer, younger cohort that asks a lot of questions and experiments with process. I think that’s partly the reason for sometimes uneasy relationships I’ve had with more veteran colleagues of mine.

(Read: our struggle at Technically Philly to establish any meaningful content partnerships, our decision to expand to other markets and, sure, the fact that BarCamp NewsInnovation will often have more people from other cities than the Philly daily papers).

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Campaign opposition research is a type of investigative journalism

TheOppositionBook

What we have lost in investigative reporting units at news organization in the last two decades will be at least partially replaced by mission-orientated groups that can find other value for doing such work.

Foundations, think tanks and mission-minded nonprofits may be the more ethically normalized groups, but in elections and government, the idea of campaign opposition research will almost surely come to wider prominence. The idea that a campaign would hire investigators, lawyers or others to dig up shortcomings on political rivals is not new at all, but we’ll hear more about this.

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Drinks with George Saunders

After enjoying hearing him and Jonathan Dee give readings of their latest work and take questions from the Free Library audience, I was honored to spend a couple hours with a few friends drinking with acclaimed fiction writer George Saunders in the Lowes hotel bar in Center City Philadelphia.

A Police helicopter ride

As part of my LEADERSHIP class, I won the chance to join half of a four-hour police helicopter shift this evening. We were in the air for more than 90 minutes, leaving from Northeast Philadelphia airport.