Hmm. The, I'm only aware of the UK okfn activities. I've never run into cdn folks on github or in my toronto life.

ODI has a chapter in Toronto that Bianca wylie is director of (she should be on this slack soon)

I see.

I’ve been kicking around an idea about a “North America” or “Americas” civic tech network since taking part in PDF17.

There doesn’t seem to be much connection between Canada civic tech groups with Latin America and the Caribbean

Had a chat with Miguel Salazar from Codeando Mexico, and he was down with the idea of forming such a network.

g0v.tw is really trying to build a regional network in East and Southeast Asia.

It would be great if North America could try the same.

ProgCode! Just heard about them, and very VERY inspired by then. Run through their bombarding and see what you think

They seem very decentralized and horizontal, which particularly appeals to me, and which I value highly in g0v

Some friends from the Toronto community have been working hard on Code for Canada. I'm so excited for their partnerships and placement of civic tech community members in gov, but I also think there's room for something else...

Interestingly, Canada has many multilingual needs, and it informs our tool use and building, especially at the national level where bilingualism is important

For example, pol.is convos would need to support both English and French to be fully appreciated and integrated by gov

So I wonder whether canada might be well suited to create spaces for bridging language divides (Spanish-English, Portuguese-english, French-spanish, etc), since we already have very compelling reasons to forge multilingual conversations within our own context...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If possible, would love to do a video call before tues at 4pm ET: myself and Gabe Sawhney (ED at Code for Canada) are having a casual meeting where I'm hoping to discuss transparency and horizontal organizing of our local civic tech group, of which we're both organizers. I find myself very inspired by g0v and progcode lately, and wondering how those values might translate

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@canadian_aaron There aren't too many Canadian civic tech organizations that show up to international events (outside US). At OGP Paris, for example, Canadian civil society included Open North, Publish What You Pay Canada… and individual Canadians working for non-Canadian organizations. IODC also had OpenNWT. OGP Mexico also had Powered by Data. Until recent years, it's sometimes just been me from Canadian civil society at such events! Better connections would be great, but just flagging that there's a degree of ambition or interest that's missing within Canadian civic tech. You may find it easier to focus on US-MX to start a network, as the CSOs in those countries show up more.

@canadian_aaron Also, OK has no chapter in Canada. It has two 'ambassadors', but I don't think they are much active in that role anymore.

@canadian_aaron also, Open Data Institute (ODI) might be relevant. Bianca Wylie runs it, and she's a public consultation professional who's very interested/active in Toronto vTaiwan discussions and civic tech more generally

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NYU's GovLab does massive networking across western hemisphere civic tech. Do you know Dinorah? @patcon met her while he was in NYC recently.

Well perhaps I might say hub and spokes vs network