CivicPlus Sends Team of Four to Participate in NYC Hackathon

MANHATTAN, Kan., Aug. 10, 2011 — CivicPlus, a national leader in open government technology, recently sent four of its talented website designers and developers from “the little Apple” to the “Big Apple” to participate in the “Reinvent NYC.gov Hackathon,” an event sponsored by New York City. Companies and individuals from throughout the U.S. and Canada came together to re-imagine New York City’s web presence.

During the weekend of July 30 and 31, Dean Kimball, Kyle Gach and Jameson Sedlacek, all of Manhattan, and Amy Horan, of Wamego, KS, worked together in a conference facility in New York City’s burgeoning “Silicon Alley” to brainstorm, develop and put concepts for a redesigned NYC.gov website into effect. The four, who range in CivicPlus tenure from five months to five years, put their local government website expertise to the test as they worked in a virtual marathon from early Saturday morning until Sunday night to create a new visual presentation for New York City government.

“Our time participating in the Reinvent NYC.gov event was a great experience,” said Kyle Gach. “It was inspiring to see a variety of ideas come from such a strong display of creativity, innovation and straight-up effort by all teams. The coolest part for me was simply sharing a great studio space with a like-minded, ad-hoc community of fellow geeks who are clearly as passionate about the web as I am.”

CivicPlus teammate Jameson Sedlacek agreed. “I was thrilled to have the opportunity to go to a place I’ve never been before and show the world what I can do.”

Founded in 2001, CivicPlus employs nearly 100 website wizards at its corporate offices at 317 Houston Street and has designed 898 local government websites serving more than 31.6 million citizens throughout North America. In the last three months a total of 21 national, international and statewide awards have been presented to CivicPlus clients for website design and features.

“This is the age of citizen engagement,” said Ward Morgan, founder and president of CivicPlus. “The more local government organizations can offer electronically, the easier they make it for people to access services and get the help or information they need. At the same time, government officials are challenged to do more with less and online services make the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars. We’re proud of our Hackathon representatives and look forward to the new perspectives they will share with our entire CivicPlus team.”