between two ferns or do a youtube interview which now seems completely norle ma. in 2009, the washington conventional wisdom flipped out. you're demeaning the president. you're putting him on the internet? but doing all those things -- shelly: it was back -- dan: even takes questions was diminishing. zach galifianakis is up for fair debate. doing all that was crucial and would change the way all presidents coming forward. shelley: totally agree. it's fair to say 2008 back in 2008, like what you did in 2008, it almost seems archaic to what we're doing now. he brought those issues to life. he was eable able to engage and mobilize. how would you respond to how dan

is saying that the president is using technology? matt: there are a couple of thoughts. what he's described is how residents figure out the bully -- one of the things that we're trying to figure out -- many of you are familiar with mybarack obama.com. i think that there's a promise in that idea and i think you saw it in the dean campaign using meetup and you've seen these different moments of people trying to use the internet. there's a product there that hasn't been realized. and what i think it is is the opportunity for more bottom-up self-organization that can plug into something formal and

somewhat centralized and top-down. you kind of have to have both of those. and for a long time now, our media, mass media has really been very centralized and has tapped into a model in which candidates and nonprofits raise a bunch of money and do a lot of direct markets to mobilize people who really don't want to hear the message and try to nudge them to give that one dollar because of guilt or whatever. and actually oddly enough, i just downloaded the feel the burn app. how many of you have checked that out? probably a number of you if you're in san francisco. -- interestingly it had videos. it had this real cool map and i could geo locate myself. i was looking at it and said

where are the people? even then there's no conversation in bottom-up power building through creating a community of action that can can sustain itself over time. and even with successed with sopa pippa it wasn't a worried group of people that want to change their own gun laws -- my background bias is through grassroots organizing so that's how we see the world in our company. i think there's a promise there that technology hasn't realize and for everything that president obama has done campaigning in office it has been amazing. it's going to be the future of getting elected but also sustaining efforts to get things done once in office. shelley: and jen, what would you have to add to that, jennifer: you have the electives and sustaining that agenda, sustaining that community, sustaining that sort of values and i think what we're seeing also through our work with local government is it's also not just

the i want to have a voice in the policy, but it's also i want to lend my hands to making my community better. and that is something that we need to power of the internet to bring it together for us at code for america, we have a program where we have folks in silicon valley come and do partnerships with local government for a year and they take an event and use that approach. these are our fellows. we welcomed our new class of fellows. we're very proud of them. but in the very first class in 2011 these are folks that are coming from tech jobs and dick: a year of service in the local government. we had a team that was working with the city of boston and at the service side project, one of the fellows noticed -- it was 2011 and it was snow pock lips. >> isn't that every winter?

>> it was first year in a long time. and they were -- these are programmers from start-ups and google and apple and their sort of in these operation centers in boston city government during this massive snow crisis. we think of government as policies. government is clearing the snow. government is, you know, helping people who are stuck. government is like who's getting the snowplowed? is my neighborhood getting the snowplowed or another one getting the snowplowed? when the snowplows clear the streets, you know what it covers, the fire hydrants. they tend to be completely covered that if there's a fire you're talking quite a long time before they're dugout. we don't have the resources to dig those things out. he's going if i live in front of dig e hydrant i'm going to that fire hydrant out.

eric michael soder wrote an app called adopt a hydrant that allowed the citizens of boston, you know what, i'm digging out that fire hydrant if it's covered up in snow. anyone here live in oakland? you can don't a storm drain in oakland. why should the city come out and clear that storm drain when it's full of leaves when you can just walk up and do that. i will say i have done it. and it is gross to stick your hand in a storm drain. but once you do that, you've saved your city a whole crew. there are things that we can do to make our communities work better, things that we've asked institutions, local government to do that. unfortunately, it is a great cost. it is free to stick your hand in the storm drain.

it's adopt a siren in -- in honolulu where it really matters so you know where the tsunami is coming and you need to know that. there's that element of not just where is my voice in politics but where are my hands to help make my community better and how do we use the internet and technologies to make it better? and i would echo about the local level of government. shelley: staying with that and we're talk about adopt a hydrant, so out of all the different technologies that you've seen through code for america, what would you say has been the, you know, the most critical for digital civic participation number one, right? and relatedly how would providers engage with the government? because code for america has done such an amazing job. how do we cast a light on that?

jennifer: yes, exactly. and to your last point one of the things that's happened in the past three years really is that many wonderful people in silicon valley and we would say limbed to silicon -- it's not limited to there as much as you would like to think. there are amazing entrepreneurs that would take this approach all over the country. but metta physical silicon valley is getting over its horror of government and actually doing start-ups that will provide technology and services to government in a way that are enormously changing the ecosystem giving people in government many, many different options that are not just the large system integraters. god love them. but we need start-ups. so this is a huge thing. seven of them have been spinned out from code for america. but there are many, many others and we support all of them

because it makes government work for the people. so your question about what technologies have been -- shelley: let's say that a mobile technology is texting -- what is a good way to insure digital civic participation that's in your hand? somethng that will be easy. . jennifer: we hear the question, what are the things that has really opened up this -- this opportunity in government and more important than any particular technology i would say, i'm sorry if i repeat myself, a data-driven approach and user-friendly approach, it's just critical and very different from the ways in which government has sort of codified their technology in the past. and frankly for all good reasons we've created things like pure curement and ethics rules because we wanted to do right

for the people. but they had an unintended consequence in that we can track things out and it rate very quickly based on user feedback. that's what works and it's very hard to do in a government context but that's what the u.s. digital service would be doing. that's what 18 has been doing -- that's what code for america is doing. so that's more porn than any technology. it's very important that we support all of our government entitys that are trying to take that approach. but to answer your question, i do think that text messaging for us at the local government there are many, many different things that we've done the data and making it usable for citizens is really, really huge. but when you're dealing on areas that are relying digital services first food stamps or housing, we have found that finding very simple ways to just text message -- for instance if

you apply for food stamps in california being able to follow-up with did you get the benefit? you're about to fall off the reply.cause you didn't if we can send you a text message that says you need to call the office or you're going to end up at the grocery store trying to use your food benefit and it won't work. these things are big for us at this moment in time where we don't have everybody on a smartphone platform. texts are huge. shelley: it's important to take the messaging to the people. i think that's critical. and to your opponent of open data, it's evidented by the fact that we have our first chief data officer at the white house. but the congress department has their first chief data officers as well, a friend of mine and

innovation fellow. >> first year. >> so i think there's a lot of coming together between what you're saying, the roles that people are playing and their relationship between the public and the private sector, so thank you for that. matt, i want to come to you next. and i read you some stuff that you said before. matt: oh -- [laughter] shelley: i promise it's all good. matt: my wife is in the audience. shelley: this is about brigades. in an op-ed last october you wrote that voters especially millenials have well formed opinions on issues such as whether or not air bnb should be regulated but they didn't know how to make their voices heard or believe that their voices count pretty much what you said earlier, right? and according to "congressional porterly" 23 states advanced 60 pieces of legislation to restrict short-term rental

classes like air bnb. how would pregade engaged voters who support tech platforms like air bnb with decision makers have stopped such legislation or let them be heard that we don't want this out there? matt: i referenced the test in new hampshire. we did the same thing in san francisco. really wasn't a test. it was scrappy. we built it in five weeks. we made a ton of mistakes and now we can take up for it with our next test in the general election, the primaries and the general this year. and i will get around to answering your question. and if i don't you can hold me accountable to it. what we wanted to test was basically three things. will users of brigade ex-press their political belief in a way that can help us inform, help us inform them how they may want to

participate in the election if we make those recommendations on how they may watch to vote are they willing to do a little more research and confirm how they're planning to vote in advance of the election and can we motivate and engage them in that same process. one of the difficult learnings was driving mobile apps. installs is really difficult. problem. nush tech that was hard. we tried a lot of different marketing approaches. i was joking with dan that not everybody wake up and say i wish i had a better tool for voting or for engaging in politics. somebody understands that. [laughter] so the barrier to entry was really high. i think part of the tactical lesson is to meet people where they are, build more on web, aybe through texts through

interfaces because there's a lot of people where we can build more hooks. once we got them into that experience though which was focused on taking positions taken by the chronicle. so position might be something like, we should enforce more restrictions on my ability to un -- rent my extra bedroom to a stranger or something like that. or we should increase taxes to fund, you know, a larger health, you know, benefit for workers in the city. we took a whole bunch offer positions. so they produced the content and produced some background information. people were incredibly willing to dig in and voice their opinions and it was amazing how quickly went through it. they said i agree with that. i disagree with that. i'm for the mission moratorium. it didn't take a lot of information. voters are not dumb and not apathetic.

you have to figure out how to reach them. so the completion rate was really, really high. people disagree. they took their sides. they got to see what other people think. they got to see competing responses for why people took different sides. given everything you told us about your political brief here's how we think you should vote. that stuff worked well as well as a very high percentage of them who thought i'm going to have the ballot on my phone so i have this rich source of recollection. they kept that with them when they took out the paper ballot or went into the voting booth with them. it was successful, better structured. it was easy to read. i personally have filled out a bunch and for weeks i didn't fill out others to help me keep track and this thing which is always with me which is my phone. on the last piece, we didn't right.y get the peer

i think it was prop f for the air bnb regulation who sent a lot of messages to their friends trying to recruit them. texting their friends saying i'm voting combre or no and here's why. so to answer the question, i think there's a general question around distribution and how you get these tools and how much demand is there that i think is going to be driven koreaing social norms around participation and something they're doing with their friends. we've got to reintegrate our civic and social lives. that's something no one's figured out. and we're trying to figure out. how do you make this main sfleem -- mainstream? there's change.org and irks- citizen and others experimenting and it rating and trying to figure that out. but then it's about making it really simple, immediate feedback. personalize, transparent and a

useful tool for people. when they got that in the hands of people they used it. and the response was really positive. i hear san francisco is in the order about 1,000 voters. the election had a turnout of what was it, 160,000? for us that's a pretty good validation at least from the feedback that we got that was so above from the voters. shlly: integrating our civic and our social lives, i think it's great that we can do that. before i go to the last question with dan, i just want to let the audience, in about five minutes we're going to go to q&a fsm you want to ask this talent a question, the mic is there. so you'll probably want to start lining up there in about five minutes. dan? right back to you. multi-part question for you. so that's ok. you know, with your new role at go fund me -- you've gone from taking tech to politics and nour

you're connecting the dots from washington to silicon valley, tell us what your new role entails in terms of what kind of policy changes are you trying to impact? are they going to affect the whole tech industry or is it just to a specific sector? and will it be easier to make those changes from the outrun? >> i think the best way that anyone can make a change if you have a chance to serve in government. that's the ultimate place to do it. >> 100%. dan: and when you think about the other people that jen has recruited from tech companies and you talk to them, people who have worked at google and face book and been part of this amazing incredibly lucrative things, you talk about the chance that they had to give more health care to people, like e people who saved healthcare.gov, that is the ull mat way to impact people's lives.

you can do it at a local level. the. mat manifestation is in the white house. i think if they can have that in their lives, they should do it. thank you. white when i left the house after six years, and i thought about what i want to do with my life, and i didn't really know. because you would ask me when i first got into politic, like what would be the -- into be tics, like what would it like? that. i got to i find myself unemployed right around the time barack obama was president. i didn't know what i wanted to do next. i had spent some time out here, having spent sometime in the

white house -- we were beginning to engage more in the tech world and trying to make chose changes. felt a cultural affinity with silicon valley rent -- je graphicly because i moved here geographicaly because i moved here. about 100 people worked there. and i went to the first office. our current office that we're going to move from soon. it's about a nail salon. i get there and the c.e.o. knows i'm coming from the white house. he said i'm so sorry about our office. i looked at him -- we have people working in the hallway, right? all standing desks. and i said to my wife, this is better than every campaign office i ever went to work in. [laughter]

shelley: this is the executive office building, our office. dan: you said that the obama campaign was the ultimate start-up. and all campaigns are start-ups in some way. what i think has drawn people from washington to silicon valley and there are more of them moving out over here every day and why those people are so valuable is a buys for action. in the start up world, you have to move fast. either you have to decide quickly and you have to act. in campaigns is the same thing. you cannot wait. if you wait -- if you sit around and dilly dally forever, it doesn't work. if it doesn't work, then you learn from it. and try something else. what led me to go fund me is a personal crowd funding sight rapidly growing.

most of our businesses people who are raising money to pay for medical bills or to help someone in their community or fund textbooks for schools or stuff like that but we do all kinds of project. i didn't know i could take a job. i thought i could do the consulting thing and work in coffee shops and get the calls and do the like. but what really drew me to gofundme, essentially what they are doing is using the technology is to help others. sometimes they're helping their families. sometimes it's themselves. a lot of times it's their community. and that was the core -- that's the obama promise. we are a for profit company. we believe that the better we do the more people will help each other. but the core obama promise, do you go back if you thereon his sneach 2007 and 2008, it's not i'm going to do all these things

for you, it's that we're going to come together and we're going to change our country. change comes from the bottom up. barack obama background is about grassroots organizing. what's powerful about technology is it's good technology is about bringing power from institutions down to people, right? and you look at other institutions what did the blog do? gave the same power that newspapers had. it would give the same power with people with a phone that teg vision networks have, right? gofundme gives the same power to people that large nonprofits have. you can see something in your community, and you yourself can do it. you done have to have a bake sale. it doesn't have to be a raffle. you can decide using the power of your social network to solve a problem.

i think that is incredibly powerful. it's an incredible opportunity and to give people a chance to change their community. that was what led me to politics and that's what led me to gofundme. shelley: go ahead. jennifer: i would like to echo what was said about public service and to draw that emotional connection between a lot of the ethos that i see and feel in silicon value yip and what -- valley and what the experience i had at any level of overnment, the theme saved healthcare.government worked every day for 160 days. it was incredibly intense. sometimes i was not on the team, i was in that office. i was working on some pearl issues at the time. but, you know, these were people that were motivated by an intense desire to save health care for their fellow americans.

and there were times when todd park who was our boss in sing because my colleague ryan is in the audience would bring the letters that the president had received about the affordable health care act. -- into the office and read them. an there was one -- i think each letter hit just -- various of us on the team differently. there was one where i can never forget him reading that was from a mother who said, i've spent the past 20 years choosing between a health care for myself and for my kids. and because i was able to sign up through health care.gov, i am now going to see a doctor for a long time. that's noss a choice i've had to make. this is a choice she's made. and everybody on the team was so inspired to do this amazing work and work, you know -- we always joke at code for america, you go

work at a start-up to have an easier job. [laughter] what these people -- people who work in government especially around technology do is just provide. we saw recently at code for mark, we helped the way they were approaching the procure yiment of the health care system. it's very easy to get lost in the abstract thing. it was going to be a $5 or $6 million procurement. it was going to be a very classic old school approach. five years to build. we wouldn't see anything until the end. these are the failed programs. we have tools to bring to bear. we have different methodologies. we have different ways. and then you're doing all that work in about abstract way and our team was coming home where they agreed to make the changes. and referenced in the fact that

this is not a piece of tech nog, this is the way we take care of the risk of kids in our state. there are 475,000 reports of abuse and neglect in our state. when it doesn't work to manage those cases those kids have bad outcomes. i think that is such an important point that you're making is that the technology is solving an issue. i know i have to go to our questions from our audience. be i do want to end on one quick thing. dan, what you said about demock tiesing that's what bri grade is about is demock tiesing democracy. dan: that should be our tag line. shelley: i was going to put that in my initial question but i like that. as you ask your questions just a gentle reminder, if you have a panelist please let us know who

it is. and please ask a question. >> ok. my question will be about data base sets. i worked on a hospital laboratory. i'm not a commuter geek. as a military veteran i was interested in a bill that was the congress a long time ago. any frustration is that 99% of the people i never get feedback from. what i want to create is a website a viewer easily available data base that has data base sets in it like the members of congress, people in executive branch but also governors and that. but also academic professions so that i can over my retirement years contact these people and try to get feedback. but that contact has been attempted and no response has been given. but data base sets are very expensive. and i just don't understand why the nonprofits doesn't just

generate these for all the different nonprofits in the country. there's a company that costs tens of thousands of dollars. shelley: so wow would like to see that context documented in a data base. >> the data base of sets themselveses is very expensive to produce. i can't produce them. i would think that if they were created by various nonprofits in the country it would be shareable for everybody in the country. shelly: anybody want to comment? matt: i heard two pars to your question. one is on the data base of officials and who represents you. that data is not easily accessible enough. there is no data base of every elected officials and there's no easy way and say here's what i am. there are some good attempts and there are some groups working hard on that.

google civic a.p.it. . map light has been working on the problem for years now. the sets are getting better but they're city not where they need to be. the second part is the responsiveness i think a lot of that comes down to incentive. i've talked to a lot of elected officials who spent a time of fundraising, a tight of time talking to interest groups. they have a lot less time to think about how to engage a wider audience. ways they are not incentivized to do so. we are hoping to aggregate votes and voters in a way so that their opinions are tied to the identity of someone who votes and can incentivize elected officials.

if you could get them directly connected to a group of voters who care about something, it probably would be well incentivized to spend time with them. i think it isn't all problem at this point and there are some good people working on it. >> i am a student and an elusive millennial that you spoke of. for me the flipside is that a lot of my peers and young people feel like just liking on something on facebook is enough and that is engaging with the cause. for me, as someone who has a see howand has tried to social media can be used to sustain involvement and go beyond the social media presence and i'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to that. there is a huge amount of

engagement online with millennial's posting articles and commenting on political topics. when you ask millennial's what are the most impactful things they do to help their community, it's actually off-line or giving in theirlunteering community where they can see the people they are serving and work on things with their hands. it's giving money where they have confidence the money will be used for something impactful. i think there is a disconnect discoursebetween the and self-expression that may feel satisfying in the moment because you got three likes on the thing you posted. whatave to ask yourself does that actually a mount to and the answer is probably not much. i think there is a gap, only 8%

of millennial's voted in the last california midterm. they just don't believe voting matters, and that is a huge problem. that probably sounds like a depressing nonanswer. part of the way you saw that is -- this is a terrible word. you show them they are not alone . you show them how many voters there are, how much their potential impact is. just got this thing as a holiday present, and it changes behavior. how many hours i sleep, how many steps i take, how much water i , these little nudges to do medically changed my behavior. i go for a walk after dinner. i try to go to bed earlier.

it's not quite as simple in the civic space but this is the kind of technology that we are responsive to as consumers and as younger people. we have to build those kinds of tools for the civic space. huge has been a underinvestment in that. jen speaks eloquently to how to bridge that gap and why it is imperative that we do. >> with the sense of working in your community, there's a code foralled the america brigade. 44,000 people across the country participate in their local communities and built technology for their city government, their local community. two of those active immunities are here -- communities are

here. our office is on 9th street. one of our sponsors is in the back from microsoft who helps out with that community. this is activism that is digital that helps out in your community. >> we have time for two more questions. >> my name is ruth shapiro. i was watching the town hall with president obama about guns, and there seemed to be in the audience quite a few people who are very much galvanized i what i believe is completely untrue information about guns. i think the dark side or the underbelly of proliferation of information is the proliferation of untrue and destructive information with isis recruitment being obviously a

worst-case example of this. i wonder if you can just discussed the fact that there is untrue, destructive information out there which people are organizing around, and how do you deal with that? there are pros and cons to all things, and the dramatic democratization and proliferation of information has done great rings but there are ifple who can use it in area's ways, isis being the most obvious example. there has been evil in the world before they were social media. .here was prejudice social media allows you to express opinions in different ways. what it does do in some cases is allow people to confront opinions they would not otherwise ever see.

guns and climate change are two of the hardest issues to communicate on, because we don't live in this all caps world where you just go on the news that everyone here's what you have to say. people are now communicating in networks and they are becoming more homogenous. whoecomes hard for someone is outside of that network to convince a bunch of people in a different network that climate change is real are that no one is actually coming to take your guns. that is a challenge. as people learn and politicians learn better how to communicate in this area, you will have more progress there. but social media is a tool that does way more good than bad, but we are going to have to work and learn about how we can deal with

close communication. it is worth noting that the fact that people have facebook friends are twitter followers who basically believe the same thing is more the symptom of something larger that's happening in society because off-line, the same thing is happening. withe are hanging out people who have the same opinions. there are precincts in this country in san francisco and new york where mitt romney got zero votes. not a single person voted for mitt romney in those areas. there were precincts where barack obama got zero. not one person differed from their neighbor on that issue. always easy for people in politics and media to blame twitter and face book and have made politics clear. things to look at bigger

. we made a specific design decision. maybe background checks should be required for gun purchases. on what informed citizens do if they take a position, they agree or disagree, but then they have the ability to leave a reason and the crowd has the ability to comment and upload. we made a decision to structure it as a debate with different perspectives. i would rather have a crowd sourced, multidimensional -- multidimensional debate more like a wikipedia model that an expert driven type of model. to require time and tools and new social norms for that to really work. downloadedave not

brigade, i encourage you to do it. i was an early user. it is a cool feeling. you leave a reason and have someone changes their mind because of your reason, you get a notification. it gives you a fulfilling, rewarding dealing. on the big issues like guns or issues, women's health in the course of reading about -- you hear interesting arguments about things you would not have otherwise thought of. it can have you change your mind. my first time of the million bell initiatives here was extremely.

>> i have already said i'm going to download it. just kidding. going to our last question of the evening from the audience. >> i was going to ask what you are talking about, which is the unintended consequence of technology helping polarized the nation more. my question comes down to this, what roles do you see yourself having on actually using technology so we can graduate and use it as a way to work together? there is so much overlap on issues like immigration that different sides agree on. when you go into this world of sorting and dividing, i'm not going to work with that person because they are so e