Open City/Open 311

Jennifer Pahlka is the founder and executive director of a new non-profit, Code for America. Previously she was the co-chair and general manager of the Web 2.0 events for TechWeb, in partnership with O’Reilly. Prior to that, she chaired Enterprise 2.0, and before that was the director of the Game Group at CMP. During her tenure in the games business, she oversaw the dramatic growth of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) from 1995 to 2003 and launched a number of notable programs, including the Independent Games Festival, known as the Sundance of the game industry, and the Game Developers Choice Awards. Her roles included publisher of Game Developer magazine and Gamasutra.com, the premiere web site for game developers, and executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), an independent non-profit association serving game developers around the world. She has served on the advisory boards of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and the GDC and held a board of directors position on the IGDA for three years. She is a graduate of Yale University.

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Nigel Jacob is in a state of motion. A native of Ontario, Canada, Nigel has lived in Boston since 2001. During this time he has undergone a steady evolution from his beginnings as a software-engineer to a graduate student (Tufts University, PhD)to, currently, the co-Director of the City of Boston’s innovation office, the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics. Nigel believes that the confluence of the behavioral-economics of computing, the modern social-entrepreneurship movement and the nature and need of modern cities are forming a perfect-storm to create innovative, new social-structures and opportunities for development. Currently, Nigel is working on delivering transformative services to Boston’s residents via the development of sustainable models of innovation for Cities.

Phil is the Open Government Program Manager at OpenPlans, a non-profit organization that develops technology and media to improve civic services, urban livability, and local democracy. Phil’s specific focus is to facilitate collaboration between cities on the development of open standards and best practices around open government initiatives. Recently Phil has been helping to direct and mediate the development of the Open311 standard so that cities can leverage web enabled 311 services in an open and interoperable way.

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Ben Berkowitz is the Founder/CEO of SeeClickFix a free web service that allows anyone to report local problems and collaborate to solve them. He is the founder of a neighborhood association district, the Upper State Street Association, and was named New Haven Town Green’s 2008 Collaborator of the Year.

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Bryan Sivak was appointed by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on October 13, 2009 to the Cabinet post of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the District of Columbia. As CTO, Sivak leads the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), an organization of more than 500 staff that provides technology services and leadership for 86 agencies, 38,000 employees, residents, businesses and millions of visitors.

Sivak has over 15 years of experience in building software and internet technologies and organizations. In 2002, he founded and developed InQuira, Inc., a multi-national technology solutions company whose products are used at top private and public sector organizations including Bank of America, UK Ministry of Defence, Nokia and T-Mobile. During his tenure, he oversaw every aspect of the business from design and development of the product to sales, marketing and management activities relating to the overall execution of InQuira’s business plan and growth of the company. In 2005, he moved to London and opened the European office of the company, which he grew from zero to 30% of the company’s revenue in four years.

Prior to his work with InQira, Sivak founded Electric Knowledge LLC, which provided the world’s first Natural Language Search engine available on the web. The company’s customers included Bank of America and Fidelity Investments and several others. Electric Knowledge eventually merged with Answerfriend, which was the basis for the formation of InQuira.

Sivak holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.

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