Jennifer Pahlka

Before I started Code for America, I spent my career around startups. First it was game developers, small teams trying to make hits in a tough business. Then, when I started working on the Web 2.0 events, it was web startups during times of enormous opportunity and investment.

Right now, if you're a talented developer or designer, government is what you go into if you can't get a better job.

When one neighbor helps another, we strengthen our communities.

There is a certain generation who have grown up being able to mash up, to tinker with, every system they've ever encountered.

I think there is a big disjuncture between what we are served up as consumers and what we are served up as citizens.

Our ability to do great things with data will make a real difference in every aspect of our lives.

You might not think of something like TurboTax as a civic venture, but that product took a confusing interface to a government process and made it simpler and easier to use for citizens.

There is certainly a strong game development community in Texas, centered around Austin, with a significant additional contingency coming over from Dallas.

If there's one thing government needs desperately, it's the ability to quickly try something, pivot when necessary, and build complex systems by starting with simple systems that work and evolving from there, not the other way around.

Cities perform most functions in a very Industrial Age model.

Everything that works on the Internet depends on a lot of people collaborating, but there's also these rules that you see across all the really successful platforms. Many, many, many more people consume the information or benefit from the information than actually contribute the information.

Government technology processes are mind-boggling long and complicated. A procurement process alone is typically two years, and that doesn't account for the time required to actually build the product.