There tends to be some reservations within tech/startup communities to work together with their cities but this event would not be possible on the scale that we have achieved without our involvement with our local government.

Hack4Reno is a completely open source event that is currently being planned and executed openly on Github and after our event we will be going through the repositories and wikis to clean up and provide a template for other cities to do what we are currently doing for the Reno area. Follow along with the updates on Twitter @hack4reno or the organizers @elskwid, @yodasan, @ kristyfifelski or myself, @colinloretz.

Office of The Mayor
City of Reno, Nevada

Proclamation

WHEREAS, with the development of new technologies and an increasingly connected and engaged population, it is essential for government leadership to support open government practices that promote transparency, citizen participation, and collaboration; and

WHEREAS, the City of Reno has a community of talented individuals in the technology space and desires to retain and attract new talent to the area; and

WHEREAS, the City of Reno is committed to supporting economic development activity, including the encouragement of entrepreneurship in web technologies and the greater technology industry; and

WHEREAS, Hack4Reno is a 24-hour civic “hack-a-thon” event that will be held October 15 and 16 at the Pioneer Center for Performing Arts in downtown Reno; and

WHEREAS, Hack4Reno is a partnership with Reno Collective and the City of Reno to inspire developers, designers and entrepreneurs to build apps, websites or services that help the Reno community become a more engaged city; and

WHEREAS, Hack4Reno will help local developers, designers and entrepreneurs to meet one another, learn about other existing talent in the area and showcase local talent; and

WHEREAS, at the Hack4Reno event, civic developers will work with data shared by the City of Reno and surrounding agencies to demonstrate the value in government-citizen collaboration.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Robert A. Cashell, Sr., Mayor of the City of Reno, Nevada, do hereby proclaim

Saturday, October 15 & Sunday, October 16, 2011, as

Hack4Reno Weekend

In and for the City of Reno and I encourage all citizens to support the event by stopping by and encouraging the civic developers to stay awake through this long, 24-hour Hack4Reno event starting at noon on Saturday, October 15, continuing all throughout the night, and ending at noon on October 16, at the Pioneer Center in the downtown Reno.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have set my hand and caused the Seal of the City of Reno, Nevada, to be affixed this seventh day of October 2011.

Reno-Tahoe WordCamp is in just over a week! This event will sell out so if you haven’t signed up yet, you can register here.

There is a whole lot of awesome planned for the weekend including the WordPress Genius Bar, great speakers, and the opportunity to meet a lot of WordPress users, developers, and designers. Chelsea has done a great job organizing the event this year and we hope to see you there!

My talk on Saturday

I’m going to be giving a lightning talk on June 4th at 4pm titled The Zen of WordPress. The possibilities are endless when you’re using WordPress but just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you always should. Before you touch that fancy new plugin, write a line of code or download a new theme, I’ll give you a few questions that you should ask yourself before making any changes to WordPress to ensure it keeps running smoothly and securely.

WordCamp Afterparty

Reno Collective and MediaTemple are putting on an after party for WordCamp attendees at Reno Collective! After you get your fill of WordPress knowledge, come on down and enjoy some libations and get to know your fellow WordPress enthusiasts.

Workshops on Sunday

On June 5th, I’ll be teaching the half-day WordPress Boot Camp for WordPress beginners and Chelsea will be teaching the Child Theme workshop for anyone interested in making kick-ass WordPress themes.

Stepping Back
While I organized RTWC 2009 and 2010 with the help of a great number of volunteers, the building of Lively Labs is my primary focus right now and I am happy to pass on the WordCamp torch to @chexee for 2011. If you’re interested in speaking, sponsoring or attending Reno-Tahoe WordCamp 2011, find out more at http://renotahoewordcamp.com!

The hacking is starting to heat up as all of the hackers/devs who have attended have gotten to know one another over the last couple meetings.

For this month’s hacknight, I worked with Robert Bousquet on communicating RFID data to a sinatra web server via an arduino. It will become the basis for our security system that we are developing for the coworking space.

Come on down and join us! The next couple hacknight dates are March 9, April 13, May 11 and June 8.

This year I submitted a presentation with Eric Jennings from Loopshot called “Beyond Mashups: Connecting Web Apps in the Cloud” to discuss and demonstrate what is possible when trying to connect multiple web applications so that they can send, receive and share data between one another.

Vote Here! http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7077

Beyond Mashups: Connecting Web Apps in the Cloud
Have you ever wanted to capture your project management or time entry data from Basecamp within an invoicing application like Freshbooks, or perhaps a customer relationship management tool like Salesforce.com? Maybe you want your WordPress traffic to publish to multiple analytics systems at the same time, update your Google calendar from your online to-do list app or have Craigslist send you a direct message on Twitter the moment the that first edition of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” shows up? In this session, the presenters will give you a crash course on how simple it is to leverage data from web applications and have them do your bidding. There is not a single web application out there that can do everything. In fact, we believe each one should focus on doing what they were intended and performing those functions extremely well. This session will not only discuss technologies including REST and SOAP APIs, webhooks, microformats, data portability, and JSON/XML data, but also demonstrate how you can connect any number of web based applications together and get them talking with one another with real-world examples.

Questions that will be answered

1. What is a mashup?
2. Are cloud app mashups hard?
3. Who’s JSON and why do I need to know him?
4. How exactly do you leverage the multitude of interesting APIs available on the web today?
5. Can I see some quickie real-world examples of just how mind-blowing this is?

Wondering Ignite Reno is all about?
Watch the intro video to find out!

Check out presentations from the last Ignite Reno.

Think Kindness has collected over 2,500 3,800 pairs of shoes and now we need help delivering them to Nyeri, Kenya, where they will be personally placed on the feet of children in need. Many of these children have never owned a pair of shoes.

Join me on June 7th at the Manzanita Bowl at the University of Nevada, Reno for a 1 mile walk without (or with, if you prefer) shoes. Our goal is to have over 1,500 walkers so please spread the word to your friends, family, and coworkers!

Call to Action! What can you do?
1. Register for TAKE THE WALK today!

2. Visit TAKE THE WALK on Facebook

3. Print or email flyers (PDF) for your friends, family, and coworkers

4. Post the flyer (JPG) on your blog or website

Take The Walk from Brian Williams on Vimeo.