It has been 9 months since I wrote this post calling us Sunlight Labs 2.0. Since then, we, as a community have done the following:

• Built 96 applications around government transparency and accountability, with 45 being built from Apps for America 1, 47 built from Apps for America 2, and Congrelate, TransparencyCorps, ForeignLobbying.org, and CapitolWords built internally here at the Sunlight Foundation. We have a few more in the wings, too– The National Data Catalog, and VotersDaily.

• Built a community of over 1000 developers and designers working on these applications, discussing open source and an open government and moving our country in the right direction.

• Parsed 15 state legislature websites completely, with another 25 nearing completion in the 50 state project

• Created 40 public repositories on GitHub

So it is clear that with strong community building, keeping our heads down and working hard, and making sure that we keep our eyes on the ball, we can do amazing things. So now it is time to take it to the next level. So we’re upgrading SunlightLabs.com

The point here is simple: we want to make it easier for developers and designers to find ways to help, come up with ideas, and start projects of their own. We want to make it easier for you to reach out to people in your community and find people you can work with. And we wanted to make it easy for people who run projects to ask for help. So James built the new SunlightLabs to start providing you with the tools to do just that.

Oh, and there’s merit badges, too.

So enjoy– plan an event in your area, submit an idea to kick off a project, or find a way to contribute to many of projects built by our community and the Sunlight Foundation.