This year’s TransparencyCamp is just around the corner! This year will mark our 6th annual TransparencyCamp and we couldn’t be more excited to host the growing open government community here in the District of Columbia to chat how open data, technology and civic engagement can be used to provide more transparent governing bodies and healthier, happier, engaged communities. This year we have many fun programming plans up our sleeves and a growing list of civic hacking heroes set to attend. We have also been honored with a great line up of OpenGov Champions from across the world to kick off TCamp with keynote and lightning presentations. Read more about the featured speakers of #TCamp14 below!

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Anthea Watson Strong

Strong is a technologist and community organizer working at the intersection of the internet and social systems. Anthea is part of Google’s Social Impact team, building products that facilitate civic engagement, open societies and free expression across digital platforms. Through their products, Anthea’s team has helped millions of people vote and engage in the political process. Most recently, she launched the Google Civic Information API to make it easier for developers to build useful new civic apps. During the 2012 campaign cycle, Anthea spent 12 months working as the Director of Voter Experience with the Obama technology team. On the campaign, she joined a team of baller engineers who built some pretty cool stuff that helped reach, register and protect potential voters and re-elect the President. Before joining the campaign, she ran an open data effort, the Voting Information Project— a non-partisan effort to collect, standardize and distribute, through an open API, a nationwide database of polling locations and election related information. The API received 22 million look-ups in 2012 and was used by Google, AT&T, Microsoft, Foursquare, CNN and Politics-360 among many others. Anthea lives in a little blue house in Washington DC with her husband, Reid Strong and her cat, Wallace.  Reid is a civil rights attorney at USDA, and the cat spends his days being grumpy about life.  When she’s not causing the establishment problems, Anthea likes to swim, wear vintage sunglasses and coax her many houseplants into not dying.

Eric Gundersen

Gundersen believes that open data and open source are going to change everything. He is the CEO of Mapbox, a platform that uses open source and open data to give developers the power to make maps that embody their product and brand based in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. Eric got his start in the mapping and open data space at Development Seed, building open source tools for international development agencies. He holds a master’s degree in international development from American University in Washington, DC, and has dual bachelor’s degrees in economics and international relations.

Susana Vasquez

Vasquez serves as the executive director of the Chicago office of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). LISC Chicago’s mission is to connect neighborhoods to the resources they need to become stronger and healthier. She has more than twenty years working within the field of community organizing and development. Ms. Vasquez joined LISC in 2003 as a program officer and soon became director of the Chicago office’s most ambitious effort—the New Communities Program (NCP), a ten-year demonstration to build organizational capacity and support comprehensive community development across 16 neighborhoods. As director of that program, she helped define and expand the field of community development, while raising more than $60 million from private and public sources to support neighborhood work. Ms. Vasquez earned a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She has a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Ellen S. Miller

Miller is the co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based, non-partisan non-profit dedicated to using the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency. She is the founder of two other prominent Washington-based organizations in the field of money and politics — the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Campaign — and a nationally recognized expert on transparency and the influence of money in politics. Her experience as a Washington advocate for more than 35 years spans the worlds of non-profit advocacy, grassroots activism and journalism. Ms. Miller’s work has recently been featured by 2013 Campaigns & Elections Magazine (“CampaignTech Nonpartisan Innovator” ), in Government Technology (“Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers in Public Sector Innovation,” March 2011), Washingtonian Magazine (“100 Tech Titans,” May, 2009), Fast Company, (“The Most Influential Women in Technology,” January, 2009), WIRED Magazine (“15 People The Next President Should Listen To,” October, 2008), The Chronicle of Philanthropy (“Seeking Online Exposure,” January, 2008). Ms. Miller also served as deputy director of Campaign for America’s Future, was the publisher of TomPaine.com and was a senior fellow at The American Prospect. She spent nearly a decade working on Capitol Hill. Ellen serves on the Board of Directors of the Sunlight Foundation, Publish What You Fund, the Center for Responsive Politics and Heaven Hill Distilleries. She is a Trustee of the Awesome Foundation, Washington, D.C. and is a member of the Policy Advisory Council of Transparency International, U.S.

Edgar Rios

Rios currently serves as Project Officer for Open Puerto Rico/CIPP and is responsible for the organization’s day to day efforts and operations. His 10+ year career working with diverse educational nonprofit organizations spans from Puerto Rico, the United States and Mexico. He has also worked as a Research Associate in the private sector for a Public Policy Research firm. He has contributed to many and varied executive projects and programs, serving as an interdepartmental liaison, as well as point person for diverse cross organizational collaborations. He possesses a Masters in Public Administration with coursework in Non Profit Management. Additionally, he possesses a Masters in Social Sciences with concentration in Social Research Methods.

Ted Henderson

Henderson is the founder of Capitol Bells, an application that uses radio waves to track Congressional proceedings in real-time, and a former congressional staffer under Rep. Dale Kildee (D-MI) and engineer turned civic hacker. After Congressman Kildee’s retirement in 2013, Ted started Capitol Bells to track Congress in real-time and to update constituent engagement for the social web.

Paul Lenz

Lenz is the Head of Finance and International Projects for mySociety. He joined the organisation in January 2011 having worked in the commercial sector for 15 years, the last of 5 of which were with BT Group PLC where he held a range of management and marketing positions. Paul’s role in mySociety covers both overall operational management, and specific focus on working with partner groups that use mySociety’s tools and open-source code base to drive democratic engagement and accountability around the world. This has included managing the re-launch of Mzalendo.com in Kenya and working with Hutspace to launch Odekro.org in Ghana, and most recently working with the Parliamentary Monitoring Group in South Africa on the launch of People’s Assembly, pa.org.za. Additionally Paul manages the expansion of the Alaveteli Freedom of Information platform internationally – versions are live in 12 different countries – and he also leads the mySociety side of their partnership with Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente (FCI) in Chile to develop online tools as part of the Poplus.org project. Paul has an MA in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford and an Advanced Post-Graduate Diploma in Environmental Decision Making from the Open University, UK.

Felipe Heusser

Heusser is a researcher in the field of transparency and a citizen activist using web technology as a mean for civic organizing and reducing power asymmetries within societies. He is the co-Founder and Director of Ciudadanointeligente.org, the 2011 winners of the Golden Nica award for Digital Communities from Ars Electrónica. Felipe is affiliated to the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, Ashoka Fellow, and co-founder of Subela.cl (online radio) and Rhinobird.tv, a global live-streaming network, winner of the 2012 Knight News Challenge. Felipe has served as Director of the Personal Democracy Forum- Latin America, Director of Legal Affairs at Un Techo para Chile, Senior advisor for the Ministry of Labor, and consultant for the Open Data research project at ECLAC-United Nations and IDRC-Canada. He graduated as a Lawyer from the Universidad Católica of Chile, holds a Master in Public Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE), and is currently a PhD Candidate in Government, also at the LSE.

Rachel Hatch

Hatch is a research director for the Ten-Year Forecast program, Rachel spends most of her time customizing and interpreting IFTF research for clients. She has worked with a range of organizations, from large corporations like Procter & Gamble and Hallmark Cards to government agencies like the Office of Naval Research to nonprofit organizations like United Cerebral Palsy, the AARP, and the Episcopal Church. She is an expert designer and facilitator of workshops as well as an experienced game guide in IFTF’s Foresight Engine forecasting engagements. Rachel is also co-curator of TEDxRedding. Before she joined the Ten-Year Forecast team, Rachel worked as a research manager with Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen, focusing on future forces affecting retail, customer relationships, business architecture, branding and consumer insight, supply chains, and leadership development (including the future leadership skills outlined in Bob’s book Leaders Make the Future). Rachel’s current research is broad by design, spanning the five domains of the Ten-Year Forecast: work, wealth, bodies and minds, planet, and power. In addition, she is doing deep dives into affective technologies, digital versus tangible choice points, and the intersection between new media and religion. She holds a BA in religion and psychology from St. Olaf College, an MDiv from Yale Divinity School, and an MPhil in ecumenical studies from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

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Many thanks to all our speakers! We can’t wait to get this party started. Check out the TransparencyCamp 2014 schedule here, and if you’re a TCamper with a session idea, please add it to the party here.