Public good tech experts from around the world will be flocking to the District in a few days for an inaugural, free festival hosted by a Bay Area nonprofit.
Starting Monday and running through Nov. 15, the Public Good App House Festival is organized by Caravan Studios, a division of nonprofit TechSoup based in San Francisco.
The festival will include panels and demos to showcase public good technologies like financial tech apps and environmental apps. Also, there will be discussions on participatory methodologies, active projects, and impact and scale. All public technologies are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
DC Inno chatted with Marnie Webb, CEO of Caravan Studios, to see what she's excited about from their first D.C. event.
1. Diversity of Speakers
According to Caravan Studios' schedule, speakers run from Dwight Lomayesva of UCLA's Tribal Learning Community to Sean Marcia of Ruby for Good to Rodrigo Iriani of The Trust for the Americas.
Webb said they have 57 speakers at the event this year. She was excited that these speakers represent nonprofits, for-profits, government agencies, international institutions, foundations and universities.
Most speakers are from the U.S., but based on the festival's lineup, speakers are also coming in from Peru, Canada and Brazil.
2. Participants and Networks
Webb said she expects to see about 300 participants, ranging from government workers, technology activists, decision makers at NGOs, people in corporate social responsibility programs, and that each one of them learns from one another's projects.
"Our experience in bringing people together tells us you can bring smart people into the room and give them a space to talk," said Webb. "I am very excited about is the opportunity that discuss impact across projects and across geography. "
3. Public Libraries
The coming event will be held in multiple D.C. libraries, including Petworth, Mt. Pleasant and Shaw (Watha T. Daniel), over the three-day festival.
"Libraries can bring everybody together," said Webb. "It connects people and information."
4. UN Sustainable Development Goals
The festival also plans to highlight and follow the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development throughout its programming, with different events focused on several goals. Webb said she hopes that in showing how public good technologies can align with these development goals, they can walk away from the festival with a working group on how to best utilize public good tech in creating a better world.
"We found D.C. was a good place to have this conversation, because there are so many organizations there and they all thinking about these goals," said Webb.
Webb said the company is scheduling one more event in D.C. in the spring, and hopefully another event in 2018.
Sponsors of the Public Good App House Festival include Twilio, Equinix Impact, Lyft, and Hustle.
