Madison CityCamp, on Saturday, June 16th, will bring together local government officials, municipal employees, programmers, designers, citizens, and journalists to share perspectives and insights about the cities in which they live.

CityCamp recognizes that local governments and community organizations have the most direct influence and impact on our daily lives. This event seeks to create local communities of practice who are dedicated to design, process, and technology applications that make cities and other local communities more open and “user friendly”.

In Madison, we’ve had some recent community projects that build on top of open government data and/or complement existing city services, best exemplified by the Madison Metro Transit API. CityCampMadison would like to build on this momentum, learn from those experiences and explore new ideas around open, community resources that help city and municipal organizations innovate and deliver new tools to its citizens.

This is the followup to our successful 2011 CityCamp. The focus of the 2012 Camp is rough consensus and running code, with a priority on deploying working systems. While this may not be last CityCamp as a singular event, we hope it will mark the transition from occasional events to a more sustained community of civic hackers.

The day will be broken up into two parts. In the morning we will have a series of sessions by members of the Madison community discussing project and initiatives they are involved with that are contributing to the Madison ecosystem. The tentative morning scheule is posted here:

http://citycampmadison.org/sessions/

After lunch (provided by our generous sponsors), we will break into an unconference, where people can follow up with the morning presenters, host their own sessions or work together on projects. Session ideas are being discussed on Google Moderator and can give you a good sense for the types of topics that may be discussed at the event.

http://goo.gl/mod/oTcG

Our website is http://citycampmadison.org/. The camp begins at 10am on Saturday, June 16th 2012, and will take place at the Computer Sciences building on the UW campus (1210 W Dayton St). There is no cost to attend, though we do ask that you register so we can order enough food. Registration is available here: http://citycampmadison2012.eventbrite.com/

Congratulations to Sector67 member team C-Motive Technologies for making it into the top 12 in the WI Governor’s Business Plan Competition this year.  Micah Erickson, Dan Ludois, and Justin Reed have been working out of the business incubator for several months preparing a number of prototypes and experiments with their motor technologies.

We see a few other of our friends have made it as well, including Aaron Larner’s Style Shuffler, born at the first Build Madison event (then called Brainsy) that we hosted.  Ankit Agarwal’s Imbed Biosciences was the first place Burrill Business Plan winner ahead of Sector67 in the 2010 competition, we’re happy to see him remaining in the Madison area and working hard on his invention!

Best of luck to everyone, we’ll see you there on Tuesday where we’ll be on a panel discussing lean startups.

Wisconsin’s first Startup Weekend event, ‘Startup Weekend Madison’, is coming to Madison April 27th-29th, 2012. Organized by leaders from UW-Madison, Madison College, Edgewood College, Capital Entrepreneurs, and Sector67, the goal of Startup Weekend Madison is to bring together entrepreneurial minds from Southern Wisconsin and beyond to collaborate on innovative projects and potentially form new startup companies.

Startup Weekends are weekend-long, hands-on experiences where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs can find out if startup ideas are viable; nearly 500 Startup Weekends have taken place around the globe, with 200 more currently in the planning phase. Developers, designers, marketers, product managers and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, launch startups and compete for prizes in 54 high-energy hours. Anyone looking to test the entrepreneurial waters is welcome, however the experience is especially useful to entrepreneurs interested in receiving feedback on an idea, looking for a co-founder, or who want to learn new skills.

Startup Weekend Madison will take place at the Madison College – West Campus, 302 South Gammon Road, Madison, WI. Registration covers the cost of instruction, mentorship, seven locally prepared meals, and a Startup Weekend Madison T-shirt and water bottle; early bird and student discounts are available, so the cost is $49-$99 for the full weekend. Participants must register by April 13th for the early bird discount: http://madison.startupweekend.org/. Accommodations are not included in the fee but will be available at an additional cost.

Lorin Toepper is the Executive Director of Economic and Workforce Development – Southwest Region at Madison College and chairs the Startup Weekend Madison Committee. “Startup Weekends are risk-free environments where everyone is expected to roll up their sleeves and dive into the exhilarating world of startups,” says Toepper. “This is a fun, high-energy opportunity to create something new with a team of innovative thinkers, and we’re proud to be bringing it to Wisconsin.”

Startup Weekend Madison is one of the signature bookend events of Capital Entrepreneurs Week, which will feature a series of experiential, educational, and social opportunities for entrepreneurs. The events kick off on Wednesday, April 25th with the Capital Entrepreneurs Open Social and finish with ‘3 Day Startup Madison’, a weekend event for pre-registered teams of student entrepreneurs. For a complete event listing with details visit http://www.capitalentrepreneurs.com/week/.

Startup Weekend Madison is sponsored by Google, Earth Information Technologies, Gener8tor, and Neider and Boucher. For more information and the online application visit http://madison.startupweekend.org. Watch a video about Startup Weekends here: http://vimeo.com/28872840.