Jason Aaron Kiesel

I don’t know if many of you know, but I founded a company called CitySourced recently. Very simply, we make it really easy to make your city a better place with your smartphone. See a pothole or some graffiti? Snap a picture of it with your iPhone and it automatically gets reported to City Hall. Cool, eh? Well, I think it is. (Granted, I’m really, really geeky) While our application works in over 1900 cities nationwide, we recently launched CitySourced as the official mobile platform for the City of San Jose. We held a download day on December 12th, and I have to say, the results are really impressive. In just a few days, hundreds of issues have been reported, and all those issues have been worked into the backend workflow of the city itself. The reports that get filed will be automatically updated when at various stages in the report lifecycle (submission, confirm receipt, resolved, etc.) This is just one of many cities to adopt our platform officially, and we’re excited to bring on many more as the new year approaches.

If you’d like to download the CitySourced application for your city, you can do so here (it’s completely free!) – http://itunes.apple.com/app/citysourced/id336854714

And if you have any issues that come up, please don’t hesitate to email them to me.

Enjoy the app, and have a very safe and happy holiday!

So my partner, Kurt Daradics, has lined up some really strong power intros into the California Republican Party (which is pretty insane, if you ask me). We had a great lunch with Matt Robbins, their political director, on Wednesday and he’s asked us to come up to their first annual tech summit and speak as to what we’re up to with FreedomSpeaks. We’re both really stoked on the reception our product is getting, and we’re excited to be an integral part of this new “Government 2.0″ initiative (cheesy, I know). Supposedly, there are going to be some heavy hitters at the summit tomorrow – Newt’s Director of New Media, the NRP’s Director of Media, and a handful of others. I’ll let you all know how it goes!

On a similar note, we’ll be pushing out our CitizenCamp concept soon – probably middle summer launch (maybe July 4 ~ish). The elevator pitch on that one is “online plus offline equals streamlined”. We are basically trying to take the concepts of FreedomSpeaks and adapt them to the offline world – taking our online social circles offline to greater impact civic and social change. We’ll have how to’s on any number of things – from how to start a petition to getting an initiative on the ballot to strategies on getting involved. Ultimately, we want people to give a damn. It’s time to wake up the neighborhood, y’all!

Thanks for tuning in. Feel free to contact me if you would like to get involved.