BetaNYC

Mr. Hidalgo stands at the crossroads of technology, government, community, and impact. He believes in participatory communities and uses technology to improve peoples lives. His work has been achieved through patience and organizing problem-solving teams. Mr. Hidalgo is known as an effective organizer who can walk between worlds. Since 2009, he has organized BetaNYC to be a driving force to improve New York Citys use of technology and share its data. BetaNYC has advocated for a suite of government transparency laws, including the citys transformative open data law and city record online law. BetaNYC runs the New York City Civic Innovation Lab/Fellows program, in partnership with the Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer, and curates the NYC School of Data community conference. Mr. Hidalgo is an Eagle Scout. He was a Technology and Democracy fellow at Harvard Kennedy Schools Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation; served as an inaugural member of Code for Americas National Advisory Council, and is a former fellow / currently an affiliate at Data &a; Society Research Institution. Emily joined BetaNYC in 2014 when she was doing fieldwork research in Brooklyn for her Ph.D, and began analyzing changes in Brooklyns stock of rent-stabilized buildings. The data had to be extracted from PDF documents, a project which brought her to a BetaNYC Civic Hacknight in June 2014. Ever since presenting her work then, she has been an enthusiastic member of BetaNYCs leadership committee. Emily believes that recent developments in opening data and in civic technology hold the potential for societal improvement, and she is continuously excited to participate in helping this mission move forward. Co-directing and teaching in the third year of the Civic Innovation Fellowship program is proving to be a very interesting and rewarding first position after her Ph.D. Kate has a MFA in Design for Social Innovation from School of Visual Arts and a BA in Economics from Tufts University where she also minored in ...