Seattle: Tech for Good, Tech for Community

Seattle’s Tech for Good journey, while still in it’s earlier stages, has already made waves in the local community. With groups like DemocracyLab, Open Seattle, and Seattle Tech4Good developing initiatives to engage with community stakeholders in the Seattle area, it is quickly becoming a North American hub for Civic Tech. In 2019, Seattle hosted a Civic Tech Volunteer Hackathon with the specific goal to make strides toward facilitating new opportunities for long-term volunteer engagement between Seattle residents skilled in tech and local organizations (Frischmuth, 2019).

Through projects like this- with an emphasis on community building- the Seattle tech innovation sector has developed a strong base from which to keep working towards larger projects, and scale their impact. With Calgary’s rapidly growing tech sector paralleled to Seattle’s flourishing one, we might look to Seattle as a window into the Calgary sector’s near future and take note of how impactful Tech for Good can be, especially to support and learn from our neighbours.

MM