The Disruptathon is providing their innovation discovery platform (including super slick branded iPod Touch devices) to select the winners in real-time at the contest finale & party at Ben’s Next Door.  The winner gets… wait for it… a framed picture on the illustrious wall of Ben’s Chili Bowl (close by to Bill Cosby or Obama, of course), Ben’s gear, gift cards, some serious bragging rights — and even an ‘unveiling’ party with 20 friends (nice).

PHASE 1 – April
The contest kicks off on April 5th at Tech Tasters (12pm-3pm) at Ben’s Next Door.

Community votes on ideas to help guide developers - [CLICK HERE]

PHASE 2 – May
Apps are created, submitted to first round.

Finalists are announced, Apps are tweaked and polished.

CONTEST FINALE – June 20th
The whole thing will conclude on June 20th (the final event of #DCWeek) with a voting and awards party at Ben’s Next Door. Apps are presented,  the community votes in real-time, and winners are announced!

Everything you need can be found here: http://apps4bens.com

The only question is, why am I not a mobile app developer?!

Download the Digital Capital Week Overview PDF or Download the Full Details PDF

What is Digital Capital Week?

Digital Capital Week (DCWEEK) is a 10 day festival in Washington DC focused on technology, innovation and all things digital in our nation’s capital.

The first 2000 General Admission tickets will be free. Registration is OPEN here.

Modeled after Internet Week NY, Social Media Week, FotoWeek DC, Fringe Festival, etc. — DCWEEK will consist of a series of distributed events produced and hosted by individuals, organizations and community groups.

It’s a time to do the following:

• to learn from others through sessions, keynotes, workshops and panels
• to meet new friends, clients, partners, investors and collaborators
• to focus on the issues that can be addressed in new ways
• to come together to support innovative businesses, people and ideas
• to showcase the DC area as a region for technology, innovation and creativity
• to work on projects that benefit the city and the world
• to experiment with what’s possible
• to have fun at some great parties!

How much is it to attend?

• The first 2000 General Admission tickets will be free.
• Specific events will be hosted by community members and will have an entry fee

How do I connect with others participating in DCWEEK?

Join the Facebook Group

Use/follow the hashtag #DCWEEK

Follow @dcweek on Twitter

When is DCW?

DCWEEK will kick off on June 11th and conclude on June 20th, 2010. The full schedule of events is located here and will be updated frequently:http://bit.ly/dcwcal

Who is participating in DCW?

Technologists, Artists, Entrepreneurs, Communicators, Govies, and social capitalists of all kinds will participate.  Use this as an opportunity to hang out with your tribe, or connect with a new one! The schedule is segmented according to these participant groups for your convenience.

Who is behind DCWEEK?

DCWEEK is co-produced by iStrategyLabs and Shiny Heart Ventures.

iStrategyLabs is an idea foundry that brings new ideas to life in the digital and physical world for clients, communities and ourselves. We specialize in experiential, word-of-mouth, and social media marketing.

Shiny Heart Ventures is a technology company with heart and soul, focused on creating community powered products and services that remind us of the joys of life.

Who are the supporters and partners?

This thing is OFFICIAL! DCWEEK has support from the WDCEP (Washington DC Economic Partnership), DC Office of Planning, CTDC (Cultural Tourism DC), OCTO (DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer) and the city’s BIDS (Business Improvement Districts).

Ways to Participate:

1)  Attend! Register here: http://dcweek.eventbrite.com and build an itinerary here: http://bit.ly/dcwcal. Most events won’t be populated until late Spring.

2)  Host an event/session. What will you add to Digital Capital Week?

• Schedule your typical monthly meetup during Digital Capital Week
• Create a panel, workshop, roundtable and let us know where it will be
• Host a ‘studio tour’ to show off your stuff
• Create a demo lounge for people to show off their own stuff
• Throw a party, or host a fundraiser for a digital cause
• To submit an event it must have the following characteristics:
• It must take place in DC
• It must take place between June 11th and June 20th
• It must not have the same content at the same time as another event
• Must submitted to the Event Submission Form here: http://bit.ly/dcweform

3)   Lead/participate in a project

Digital Capital Week is not just 10 days of parties and sessions. It’s also an opportunity for you to collaborate on a project with others. If you’d like to participate in a project, please use the event RSVP to indicate your lever of interest. The following kinds of projects will be developed by DCW participants:

• Local projects – bridge the digital divide and work on civic innovation projects to make your neighborhood better
• Global projects – DC is home to innumerable global NGOs that need our help to solve the worlds problems.
• Design + Dev project – build something for someone who needs it badly! We’ll source assignments from worthy non-profits that could use your help.
• Art Project – want to create some digitally infused art, or shoot/screen a film? Lead or join an art project during Digital Capital Week.
• Hard Problems – Most problems won’t get solved during a session or even a full day conference. If you’ve got a hard problem you want help solving over this 10 day period and beyond this type of project is right for you.

4)   Sponsor or Partner with DCWEEK

To explore sponsoring/partnering with Digital Capital Week, please contact DJ Saul:

dj@istrategylabs.com, 541-521-1349, http://twitter.com/darienjay100

Craig delivered insights that kept us at the edge of our seats. Rather than recap them here, I’ve embed the video below. If you’re passionate about technology, democracy and the web this conversation is for you:

Networked Democracy with Craig Newmark and Peter Corbett at FedScoop’s VIP event at the Newseum October 14, 2009 from FedScoop on Vimeo.

Additional videos from this conference can be found here: FedScoop’s Vimeo Channel

The full presentations can be found here. This is the slide of the ecology:

The conference was simply remarkable – O’Reilly Media did an amazing job. As is typically for me, however, I ended up working in the speaker’s lounge most of the time…and missed nearly all the presentations. When I emerged from my cave, I discovered that Clay Shirky, Macon Phillips (Director of New Media – The White House), and LTG Sorenson (CIO – The Army) had discussed Apps for Democracy in their presentations. Their presentations are here:

Clay Shirky’s “Technology Insight”:

“Kojo Nnamdi One-on-One with Macon Phillips”:

Linton Wells w/ LTG Sorenson and LTG Justice: “Innovation from Within: Apps for Security Program in Armed Forces”

Civic innovation is on the march for sure! If you’re interested in hearing about more of this kind of thing, make sure you sign up for a new organization that’s just getting off the ground – Code for America.

Regardless of whether or not we win the Big Apps project, we’re committed to building our business in NYC, and adding tremendous value to the tech/social media/marketing communities in The City as we’ve done – and will continue to do – in DC.  iStrategyLabs is a strange bird – we feel much more like a community organizing entity than anything else, but we’re a for profit that does marketing/innovation work for brands both big and small.  In the end, what we’re passionate about is adding value to communities and solving problems – and The Big Apple’s got big problems to work on just as DC does.

This is an especially sweet moment for me personally, for a number of reasons:

1. I was born at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in Palisades Park, NJ – in the last great decade of the 20th century (the 80′s).
2. I grew up in Ridgewood, NJ and began my love affair with NYC as a 7-year old, heading to Yankees’ games with my late grandfather (my namesake), who classically called the Yankees “a bunch of bums” whenever they were losing, and “the greatest team in the world” when they were winning.
3. My 9th birthday included a trip to Yankee Stadium to meet the dominant closing pitcher Dave Righetti who, like many celebrities, sported a monkey on his shoulder when we met. I’m still not sure why the 80′s had so many monkeys in it.
4. By 12, my friends and I were riding our bikes 20 miles to get to the GW Bridge just to spit off of it and head back home.
5. At 15, my friends and I began hopping on the NJ Transit, and then grabbing the PATH from Hoboken to Christopher Street to explore Greenwich Village and Central Park. Yes, we were your classic Bridge and Tunnel (BnT) kids that New Yorkers despise – especially when they too were once BnT’s themselves.
6. At 23, I graduated from business school at Emory and lived out the first big dream of my young life – to live and work in NYC. I got my start as a TV Producer for VideoFashion Network… running around the world shooting fashion shows and learning how to tell stories using media. Our new office is a couple blocks from my old office, and I plan to frequent Cafe Angelique as I did back in 2003/2004 – it has the best coffee in NYC!

iStrategyLabs will celebrate its 2-year anniversary in about two weeks – and in that time, during a period of serious economic strife, we’ve grown from a team of one (me) to 4 full time iStrategists, along with a sea of talented collaborators who are helping us forge new paths in fields of interactive strategy, experiential marketing, content creation, civic engagement, and more.

If you’re in NYC, drop me a line – I’ll be splitting my time between DC and NYC from now on and would love to talk about what you’re up to, and see if we can find a way to work together.

If you know anything about the work we do at iStrategyLabs, you know we’re suckers for a good unconference. Over the past two years, we’ve created, hosted, sponsored and/or co-organized so many terrific open format events – from WidgetDevCamp, to BarCampDC2, Apps for Democracy code jams, Transparency Camp, Government 2.0 Camp, Participation Camp, Privacy Camp and more.

You could say we’ve become pretty good at getting people together for a common purpose – to share a vision, explore possibilities and get down to the creation new things. You could also say that we’re very passionate about citizen engagement as we see the future of innovation being driven by citizens empowered by their government and other institutions to do great things. That’s what our experiment Apps for Democracy is about.

Which brings me to PublicMediaCamp. When NPR and PBS began thinking about how to strengthen the relationship between public broadcasters and their communities, they turned to iStrategyLabs to collaborate on a framework that could serve as a guide for local market public broadcasters across the country to use for engaging their talented citizens to not only foster dialogue, but even better, build something together. Though most bricks will be made of 1′s and 0′s, either in the form of new civic apps or media projects, the most durable bricks these PublicMediaCamps will cement together will be human relationships. These relationship will build enduring bridges between public media and citizens with the end result being a strong mediascape and cityscape.

PublicMediaCamp will begin as a nationally focused unconference, taking place on the weekend of October 17th at American University’s campus in Washington DC. It is co-hosted by NPR, PBS and AU’s Center for Social Media, in conjunction with iStrategyLabs. But PublicMediaCamp won’t stop there – it will roll out across the country organically as other local public broadcasters pickup the torch and create their own camps in their own cities and towns. We’ll support them with a step-by-step guide for creating these kinds of innovation events, and provide a flexible technology framework for content publishing, event planning and virtual collaboration.

If I’m not mistaken, everything we do will be released under a creative commons license for everyone to use, remix and fuel their own community development efforts. We’ll release the guide and further information as soon as we can. See you at #PubCamp!

Further Reading: @acarvin has a post up on NPR.org

So what do you think?