Getting involved with the City of Seattle

I saw a posting last week on Meet at the Pig talking about this CCTAB thing and that they were looking for people to apply to participate in it.

I didn’t even know something like the Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board (CCTAB) existed until I saw that notice. The writeup at Meet at the Pig was excellent and it seemed like a really good thing to get involved with.

I submitted my resume for consideration (it’s an unfunded position – I’m not switching jobs) and got a ping back today asking about interview times early next week. I was told the interview was an informal chat – I haven’t a clue what they’re even going to be asking about. But, like anyone else, I started doing some homework. Their web site was actually a bit tricky to find, even with Google. Fortunately some-how one of their minutes got indexed into the greater google mind-meld, so I was able to track it down. They have agendas and minutes with notes going back a fair bit, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading. They even started podcasting their minutes that I found while digging around, although I didn’t spot the link in the last few minutes to pop it in here.

There’s a lot of interesting projects going on – public wifi, fund matching for community technology programs, an effort of make seattle government more transparent called MyNeighborhood Map, SeattleChannel, the HDTV cutover, cable & fiber provisioning for internet access in the city… I suspect it’s larger and deeper than even that.

It’s got me thinking about grand views and where I think the city government can touch to make Seattle better… and what “better” actually means.