Brendan Babb
@brendanbabb.bsky.social
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📥 555
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Chief Innovation Officer & i-team Director, Anchorage, Alaska | Math | DJing | Biomimicry | GenAI
reposted by
Brendan Babb
Quanta Magazine
10 months ago
These are coral polyps, tiny animals that build coral reefs. Coral can grow into many shapes, including shelves, boulders, pillars, branches and cauliflower-like nubs. How these structures emerge is a kind of polyp packing problem.
www.quantamagazine.org/the-elegant-...
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Are you a city/county government employee? Then come join the Results for America Results Network and discuss evidence-based solutions to help address communities' biggest challenges.
resultsnetwork.results4america.org
#LocalGovernment
#ResultsforAmerica
#EvidenceBased
@bloombergcities.bsky.social
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Join The Results Network
https://resultsnetwork.results4america.org/
10 months ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Beth Foraker
about 1 year ago
E-bikes are a legit car replacer! 💙🚲💙
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Michael Baskin
about 1 year ago
ChatGPT is an awesome tool for preparing facilitation, especially as an experienced facilitator. It helps me brainstorm creative agendas, foresee challenges, draft messaging, train co-facilitators, and wrap it all up…all with the facilitation methods I like. Paired with MiroAI….magic.
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Brent Toderian
about 1 year ago
IMPORTANT NEW STUDY: Fully flexible parking rules would result in MORE NEW HOMES than legalizing granny flats & larger multifamily buildings near transit combined, even if every new building still included some amount of parking. The
#PowerOfParking
.
@sightline.org
www.sightline.org/2024/12/10/p...
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Office of Mayor Michelle Wu 吳弭
about 1 year ago
Our $13M Boston Acquisition Fund offers low-interest loans to local, mission-driven developers to purchase housing, keep tenants in their homes, and make sure these properties remain permanently affordable.
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Boston launches new fund to preserve affordable rental properties
The fund will provide loans to developers to buy existing rental properties and prevent them being sold to investors who would convert them to condos.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2024-12-12/boston-launches-new-fund-to-preserve-affordable-rental-properties
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Brent Toderian
about 1 year ago
Paris definitely wasn’t always this way. This is very recent. It wasn’t magic. It just took vision and leadership. Your city could choose leadership too. Great pic via @JBPssx
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Just started reading this at lunch (Alaska is 4 hours earlier than East Coast) and it so cool! Thanks US Digital Response and State of New Jersey for this amazing research and work and for sharing it openly for other states and cities to leverage and remix!
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Stephen Goldsmith
about 1 year ago
2/ A big thank you to these powerhouse panelists,
@eyalfeder.bsky.social
, Arti Tangri, Carrie Bishop, and Enzhou Wang, who made moderating this session a great experience and shared fantastic insights.
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Stephen Goldsmith
about 1 year ago
1/ Moderating a great conversation today at the 2024 GovAI Coalition Summit
@cityofsanjose.bsky.social
and Government Technology. I had the honor of leading a data governance session discussing ethics and best practices for public sector employees on the front lines of integrating
#AI
and
#GenAI
...
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A good discussion about the
#energy
future of
#Anchorage
,
#Alaska
at the
#Assembly
retreat on Energy & Infrastructure. I'll be on a panel at 1pm talking about solar & Muni buildings. Happening now at UAA Student Union -
muni.org/Departments/...
Live feed -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqlt...
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Assembly Retreat on Energy & Infrastructure
YouTube video by Municipality of Anchorage Meetings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqltoZdPJ5I
about 1 year ago
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Honored to be named one of
@statescoop.bsky.social
's 2024 City Executives of the Year, on behalf of the
#Anchorage
i-team (Ben Matheson & Emily Bokar), Muni IT Dept., Muni employees & partners.
#Alaska
#LocalGovernment
#iteams
@bloombergdotorg.bsky.social
statescoop.com/list/announc...
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Brent Toderian
about 1 year ago
IMPORTANT STUDY: “On average, the implementation of 30 km/h speed limits in European cities demonstrated a 23%, 37% & 38% reduction in road crashes, fatalities & injuries respectively. Lower speed limits also yielded environmental benefits.”
www.nrso.ntua.gr/review-of-ci...
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#GivingTuesday
- I'm the co-captain of
@codeforanchorage.org
and we would love you to consider donating to our
#civictech
volunteer group -
hcb.hackclub.com/donations/st...
We have been making projects for 12 years for
#Anchorage
&
#Alaska
and funds go to pay for software services, pizza and more.
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Mayor Melanie Kebler
about 1 year ago
Building homes - it works.
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Jason Thorne
about 1 year ago
If you zone it, they will come. Trend in “Attached Accessory Dwelling Units” (planner-speak for housing units like basement apartments) since zoning/parking restrictions were removed (data and graph from new University of Toronto School of Cities report
schoolofcities.github.io/gentle-densi...
)
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Totally agree! Also their is a certain excitement in having an idea and having
#GenAI
create quick prototypes moments later for you to refine that is very energizing.
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Jason Thorne
about 1 year ago
A micro-theatre. Love it. Every park could have one.
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This should be an informative and interesting show on Wednesday, Dec. 4th. I’ve heard
@cmyeaton.bsky.social
speak several times and enjoyed her perspective.
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Brent Toderian
about 1 year ago
“Believe it or not, electric bikes offer more exercise than pedal bikes on average. That fact might sound strange, but the science is clear.” Why e-bikes actually give more exercise than “acoustic”bikes. (but both/either are excellent when it comes to better cities)
electrek.co/2024/02/20/w...
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Why electric bikes actually give more exercise than pedal bikes
Believe it or not, electric bikes offer more exercise than pedal bikes on average. That fact might sound strange (and...
https://electrek.co/2024/02/20/why-electric-bikes-give-more-exercise/
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Find out what
#indigenous
land you are on.
@codeforanchorage.org
collaboration w/ Native Lands Digital -
native-land.ca
land.codeforanchorage.org
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Land Acknowledgement
Learn more about the land you're living, working, or recreating on. Data from native-land.ca/
https://land.codeforanchorage.org/
about 1 year ago
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Apply for Bloomberg American Sustainable Cities (BASC) Innovation Teams - Experiment -
#GenAI
podcast fed job descriptions & overview -
www.brendanbabb.com/experiments/...
Job Listings -
publicinnovation.jhu.edu/about/career...
Not reviewed by
@publicinno.bsky.social
#LocalGov
#iteams
Apply!
about 1 year ago
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More cool stuff out of the
@boston.gov
!
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Mark D. Levine
about 1 year ago
Please enjoy this animation of peak hour MTA subway service (by u/mtdfan)
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Jascha Franklin-Hodge
about 1 year ago
Reviewing our first year of data about e-bikes in the Bluebikes public bike share system. e-bikes get used much more frequently and people travel farther on them. Those things are workhorses.
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You should check out my friend,
@lanefab.bsky.social
low-carbon house designs and more. And he is a really nice guy.
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Tracy Chou
about 1 year ago
"if you unsubscribed by mistake" I HAVE NEVER UNSUBSCRIBED BY MISTAKE it is always 10000% intentional
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A cool project I worked on w/@codeforanchorage.org, created in collaboration w/Native Lands Digital that lets you enter your city or zip code and learn what
#indigenous
land you are on. Also a FB Messenger bot -
www.messenger.com/t/LandAcknow..
.
land.codeforanchorage.org
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about 1 year ago
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Thanks for sharing this real world data - Bryn
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about 1 year ago
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A) I love
#Clippy
references - B) A good example of what I have been thinking about. Making agents for residents to navigate government services. Privacy & security needs to be figured out, but having an agent watch you apply for SNAP & advise you on next steps to succeed. C) Fix the damn website
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Jonathan Edward Durham
about 1 year ago
Public library energy is the best energy. Like here is all the knowledge we could find, it's been meticulously organized and vetted and it will cost you nothing today, welcome to the absolute pinnacle of human civic evolution, feel free to pull up any bean bag chair you like
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Info on
#Anthropic's
new Model Context Protocol that could be a first attempt at a Lingua Franca for
#GenAI
#Agents
to talk to data, APIs, Servers and other resources.
www.anthropic.com/news/model-c...
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Introducing the Model Context Protocol
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard for connecting AI assistants to the systems where data lives, including content repositories, business tools, and development environments. Its aim...
https://www.anthropic.com/news/model-context-protocol
about 1 year ago
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Being an
#iteam
(#Innovation Team) director is my favorite & most rewarding job ever. If you live or want to live in
#Akron
,
#Ohio
you should look into this Bloomberg American Sustainable Cities i-team Director job.
@bloombergdotorg.bsky.social
#LocalGoverernment
jobs.jhu.edu/job/Akron-i-...
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i-team Director, Akron, OH
i-team Director, Akron, OH
https://jobs.jhu.edu/job/Akron-i-team-Director%2C-Akron%2C-OH-OH-44308/1133208800/
about 1 year ago
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This looks pretty promising from
#Claude
and
#Anthropic
. I need to try some experiments. Model Context Protocol for talking to GitHub, Servers, Databases, APIs.
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Stephan Janssen
about 1 year ago
#Anthropic
releases Model Context Protocol (
#MCP
) A framework that allows Claude to run servers, effectively turning the Claude app into an API. Quickstart tutorial @
glama.ai/blog/2024-11...
Available online MCP servers @
github.com/modelcontext...
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Introducing Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open-source standard released by Anthropic in November 2024 that enables AI models to interact with external data sources through a unified interface.
https://glama.ai/blog/2024-11-25-model-context-protocol-quickstart
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Brent Toderian
about 1 year ago
HOUSING THE HOMELESS SAVES MONEY IN FINLAND: “a recent study showed the savings in emergency healthcare, social services & the justice system totalled as much as €15,000 a year for every homeless person in properly supported housing.” It works AND it saves money.
www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/...
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'It’s a miracle': Helsinki's radical solution to homelessness
Finland is the only EU country where homelessness is falling. Its secret? Giving people homes as soon as they need them – unconditionally
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Brent Toderian
about 1 year ago
Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1k/month. A year later, nearly half had housing. They also had fewer ER visits, nights spent in a hospital, and jail stays. The report estimates that this reduction in public service use SAVED the city $589k.
www.businessinsider.com/denver-basic...
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Denver gave people experiencing homelessness $1,000 a month. A year later, nearly half of participants said they had housing.
Participants in Denver's basic-income program reported having more-secure housing, though results were similar in the trial and control groups.
https://www.businessinsider.com/denver-basic-income-reduces-homelessness-food-insecurity-housing-ubi-gbi-2024-6
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Jonathan Bowles
about 1 year ago
There are 1.5 million adults in NYS who have some college credits but no degree. Our new
@nycfuture.bsky.social
report urges state leaders to create a new program, SUNY Reconnect, to help these adults re-enroll at SUNY & get over the college finish line.
nycfuture.org/research/its...
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It’s Time to Launch SUNY Reconnect | Center for an Urban Future (CUF)
Center for an Urban Future calls for New York to launch SUNY Reconnect for working age adults who have earned some college credits but have no degree.
https://nycfuture.org/research/its-time-to-launch-suny-reconnect
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Michael Hallsworth
about 1 year ago
Great example of govt doing things better: Michigan created a "pizza tracker" so you can see the progress of your benefits application. Led to ⬇️14% in calls to support staff
civilla.org/stories/appl...
h/t
@brendanbabb.bsky.social
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A better way to track your benefits
Designing the country’s first benefits application tracker
https://civilla.org/stories/applications-tracker
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Jay 🦋
about 1 year ago
Bluesky's firehose is a treasure trove of public data for researchers and developers, and it's completely free. Check out our developer docs:
docs.bsky.app
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Brandon Wood
about 1 year ago
Did a very Alaskan thing today, and walked out to see a dead whale that washed up in Anchorage.
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Laura G Mitchell
about 1 year ago
If your city’s bike network is safe & connected, people of all ages & abilities will use it, including people in motorized wheelchairs. Everyone deserves freedom of mobility & to get around in the ways that work best for them. Cities need to ensure that’s possible.
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Jorge Valens 🚀
about 1 year ago
Really enjoyed taking part in The Opportunity Project for Cities cohort this year. Love building cool, impactful solutions for local residents. Particularly those that help people apply for public benefit programs.
www.govtech.com/gov-experien...
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Local Governments Work With Google.org to Design Digital Tools
City and county officials discussed partnering with community organizations and technologists from Google.org on digital tools to resolve neighborhood issues, during a “Demo Day” webinar hosted by The...
https://www.govtech.com/gov-experience/local-governments-work-with-google-org-to-design-digital-tools
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Scott Crass
about 1 year ago
With a nod to inspiration from
@brendanbabb.bsky.social
I went ahead and fed our muni code into a GPT. I've been meaning to do this since AML last year. Check it out!
chatgpt.com/g/g-673edae0...
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ChatGPT - North Star Code Assistant - Experimental
Answers North Star Borough code questions with detailed examples and code references.
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-673edae0e8508191b45448cc6032ef9a-north-star-code-assistant-experimental
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This looks amazing! Sign up today, before you forget during the holiday haze.
#AI
#GenAI
#Safety
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about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Jascha Franklin-Hodge
about 1 year ago
The first City of Boston curbside EV chargers are now live in Charlestown helping "garage orphans" go electric ⚡⚡⚡ . Meet the diverse, local team that's installing the chargers and training up Boston's green jobs workforce.
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Boston’s First Curbside Electric Charging Stations
YouTube video by City of Boston
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B7LhZYDCaMU
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Avoid the Noid -
#Civilla
and the Michigan Health and Human Services department are working on the often talked about in
#localgovernment
, Pizza Tracker for X. In this case for benefits in Michigan. Awesome work!
civilla.org/stories/appl...
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A better way to track your benefits
Designing the country’s first benefits application tracker
https://civilla.org/stories/applications-tracker
about 1 year ago
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Excited to dive into this more, but
#Instacart
providing a
#SNAP
screener could help drive eligible people to apply for SNAP.
#FoodSecurity
www.instacart.com/company/pres...
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Instacart Becomes the First Online Grocery Platform to Launch a SNAP Eligibility Screener to Educate Consumers and Streamline Access to Benefits Nationwide
New tool designed to help reduce barriers to access, expands the SNAP resources available on Instacart SAN FRANCISCO – November 21, 2024 – Instacart
https://www.instacart.com/company/pressreleases/instacart-launches-snap-eligibility-screener-to-support-consumers-and-streamline-access-to-benefits/
about 1 year ago
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reposted by
Brendan Babb
Chief Digital Officer for London
about 1 year ago
🚲 One of my fave city innovations I must ramp is how Transport for London & GoogleMaps are working together to make
#cycling
safer. Because of this, today you can choose a safer, low-traffic route across the city. Here's how this amazing
#collaboration
happened... 🧵 1/6
tfl.gov.uk/info-for/med...
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Transport for London and Google Maps collaborate to make cycling better for Londoners and people across the world
.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2023/october/transport-for-london-and-google-maps-collaborate-to-make-cycling-better-for-londoners-and-people-across-the-world
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