About Civic Ninjas
We celebrate what works and work to fix what doesn’t driven by an underlying belief that community makes the world possible.
Our Focus
Our Secret Sauce
Our Solutions
Below is a selection of some of our more transformative solutions. All of our solutions are similar in their intent to address government, community or municipal challenges through technology but differ in development and implementation. Additionally, all of our solutions are open sourced under a creative commons license making them freely available to individuals and communities everywhere.
Some of our solutions were inspired by partners who reached out to us with a challenge or opportunity they faced in their efforts to improve lives and outcomes in their communities. Other solutions were directly inspired by “pain points” we, as Civic Ninjas, experienced in either conducting our daily lives or trying to fullfill our own mission to improve communities.
Our Community Services
Events
From conferences to hackathons, fireside chats to Maker Faires, Ignite Talks to Startup Weekends and everything in between our Ninjas have produced some incredible events. We stand ready to help produce these transformative inspiring events in your community.
Community Building
We are available to help you strategically look at your community building needs. Some of these services include needs assessments, stakeholder mapping, asset mapping and other related services. Whatever your community building goal, we stand ready to help.
Workshops & Training
We produce/facilitate workshops and training related to our mission. Some of the topics we cover include: Innovation & Community Building, Civic Technology 101, Maker Movement 101, Entrepreneurship 101, Human Centered Design and Design Thinking.
Our Technology Services
At Civic Ninjas, we believe that the availability of technology services is a critical component in the continued growth and acceptance of open source civic technology. Not every municipality has the time or in house resources to support this technology stack so we have developed a comprehensive suite of services to augment available municipal resources.
Install, Configure, Integrate, Support
Our ICIS Officers are deployed either remotely or on-site to provide install, configure, integrate and support services to municipalities that require services unique to their situation. IT infrastructure varies significantly from city to city, and integration with legacy municipal systems present unique challenges.
Make It So!
Not everyone has staff that can readily fork a GitHub repository, configure a VM, spin-up a database instance and then SSH into a server. We have turnkey solutions to deploy many open source civic software solutions in the cloud. We want to make your deployment of these projects as easy as saying, “Make it so!”.
Help Desk/Support
Help desk/support services are critical to the mainstream adoption of open source civic technology. We offer tiered support for many applications. These services also include automated trouble ticket support, remote call center support, and remote and on-site training.
Our Programs
Ninjas
Our Ninja Program is central to our existence. We have developed tools and techniques to help us identify civic technologists, makers, community builders and entrepreneurs that are doing great things. Our Ninja Program is our way to recognize and thank them for their amazing efforts.
Corps Cities
As the Civic Ninjas footprint expands, we are identifying cities with both a growing number of Ninjas and a local commitment to our organization. These cities will be designated as Civic Ninja Corps Cities. In these cities we will provide various resources and infrastructure to support local initiatives.
Ninja Dojos
In some of our Corps Cities we are setting up Civic Ninja Dojos. These spaces function as both office space for our Ninjas as well as co-working/maker/community/event space for the community at large. We also make our Dojos available to host community events free of charge.
Our Friends
Our Stories
Sunlight Foundation On Life Support, Family Members Notified
The Sunlight Foundation, a well-respected, early pioneer of open government and transparency has sent shock waves through the civic-tech world this week by announcing they may have hit the end of their road.
read moreA love letter from the frontline in Europe.
I might be the luckiest person alive. I just spent a week in Madrid, Spain with the most amazing group of people on the planet. So where was I and why was I there?
read moreCivic Ninjas at the National Maker Faire
This summer Civic Ninjas was invited to the Inaugural National Maker Faire in Washington, D.C that grew out of the Inaugural White House Maker Faire held last year. We were honored to be asked to participate. Seeing the Maker movement’s potential was exciting. Taking a seat at that table was also exciting.
read moreYou say you want a revolution?
How Startup Weekend Tulsa Energy Edition helped start a revolution in how business problems get solved and how new startups are formed.
Startup Weekend has a long and rich history in Tulsa and the upcoming Startup Weekend Tulsa Energy Edition is an exciting addition to the growing list of world first events held here. How we got to this point and how we started this revolution is a great story in itself.
read moreCitizen Power Brigade
Imagine yourself instantly caught in the next major disaster somewhere in the world. If you survive, who are the first 5 people you contact to let them know you are ok?Now imagine it is 24 hours later. All of your electronic devices are dead and there is no power to charge them. How do you let those same 5 people know you are still ok?
read moreThe Feast Civic Hardware Hackathon
A team from Civic Ninjas has been invited to be part of The Feast’s Civic Hardware Hackathon that is focused on hardware technology to help in disasters. We are very excited to partner with some other great folks already involved with this exciting event. Some of the other partners/sponsors include: The Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, IDEO and Intel along with the Rockefeller Foundation, IKEA, and Sparkfun Electronics.
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