Host Drew Ogryzek opens the show with more special mentions and giveaways!
Scott Bellware presents a Ruby Microservices workshop in Vancouver, April 29th and 30th. Retweet the tweet below with @vantechpodcast to be entered into a draw for a free ticket! (Drawing and winner announcement on April 22nd):
Microservices and event sourcing workshop in Vancouver on April 29th and 30th. Get your tickets before they're gone! https://t.co/NN6euTR1cx
— Scott Bellware (@sbellware) March 10, 2017
There’s also an Intro to Virtual Reality Workshop brought to us by Design Lab. Tweet your most pressing VR question, along with http://designlablive.com/vr-workshop, @vantechpodcast and @designlablive, for a chance at a free general enrollment seat (Drawing and winner announcement on March 29).
Special guest John Richardson of Ethelo Decisions
Special guest John Richardson is the founder and CEO Ethelo Decisions, a social enterprise dedicated to new ways of doing group decision making, using online technology. Ethelo was born out of trying to find a way of impacting and improving democracy, and answering the question: “What is democracy going to look like in 10, 15, or 20 years, or more importantly, what does it need to look like if we’re going to address the major challenges facing society today?”
With a unique technology that enables groups to make complicated decisions, Ethelo is a mix of commercial enterprise, selling that technology to government and large organizations, and a non-profit organization that provides its technology for free to citizens and organizations that want to engage citizens in doing democratic decision making.
Ethelo can help groups with strategy, high-value decisions like investments, or engaging the public or experts in developing the framework for legislation and regulations. They have several working demos to explore, including using Ethelo for deciding policy around marijuana legislation, international treaties, a neighborhood park, and participatory budget.
For developers interested in democracy as infrastructure, some exciting plans are on the roadmap. Open sourcing the core algorithm behind Ethelo and launching an API are scheduled for as early as sometime this year.
Theme music by A Shell In The Pit from the game Parkitect
The Vancouver Tech Podcast is a weekly show focusing on the growing tech industry in the city of Vancouver. Get caught up on the events and meetups around town, startups, new businesses, developers, designers, community programs, and news. Each episode includes an interview with an outstanding member of our community.
Listen to the show here, email us, or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes
