Can a mobile app improve the quality of life for a farmer in America's heartland? Can a web app help school children in Detroit, Michigan?

One of the most impactful projects Fission Strategy worked on this year is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between a nonprofit and a government agency. With tremendous possibilities for open government and Gov 2.0 to influence people’s lives through broadband services, overall implementation so far had seemed inadequate. “This was an opportunity to task civic minded developers with helping to create applications that can truly assist citizens,” said Jake Brewer of Fission.

Working closely with the Knight Foundation and Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Fission Strategy created and implemented a social media and blogger outreach strategy for Apps for Communities, which included making recommendations for the website and managing social media content development and interactions throughout the nearly year-long campaign. Fission Strategy was also responsible for reaching out to developer communities such as Code For America, Y Combinator, and Reddit to engage the most talented & community-spirited developers the web has to offer.

Apps for Communities was a challenge to developers to create apps that deliver personalized, actionable information to people that are least likely to be online. The winning apps provide easy access to relevant content from public data sources.

Through sustained outreach over several months, 75 apps were submitted (see all eligible apps), which is a higher number than many app challenges receive. For example, Sunlight Labs’ two Apps for America contests received just 47 applications each. A team of well known judges — including Mayor Cory Booker of New Jersey, tech investor Marc Andreessen, and Code for America's Jen Pahlka — reviewed and scored the apps.

The Challenge offered $100,000 in prizes to winning application developers at a closing ceremony in the Silicon Valley, where Fission live-tweeted, photographed, and updated Facebook on-site in Silicon Valley at the office of Andreesen Horowitz throughout the winners' award ceremony.

As Alex Howard of O'Reilly Media wrote after the challenge in his Gov20.GovFresh blog, winners of Apps for Communities "are similarly open source and each are focused on problems that citizens actually have":

• Yakb.us, (www.yakb.us) “provides bus riders with arrival times in English and Spanish when a five-digit bus stop number displayed onsite is texted to the local transit agency.”
• Homeless SCC (http://homeless-scc.org) “connects homeless people and families with services according to their specific needs and eligibility.”
• Txt2wrk (www.txt2wrk.net) “helps parolees, the homeless and other job seekers compete on a more level playing field by allowing them to apply for jobs online through a text-to-speech delivery of job postings on any mobile phone.”

At the close of the winners' ceremony, one of our clients at the FCC, Brittany Stevenson, sent us a fantastic skype chat message:

"WAVES
HUGS
You guys were awesome"

Many blogs and media outlets wrote about the challenge, including the White House blog for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. We're proud of the success of the challenge!

FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski with 1st Prize Winner Ryan Resella & the Knight Foundation's Damian Thorman

The Knight Foundation's Damian Thorman with Jen Pahlka of Code for America and Cheryl Contee of Fission Strategy