Tech Blog

[#1]

No, really there’s an app for the upcoming Vancouver civic election. Hokey? Kinda pointless in a couple weeks? Yeah, sure on both counts, but that’s not the point here. Civic elections often aren’t the most thrilling electoral events, so anything that can help answer questions, boost interest, or reach people where they “are” is a good thing in my book.

I saw the app on Rebecca “Miss 604” Bollwitt’s blog this morning and gave it a quick download to my iPhone from the App Store. Now, it might not be the most awesome app in the world, but it does give you everything you need to be prepared for the election November 19th.

You can double check that you’re on the voters list, where you can vote, what you’ll need to bring, who’s running, and (once the polls close) the results of the election. The app is pretty easy to figure out with a nice coverflow-esque way to navigate the sections. I’m not here to review the app, there isn’t much point in that, it’s an app that’s only really relevant for a short period of time, if you’re interested in the civic election just download the app and explore. What I think is more important is that the city of Vancouver saw that creating a nice, simple app was a good way to try to reach more people before the election.

Once of the principles of good government is going where the people are and, in Vancouver especially, the people are on their smartphones—and iPhones for sure. You want to help answer people’s questions in a way they can relate to and might think is cool enough to show their friends (or write about on a major Canadian tech blog), putting out a little iPhone app isn’t a bad way to pull that off.

So Vancouverites, check out the app and go vote!

[#2]

Each of us have a different criteria for voting. One of my criteria is how well candidates are able to come up with competent answers to questions at "all candidate meetings". Sadly the app does not list all candidate meetings. With a lot of new faces, it's important to see how everyone performs rather than wasting my vote on incompetence. Remember to vote everyone!