Mt. Washington Class of ’29, we know how you feel. (Image via KC Library)
We’ve just graduated to a new website, and we’re damn proud.
In fact, we’d go so far as to say there’s no site quite like it in the whole town — the whole country, perhaps.
And it has very little to do with us — that is, “KC Digital Drive” as an organization.
It all goes back to the tagline: “Technology solutions for a better Kansas City.”
The new KC Digital Drive website is more than content draped over the skeleton of a responsive CMS clotting the local Inter-waves with useless information about Initiative X and Program Z.
Our new site is meant to be a portrait of a community evolving together. It’s you, your peers, and us, all striving together to make Kansas City a better place through technology.
It’s Connecting for Good teaching 1,892 classes to 230 people across Kansas City’s digital divide, giving them the computer skills they need to make a better life.
It’s the Digital Sandbox helping to launch 37 new KC-based companies, creating 154 new jobs.
It’s the 204 coders of 1 Billion Bits logging 63 hours last year discussing how gigabit technology will bring exciting new applications that will enhance our lives.
All this is happening here in Kansas City, and it’s just the start.
When KC Digital Drive was commissioned two years ago to carry out the mission of the Mayors’ Bistate Innovations Team, we were handed a Playbook. It was a drivers’ manual for how to use the fiber-optic gigabit infrastructure to move Kansas City forward in the four big areas of Economic Development, Digital Inclusion, Next-Generation Applications and Smart City Leadership.
Now, that Playbook has been reimagined as the website you’re reading now, built in partnership with Cremalab.
You’ll find Plays that recreate and update the original commands of the Playbook.
You’ll find real-live Projects, led by your friends and neighbors, that are carrying out those visions and achieving measurable results.
You’ll also find News and Events that capture what’s going on in the community — things that you can plug into and be a part of.
You’ll also easily be able to sift through the latest content by the areas of impact we are working in so far: Gigabit Applications, Digital Inclusion, Economic Development, Government, Healthcare, and Education.
And all of this great stuff is happening because of motivated people excited by the potential of technology to transform a city and lives of its residents.
But our work’s not done yet.
We need your help making sure that KC Digital Drive is accurately tallying and trumpeting the great works going on in the community.
So spend some time with our website, keeping in mind that it’s just a beginning. If you see areas that we’re missing — cool things going on that fall under the category “tech solutions for a better Kansas City” — let us know by filling out the Contact form.
Because this site’s job, our job, is to reflect the power and potential of our city. And of you, our gigabit class of the future.