DBTB INT Matt Mahan r

sure Matt mayhem I'm the co-founder and CEO of brigade well it's exciting to be a data by the bay because I think that so many of the problems we face in our democracy come from a failure to scale the system and to make it accessible and transparent to most people and you know I think about what technologists and data scientists do its take huge complex systems and lots of data and figure out how to make it useful and personalized and accessible to people and I think fundamentally that's where the biggest things we need to do to make our democracy function better and make it more accountable to ordinary people well I you know I think I sort of I guess I sorta dist answered that but I think that thank you this is a huge amount of government related data from the voter file to election results to legislative data that we're not actually analyzing and turning into tools for citizens to participate and but I think there's huge potential there and so a lot of the things that we've gone around looking for jobs finding dates getting food delivered to your house just kind of helping people navigate and understand other systems in the world if applied to the way that citizens participate in their democracy is going to lead to a much healthier more vibrant democracy in which people believe in their own efficacy again and are more likely to participate and I think when people do participate more deeply and better understand the issues we get better representatives and better policies out of that I think the main point I was trying to make in my talk today is that democracy has gotten our system our political system has gotten so big and complex that it's being hacked by people who are able to exploit that complexity and largely that's lobbyists and it's groups that can put a lot of money behind campaigns that they prefer and I think that we can use data and technology to hack it the other way around packet packet for citizens Hackett to make it easier for people to understand how their government works what's on their ballot and to coordinate and collaborate and take action with fellow citizens who align with their values and so that was my main takeaway and I hope that people here at the conference and people watching this decide to use their superpowers to pay their data super powers for good and to make our democracy work better they decide well I've hate to break it to you I'm not a data scientist but I am a political organizer and now an entrepreneur and you know I think to be grated any that you've got to find a problem that really inspires you and you can't get out of your head this thing something that you want to you want to fix and for me that's our democracy and so I think to be great at anything it's really bout finding that moment of inspiration and then developing the skills and the tools to to do something about it and to stick with it it kind of comes down to persistence I think more than anything