The last few months Linode has routinely hosted Code for Philly weekly events—providing meeting space and refreshments in their Old City office. Moving forward, Linode is also helping Code for Philly projects with their hosting and infrastructure needs by offering employee volunteer support as well as hosting credits for our Civic Cloud initiative.

Linode is a cornerstone of the tech community in Philadelphia and is helping define the cloud hosting industry. At Code for Philly, we couldn’t be happier that they’re lending their expertise, leadership, and support to the Civic Cloud initiative.

The first phase of the Civic Cloud initiative will involve migrating existing Code for Philly projects from their current hosts to a local pilot Civic Cloud. In 2019, we’re working with Linode to organize events and volunteer days around this migration—with food, drinks, and expert guidance from the generous folks at Linode. Stay tuned to the Code for Philly meetup and social feeds for details.

About the Civic Cloud Initiative

The Civic Cloud was initiated by Code for Philly Senior Advisor and Code for America Brigade National Advisory Council member Chris Alfano. According to Alfano, the drive behind the Civic Cloud project is to give civic tech volunteers a dependable path for handing off their ready-to-launch projects to become permanent fixtures of the public commons.

Volunteer civic tech projects have, in the past, hosted their projects either privately or on space Code for Philly acquired ad-hoc for them. The patchwork approach gave teams significant flexibility, but it also meant that when project teams had volunteer turnover, there were challenges on-boarding new volunteers, updating expired payment methods, and spending precious volunteer time moving apps to new hosting.

The Civic Cloud will provide a hosting option for Code for Philly projects that’s operationally and financially sustainable while enabling them to employ a full range of technologies. It will let civic tech projects move beyond the founding volunteers and ultimately ensure each project has a chance to make a true civic-minded impacted.