CUGOS Fall Fling 2025: "Beyond Civic Tech: Public Mechanics Starts at Home"
- Date
- Event
- CUGOS Fall Fling 2025
- Format
- Opening keynote
- Where
- University of Washington, Seattle
The CUGOS Fall Fling opened on November 14, 2025 at the University of Washington in Seattle with Beyond Civic Tech: Public Mechanics Starts at Home, a keynote by Vloora founder and CEO Ron Bronson. The one day conference is run by Cascadia Users of Geospatial Open Source.
Civic tech often overpromises and underdelivers, focusing on apps or dashboards instead of the systems that quietly keep public life running. Public mechanics is a framework for seeing the rules, workarounds, and repair practices that hold services together after the launch moment has passed.
This keynote explores why the "last mile" of delivery is always political, how resilient processes safeguard against misuse, and why the unglamorous work of maintenance is what makes systems durable and worthy of public trust.