We should be audacious: Code for America’s Philly Brigade co-captain Chris Alfano has big plans

Code for America’s Philly fellowship might be winding down, but the organization won’t drop its connection to Philadelphia.

Code for America just announced the local captains for its national civic hacking network called the Brigade. Philly’s Brigade captain is a familiar face: Chris Alfano, one of the founders of Northern Liberties web dev shop Jarv.us Innovations (and the coworking space Devnuts that they call home.)

Join the Philly Brigade here.

Chris Alfano, co-founder of Northern Liberties web dev shop Jarv.us Innovations, was recently named captain of the Code for America Philly Brigade. Photo courtesy of Flying Kite.

According to Code for America’s blog, the Brigade aims to strengthen connections between cities by encouraging the sharing of open-source tools, as well as by organizing the various civic hacking communities with Brigade captains.

To Alfano, the Brigade is a way of continuing Code for America‘s mission even after the fellows have gone.

“The fellows were the catalyst,” he says. Now, he says, it’s about Philly taking the reins.

The first order of business is for the Brigade to establish a one-year plan of what it wants to accomplish, and Alfano is thinking big.

“I think we need to be kind of ambitious with it,” he says, “kind of audacious.”

Though he’s not clear on the details just yet, he says he wants to focus on “transformative” goals that concern “infrastructure for projects and learning.” Alfano’s company previously developed an open source high school management tool that’s currently being used in Philly-area public schools.

He has also recruited a co-captain, Lloyd Emelle, who runs the Philadelphia Open Developer and Designer Meetup.