Other OGC resources: Google Groups: http://groups.google.com/group/opengovchica...  ----- "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." We believe that citizens should consider government to be "us", not "them." This meetup is for citizens who are interested in seeing their federal, state, and local government function more efficiently and responsively. We are inspired by people who are actively building tools and experimenting with solutions along these lines, like the Sunlight Foundation (http://sunlightlabs.com/), and GovTrack (http://GovTrack.us). We believe that open source software practices and internet culture provide good examples of how people can work cooperatively on complex problems to produce meaningful results, but you don't have to be a techie to be part of this meetup. Whether you are an activist or a government employee, or just a hacker looking for interesting projects, come to the Open Government Chicago group to meet other interested people and get involved in making things happen.