Participants at CityCamp Oakland packed the City Council chambers for an all-day "unconference" connecting technology and local government.

Saturday’s “unconference” at Oakland City Hall featured more than a dozen workshops ranging from the city budget, to neighborhood crime issues, to the digital divide, and open data. Over a hundred technology professionals, city staff, local citizens, and business leaders came together to discuss the often-rocky relationship between technology and local government.

The second annual CityCamp Oakland comes out of a surging tech community in Oakland and a city government looking to become a leader in civic technology. The conference was organized by OpenOakland, a civic hacking group born out of Code for America, the national non-profit that pairs young programmers with local governments.

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Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka gives the keynote at CityCamp at City Hall.

Sounds of Christmas music, cheering and motorcycles at the Oakland Parade seeped through the windows of City Hall, but didn’t stop discussions on youth and technology, the freedom of information act and the digital divide in Oakland at the first annual CityCamp, organized by the OpenOakland brigade. Over 120 people, including programmers, city officials, bloggers and community members, attended the “unconference,” or interactive forum with topics of discussion that attendees themselves choose.

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