After participating in a 1.45 hour interview today that’s going to be a front page story tomorrow in a Zurich newspaper about the cultural differences between San Francisco and Zurich (enough already!), I was pinged by Google News informing me that the Monterey County Herald (in California) published an article highlighting the City of Pacific Grove’s new e-government system delivered by Comcate. We’re excited about our work in Pacific Grove and I wish that would have gotten more ink. Instead the author of the article seems to have spent some good time on this blog (and mis-writes the URL):
The software behind Access Pacific Grove was created by 12-year-old whiz Ben Casnocha when he was assigned to create a community service Web site for a sixth-grade technology class. He came up with a program to handle citizen complaints about local government.
Now a 17-year-old high school junior in San Francisco, Casnocha owns Comcate Inc., a company that once operated out of Ben’s bedroom and now sells the software to the cities of Fairfield, Atascadero, Cupertino, Menlo Park, Orinda, Vallejo, Pleasant Hill and others.
Comcate also markets a “code enforcement” program that Rojanasathira said the city would like to acquire, “but there are always budget problems.”
Casnocha, also a writer, publishes a blog about school, entrepreneurship, books and current affairs: bigben.blogspot.com. On Wednesday, the site featured essays on narcissism and solitude.
His Web site says he’s working on a book titled “And a Teen Shall Lead Them: A Young CEO’s Journey Through High School, Silicon Valley and Life.” He has established a charity called the Comcate Foundation for Teen Entrepreneurship.
Rojanasathira said he was unaware the city’s new citizen feedback system had been invented by a 12-year-old.
“That’s pretty cool, though,” he said.
Nat’s a good friend of mine. He is pretty excited about this product, amazing what you’ve done at such a young age.