U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith tells Alex Howard of the Huffington Post that she thinks civic tech is the next big thing: “I was there at the beginning of the smart phone, the beginning of open source. I think this is like that. It’s the start of something much bigger.”

New on Civicist from our Jessica McKenzie: How researchers at Cornell University have built a “smart participation” tool to improve public comment processes, which is now being used to invite the New York City public to weigh in on congestion and the ongoing dispute between City Hall and transportation network companies like Uber.

“Many people are driving on the Uber platform to get the pay raise they have not received in their other jobs,” writes David Plouffe, the company’s senior adviser. In other words, Uber does what unions used to do.

Becky Hogge looked at six case studies of open government data usage in the U.K. for the Omidyar Network, and found that “Private actors have taken government data, and they have transformed it in ways that are useful and valuable to citizens and consumers. Far more time and money has been invested in government data than it is possible to imagine the government ever having done by itself. The impact of this investment, though not always quantifiable, is in most cases tangible and scalable, if not already ‘at scale.’”

In San Francisco, grants are called “philanthropic rounds.” That’s what health-care crowdfunding nonprofit Watsi is celebrating, as donors including Ron Conway, Tencent, and Paul Graham have just given $3.5 million to fund its operations for the next two years, as Josh Constine reports for Techcrunch.

Cory Doctorow reports for BoingBoing on how the just-released text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade treaty seeks to prevent governments from requiring that “internet of things” products like cars and other regulated devices make their software open for inspection.

It’s not too late to register for the annual Nonprofit Software Development Summit, hosted by Aspiration November 18-20 in Oakland.

Aimee Lee Ball reports for the New York Times on the rising trend of “all-gender bathrooms,” including our own here at Civic Hall. And, yes, there’s an app for that: Refuge Restrooms, which shows the location of all-gender bathrooms nationwide.