The Apps for the Environment Forum was held at the Artisphere in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, VA.

Address:	Artisphere,1101 Wilson Boulevard. Arlington, Virginia 22209 - www.artisphere.com
Phone:	703-875-1100
TTY:	703-228-1855
Metro:	The Artisphere is located two blocks from the Rosslyn Metro (blue/orange line).  To walk to the Artisphere from the Metro, exit the station onto Moore Street and turn right (south).  Walk half a block and turn left onto Wilson Boulevard.  Walk approximately one block to the Artisphere at 1101 Wilson Boulevard.
Driving Directions:	click here for driving directions to the Artisphere.
Parking:	Parking is available at the Artisphere at 1101 Wilson Boulevard and across the street at 1100 Wilson Boulevard for a fee.

Map of Rosslyn with Artisphere location starred:

A very exciting program came together for this event! Click here to access a copy of the final agenda. (1pp,237KB About PDF)

Agenda as of 11/08/2011 - Speakers, titles, and times are subject to change

Click here to access a copy of the draft agenda. (1pp,237KB About PDF)

“Building Innovation Through Partnerships: Apps for the Environment Forum” commemorated EPA's Apps for the Environment Challenge and presented a vision for the future of environmental apps and mobile technology. The forum was held on November 8, 2011 at the Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia.  Attendees learned about efforts to promote environmental applications from government, business, and tech-industry leaders and discovered cutting-edge environmental apps.  Attendees also had an opportunity to share and collaborate on environmental data needs and innovative solutions and develop partnerships through breakout sessions, networking and exhibits.

This event was free and open to the public!  Also, it was held during DCWEEK. For more information see http://digitalcapitalweek.org.  

Click here to find out more.

Read about speakers that will be at the Forum below:

Mike Barrette, Team Leader, EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance

Mike Barrette is the Team Leader for Enforcement Targeting and Public Access in the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.  He has been a champion for public access to information about facility environmental violations and performance of state environmental agencies.  He runs EPA’s popular Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) website, which was recently cited by President Obama as a model for government transparency. In addition, Mike is a national expert on enforcement and compliance data, and has shaped national enforcement policy for the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and other statutes.

Mike joined EPA in 1992 after completing his Masters in Public Administration.  Prior to joining EPA he worked for the New York State Legislature.  In his spare time, Mike is a solar energy advocate and is a co-founder the DC Solar United Neighborhoods (DC SUN) cooperative.

Robert Burchard, EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation

Robert Burchard works in the Office of Air and Radiation on the SunWise program, and is leading efforts to promote the use of the UV Index as a sun safety tool.

Aneesh Chopra, United States Chief Technology Officer

Aneesh Chopra is the United States Chief Technology Officer and in this role serves as an Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology within the Office of Science & Technology Policy. He works to advance the President’s technology agenda by fostering new ideas and encouraging government-wide coordination to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland. He was sworn in on May 22nd, 2009. Prior to his appointment, he served as Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia from January 2006 until April 2009. He previously served as Managing Director with the Advisory Board Company, a publicly-traded healthcare think tank. Chopra was named to Government Technology magazine’s Top 25 in their Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers issue in 2008. Aneesh Chopra received his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University and his M.P.P. from Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Tod Dabolt, Director, Project Management Office, EPA’s Office of Water

Tod Dabolt is the Director of the Office of Water's Project Management Office.  His organization manages the development of software and systems to support States, Regions, and HQ programs in implementing the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.  Tod has been with the Office of Water for 15 years and worked in a variety of positions from water quality monitoring to emergency response.  He has a Master's of Environmental Management from Duke University and an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science.  He is an avid outdoor enthusiast and enjoys spending his free time with his two daughters.

Kevin Donovan, Acting Branch Chief, EPA's Office of Environmental Information

Kevin Donovan is an Environmental Protection Specialist in EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory Program currently serving as the Chief of the Information and Outreach Branch.  He has over 20 years experience in the environmental field, also working in EPA’s Superfund and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Programs.  Kevin spent 8 years in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environmental Management program.  His academic background is in Geology and Earth Sciences.

Christopher J. Dorobek, Founder, Editor and Publisher of the DorobekINSIDER blog

Christopher J. Dorobek is the founder, editor and publisher of the DorobekINSIDER blog, a leading blog for the Federal government community.  In 2008, his editorials in Federal Computer Week were recognized with the ASBPE national editorial award, and in 2010, he was awarded Federal Computer Week's prestigious Federal 100 Award -- the first working journalist win that award in its more than 20 year history.

Most recently, Mr. Dorobek served as the anchor of Federal News Radio 1500 AM's afternoon drive program, the DorobekINSIDER.  He joined Federal News Radio in 2008 with nearly two decades of experience covering government issues with an emphasis on government information technology.  Prior to joining Federal News Radio, Mr. Dorobek was editor-in-chief of Federal Computer Week (FCW), the leading news magazine for government IT decision-makers and the flagship of the 1105 Government Information Group portfolio of publications.  Before FCW, he was a technology reporter at PlanetGov.com, one of the first online community centers for current and former government employees. He also spent five years at Government Computer News, another leading industry publication, covering a variety of federal IT-related issues.

Mr. Dorobek is a frequent speaker on issues involving the government IT industry, and has appeared as a frequent contributor to NewsChannel 8’s Federal News Today program. He has also written for Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's Signal magazine.

Donald Frank, Branch Chief, EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention

Donald Frank has a B.A. in Economics from Millersville University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. in Business Administration from Boston University. He has over 25 years of experience as a private consultant in transforming government business operations through strategic and tactical application of information technology for the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, Department of Treasury, Department of Defense, Military Departments, Defense Logistics Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, American Red Cross, National Institutes of Health, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Mr. Frank is currently employed by EPA as Branch Chief for the Science Information Branch of the Information Management Division in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT). He leads the effort to transition OPPT from paper-based to electronic management of Toxic Substance Control Act information. He is currently managing the project to facilitate electronic delivery and processing of Inventory Update Reporting (IUR) submissions and New Chemical Submissions using EPA’s Central Data eXchange (CDX) and Enterprise Content Management System (ECMS).

Alexander B. Howard, Government 2.0 Correspondent, O’Reilly Media.

Alex Howard is the Government 2.0 Correspondent for O'Reilly Media. Before joining O’Reilly, Howard was the associate editor of SearchCompliance.com at TechTarget. His work there focused on how regulations affect IT operations, including issues of data protection, privacy, security and enterprise IT strategy. Howard’s previous work experience includes working in operations for an e-business consultancy, as a knowledge broker for a management consulting firm, as an apprentice to a master home builder and, very briefly, as a garde manager at an outstanding Italian restaurant.

Malcolm D. Jackson, EPA Chief Information Officer and Assistant Administrator for the Office of Environmental Information

Malcolm D. Jackson is EPA’s Assistant Administrator for the Office of Environmental Information and Chief Information Officer. In this dual role, Mr. Jackson is responsible for IT operations and security, information quality and collection, and access to environmental information including the Toxics Release Inventory. His leadership focus includes IT strategic planning and governance, IT investment management and government transparency.

Malcolm D. Jackson was appointed to serve this role by President Barack Obama. Prior to being confirmed by the Senate in June 2010, Mr. Jackson served as the Senior IT Business Unit Director of CIGNA Group Insurance. At CIGNA, he managed all IT aspects that supported short term disability, long term disability, life and accident insurance products and services. From 2006 to 2008, Mr. Jackson also served as the Senior IT Business Unit Director for CIGNA Insurance Corporate Business Functions. During this tenure, Mr. Jackson directed the development of IT applications for Human Resources, Finance, Legal and Public Affairs, and Investments. In addition, Mr. Jackson had IT oversight for Corporate-Owned Life Insurance, Reinsurance, and Settlement Annuities.

Prior to joining CIGNA Insurance, Mr. Jackson held various positions in the areas of IT, engineering, marketing and general business management at Monsanto, Quaker Oats, General Dynamics, and Shell Oil Company. He has a broad business background which included consumer packaged goods, defense contracting, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and the oil and gas industries. Throughout his career, Mr. Jackson has developed expertise in IT strategy, large-scale enterprise resource planning, performance metrics development, and business process re-engineering.

Mr. Jackson was a Board member of the Children’s Literacy Initiative in Philadelphia and the Jackson State University National Alumni Association, where he chaired the membership committee. Mr. Jackson holds a B.S. from Jackson State University and an M.B.A. from Northwestern University, J.L. Kellogg School of Management.

Julie Kunrath, ASPH Fellow, EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation

Julie Kunrath is an ASPH Fellow with the SunWise Program in the Office of Air and Radiation at U.S. EPA.  Her projects include outreach to schools and other educational organizations to encourage sun safety for children and their caregivers.  She received her MPH in Environmental Health Sciences at Yale School of Public Health. 

Tom Lee, Director of Sunlight Labs, Sunlight Foundation

Tom Lee is the Director of Sunlight Labs; prior to assuming leadership of the labs, he managed Sunlight's Subsidyscope project, an effort to explore the level of federal involvement in various sectors of the economy. On that project, Tom and his team were responsible for identifying and parsing federal databases covering various forms of government support, evaluating their quality, and composing sophisticated analyses and analytic tools based upon them. Tom came to Sunlight from EchoDitto, where he handled the technical implementation of Drupal projects for clients like Greenpeace UK and Mother Jones. Before EchoDitto, he did .NET development for members of the House and Senate, building constituent services websites and one of the first reusable software platforms for member offices. Along the way he's done Movable Type consulting for Gothamist, lobbied WMATA to open its data, taught screen-scraping to TI Georgia, cleaned data for academics, built sites for numerous bloggers, and mostly avoided electrocuting himself. His writing on technical policy has appeared in the American Prospect, Techdirt, Progressive Fix, and various impassioned Slashdot threads.

Eric Paulos, Director of the Living Environments Lab and Associate Professor

Eric Paulos is the Director of the Living Environments Lab and an Associate Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute with courtesy faculty appointments in the Robotics Institute within the School of Computer Science and in the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Previously Eric was Senior Research Scientist at Intel Research in Berkeley, California where he founded the Urban Atmospheres research group - challenged to employ innovative methods to explore urban life and the future fabric of emerging technologies across public urban landscapes. His areas of expertise span a deep body of research territory in urban computing, sustainability, green design, environmental awareness, social telepresence, robotics, physical computing, interaction design, persuasive technologies, and intimate media. Eric is a leading figure in the field of urban computing, coining the term in 2004, and a regular contributor, editorial board member, and reviewer for numerous professional journals and conferences. Eric received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley where he helped launch a new robotic industry by developing some of the first internet tele-operated robots including Space Browsing helium filled blimps and Personal Roving Presence devices (PRoPs).

Eric is also the founder and director of the Experimental Interaction Unit and a frequent collaborator with Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories. Eric's work has been exhibited at the InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Japan, Ars Electronica, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, the Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF), SFMOMA, the Chelsea Art Museum, Art Interactive, LA MOCA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the ZKM, Southern Exposure, and a performance for the opening of the Whitney Museum’s 1997 Biennial Exhibition.

Eric is also core faculty within CMU's Master of Tangible Interaction Design program and Advisor for the Studio for Creative Inquiry.

Erin Robinson, Director of Information and Virtual Community, Federation of Earth Science Information Partners

Erin Robinson leverages her knowledge of environmental informatics, in particular collaborative web technologies to support the diverse communities of practice that make up the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP). Her current research interests include improving collaboration among distributed partners by enhancing connections at various levels in the interoperability stack, coordinating events to enhance human-to-human relationships, developing collaborative sites that integrate social media to facilitate knowledge exchange, and sharing Earth observations through standard data access.

Andy Rossmeissl, Co-founder and Product Design Director, Brighter Planet.

Andy Rossmeissl co-founded Brighter Planet in 2005 and managed marketing through the fall of 2007 when he assumed product design duties. Andy has been chief of staff to political consultant Joe Trippi and personal assistant to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Andy, a Middlebury College graduate, previously served on the Web team of Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, worked for the advocacy group Waterkeeper Alliance, and held positions with several information technology consulting firms. A long-time technologist, he is also an Eagle Scout.

David G. Smith, EPA's Office of Environmental Information

Mr. Smith has recently joined EPA to head up its Facility Registry System within the Office of Environmental Information.  He has an extensive background in geospatial technologies and systems integration, and is also a licensed Professional Engineer and Land Surveyor, with over 20 years experience in a variety of projects dealing with mapping and environmental issues, as well as in environmental modeling, analysis and information management.  Mr. Smith also supports EPA’s TRI program through efforts toward improvement of data quality, particularly locational data, to support improved analysis of TRI reporters.

Nancy Sutley, United States Council on Environmental Quality Chair

Nancy Sutley is the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). In her role as Chair, she serves as the principal environmental policy adviser to the President.

Prior to her appointment, Sutley was the Deputy Mayor for Energy and Environment for the city of Los Angeles, California. She represented Los Angeles on the Board of Directors for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and served on the California State Water Resources Control Board from 2003- 2005. Sutley also worked for California Governor Gray Davis as Energy Advisor, managing state and federal regulations, legislative affairs, finances and press relations. She served as Deputy Secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations in the California EPA from 1999-2003. She advised on water and air pollution policy, and established budget and legislative priorities. During the administration of President William J. Clinton, Sutley worked for the EPA as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Regional Administrator in San Francisco and special assistant to the Administrator in Washington, D.C.

Sutley received her Bachelors degree from Cornell University and her Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University.

Chris Thomas, Director Digital Strategies, The Sierra Club

Chris Thomas is responsible for developing, integrating and focusing new media and online channels for building constituent engagement for The Sierra Club.  Before the Sierra Club, Chris was in charge of the Digital Products Unit at Greenpeace International, producing a global digital platform for Greenpeace's regional offices that powered greenpeace.org Web sites, Greenpeace's mobile sites and mobile device apps.  Chris has more than 20 years experience in digital production and management, working for brands such as Joost, The International Herald Tribune and Elle magazine.  He's interested in pervasive online engagement and empowering people via technology.

Apps Forum Recordings:

A recording of the Apps Forum can be found on EPA’s Ustream channel at the following URL: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18536348.  

The recording is one file; however, individual speaker start times are listed in brackets next to each speaker name. The start times allow you to scroll to the presentation you would like to listen to by utilizing the slider bar at the bottom of the media player.

• Malcolm D. Jackson’s Opening Remarks [Starting time: 00:03:47]
• Nancy Sutley’s Opening Remarks [Starting time: 00:10:22]
• Apps for the Environment Challenge Winner Recognition Ceremony [Starting time: 00:20:45]
• Aneesh Chopra’s Keynote Address [Starting time: 00:32:15]
• Business, Tech and User Perspectives Panel [Starting time: 00:48:48]
• Empowering People and Communities: Innovation in Sensors and Apps [Starting time: 01:43:00] (beginning of session recording missing due to technical difficulties)
• Lisa Schlosser’s Closing Remarks [Starting time: 02:05:18]

Break out Session Recordings:

Recordings, powerpoint presentations and notes of the break out sessions are available via the links below.  Click on the hyperlinks to access each of the files: 

The Forum's exhibit area was designed to encourage communication on environmental information, data needs and innovative solutions as well as showcase cutting edge demos of environmental apps.  The exhibit booths were open during the entire Forum from 1:00 p.m. to 5:15 p.m.    

Exhibitors included:

• Apple Inc.


• Brighter Planet: The Computational Sustainability Platform


• Challenge.gov


• Cognizant Technology Solutions


• Conformé:  Renovate Right


• EPA: Chemical Search Web Utility


• EPA:  Connecting Toxic Data and Pollution Prevention


• EPA:  Design for the Environment


• EPA:  Enforcement and Compliance History Online


• EPA: Green Power Partnerships


• EPA:  Information Access Tools


• EPA:  Innovations in EPA Research and Development


• EPA: MyRTK Mobile App


• EPA: Office of Water GIS Applications


• EPA:  Rays Awareness - Apps to Promote Sun Safety


• EPA:  Tools to Support Tribal Decision-Making


• Esri


• Forum One Communications


• Google


• IBM


• iScrap App


• Johnston McLamb


• Light Bulb Finder


• Microsoft


• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)


• University of Georgia


• Western Washington University

For questions or comments, please e-mail greenapps@epa.gov or contact Christine Arcari by phone at 202-566-1746.