7 Albuquerque-Made Apps That Will Change the World

Eric Paradis, Cofounder and CEO of NewsCastic, moved to Albuquerque seven years ago when ReelzChannel, his employer relocated to Albuquerque. It was clear to Paradis that there were some major trends happening in mobile and online social media. In particular, local media distribution has historically been fairly closed; you have to know someone to get in, and you need expensive technology, like large antennae, to distribute it. Furthermore, the way people consume stories has drastically changed. With these trends in mind, Paradis and cofounders created NewsCastic, a mobile marketplace that connects journalists, writers, and videographers with paying assignments. Through the marketplace, storytellers can pick up assignments from NewsCastic, local business, or traditional media to tell a story in the physical marketplace they’re in. In 2013, NewsCastic applied and got accepted to Dreamit Ventures, a premier startup accelerator in the US. Since their launch in Albuquerque, NewsCastic has expanded to nine additional markets including Salt Lake City, Portland, Minneapolis and Chicago, with an average reach of 1 million people per month in each market. When asked how NewsCastic impacts Albuquerque, Paradis replied, “we look at Newscastic as a way to reinvigorate the story telling within a community. The stories about the communities we’re in make those communities stronger, more vibrant, and healthier.” 

Originally from New Jersey, Charlie Wisoff, Founder of CivNet, moved to Albuquerque with his partner in 2014 to be closer to her family. With 5 years of experience working in community engagement, Wisoff saw a disconnect between the needs of communities and the engagement opportunities online spaces offer. In January 2015, he began developing a demo version of CivNet, an online platform that seeks to help people make an impact on issues they care about. CivNet helps users understand what’s going on in their communities, connect with others who care about similar issues, find opportunities to get involved, and organize to take action. Wisoff says he believes that "the power to fix our democracy lies in you. The actions you take, from having a conversation over dinner with your family to calling up your local representative, can change the world.” Since finishing the demo platform in March, CivNet has acquired seed funding, put together a development team, and plans to launch the beta platform on December 2nd, 2015. Wisoff hopes that piloting the beta in Albuquerque and the surrounding area will help revitalize community engagement, build community capacity to take action, and give more power to the voices of communities when important decisions are being made about their future. The CivNet beta platform already has over 250 beta users pre-registered, and they aim to pre-register over 500 community members before the beta release. Interested community members can pre-register or learn more at www.civnet.co.

Michael Deitcher is the lead software engineer for Trekaroo, a website founded in 2008 that helps families traveling with kids find places to stay or things to do. The first version of Trekaroo was built in the basement of Deitcher’s house in San Francisco, and he moved to Albuquerque in 2010 because his wife needed to satisfy a scholarship commitment to the National Health Service Corps (NHSC). Since then Trekaroo has grown to be the largest online family travel community in the US with 350,000 unique visitors a month and a community of bloggers committed to providing relevant and helpful information for families. Michael has teamed up with Aryon Hopkins, an Albuquerque based designer, and is now back at work rebuilding the next Trekaroo as a single page mobile-first javascript app. “We are rolling out the next version as fast as we can design, build, and test features. We are a lean team. This new version will make it even easier for our family travelers community to find and create useful information.” When asked about why Trekaroo is important to Albuquerque, Deitcher responded, “We can welcome and help families visiting Albuquerque find the best places to check out and tips that will give them the best experience.”

Many moments of inspiration come during times of crisis. Peri Pakroo, a UNM law student from ’93-’95, moved back to Albuquerque in 2000 and worked as a business author, freelance editor, and consultant for more than ten years. In 2012, her daughter became ill, and she couldn’t continue her daily blog at PeriPakroo.com. She got the idea to use guest bloggers which quickly grew into the idea of featuring guest bloggers all the time. Different creative people would write about their work and share what they’ve learned pursuing their creative careers. In 2013, Pyragraph, an online career and lifestyle magazine for artists, musicians, writers and other creatives, was launched. In the past two years, Pyragraph has grown into a four-person editorial team plus a creative director and established their niche. Pyragraph currently averages 10,000 unique visitors a month, which has been a result of completely organic growth. When asked what makes Pyragraph special, Pakroo responded, “It’s pretty much 100% voices of authentic artists, first-person. There are a lot of art-related publications with feature stories, but with Pyragraph’s first-person narratives, the authenticity comes through. We’ve created a supportive environment where you see other peoples’ struggles, and you can see that you’re okay.” If you’re a creative or like learning about creatives, share and check out stories at www.pyragraph.com.

Code For ABQ is the local brigade of Code for America and one of their first projects is ImagineABQ, an online space where people post ideas of how they want to see Albuquerque in the future. Lizzie Halpin, Storyteller for Code For ABQ, is helping to spread the word about ImagineABQ. Halpin moved to Albuquerque five years ago for graduate school in Community and Regional Planning at UNM. She became involved with ImagineABQ while attending a meeting of Code for ABQ, a group of local volunteer web developers dedicated to making public services simpler, more effective and easier to use. Halpin saw ImagineABQ as a way to bridge the gap between formal planning processes in the City and how people envision the community. By categorizing citizen input according to themes, ImagineABQ will make that input easily accessible for future projects. Currently, ImagineABQ is planning on partnering with Bernalillo County to use ImagineABQ as a community assessment tool in deciding how to spend the $17 million that has been put aside to create more mental and behavioral health services for children and adults in the Albuquerque and Bernalillo County area. Yet, Halpin emphasizes that ImagineABQ is not simply a tool for community input. In addition, there is an intangible effect that comes from the community conversation ImagineABQ inspires: social capacity is created.

Rebecca Crane, a Colorado native, has been living in and out of New Mexico for the past three years. Although she’s relatively new to Albuquerque, she says, “I find the community really welcoming, and I love that so many people are excited about trying to make change.” Rebecca got the idea for Buoy when she and Buoy’s lead developer, Maymay, attended the Tech for Justice Hackathon in September. Buoy, a community-based emergency response app geared towards supporting survivors of domestic violence, won the hackathon and donated the $1,000 in winnings to S.A.F.E. House New Mexico. A lot of times, Crane notes, the only recourse in an emergency is to call 911. "But for domestic violence survivors,” she says, "that often isn’t an option. Many survivors don’t feel comfortable calling the police, don’t feel that their situation warrants that level of intervention, or simply have needs that could be better met by a supportive community network.” Buoy allows users in an emergency to directly connect with a network of trusted people; friends, family, or personally selected professionals, who can come to their aid in a crisis. When a Buoy user sends an alert, all members of their response team are shown a live map and invited to a chat room where they can coordinate a response to the crisis. When asked how Buoy specifically supports the Albuquerque community, Crane responded, “New Mexico has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the country. We really believe that technology has the ability to catalyze social change.” Buoy currently exists as a working prototype and is looking for more testers. Contributions from other developers are also very much appreciated. If interested, contact rebeccacrane@gmail.com or check out the project on GitHub: https://github.com/meitar/better-angels. 

Tuyu

Tuyu co-founder Zach Grant first moved to Albuquerque in high school. Although he has been back and forth since college, he and his life partner plan to raise their two-year-old daughter here in Albuquerque, close to family. The story of Tuyu begins with Deep Dive Coders, a nine week intensive coding bootcamp. Grant and his co-founder, Dameon Smith, met at Deep Dive, and halfway through the bootcamp decided to do a startup weekend together. Out of that weekend came the idea for Tuyu, an online delivery platform which connects people who need goods to those who can deliver them. When asked how they came up with the idea, Grant responded, “the basic idea was crowdsourcing delivery. For example, as a new dad, I’ve often wished I could hire someone to pick diapers up for us in the morning or medicine late at night.” Tuyu puts the power in the hands of both sides of the transaction; customers can say what they need and when they need it, and a runner can decide what works for them. Grant points out that Tuyu can help Albuquerque because it has a low barrier to entry that will create new sources of income for runners. “A lot of delivery services out there are looking for higher density, higher-end markets. Tuyu is lower cost and more about community. It allows people to participate in something that usually only exists elsewhere.” Since winning startup weekend, Grant and Smith have been working on Tuyu part-time, and they plan to release a demo of the app this November, 2015. During the demo period deliveries will be free, so signup today at Tuyu.io!