Fellow: Michael Gomez Daly
Team member(s): Oscar Giovanni Ruiz
Seed Lab Cohort: 2020/2021
Michael Gomez Daly is the Executive Director of Inland Empowerment, a Southern California coalition which focuses on engaging impoverished communities and people of color. Oscar Giovanni Ruiz is a senior software developer whose involvement with activist groups started during the 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement. After years of political work and involvement in community-led organizations, they learned that one of the main challenges these organizations are facing was the absence appropriate systems to manage data. Due to lack of resources, these organizations need tools that are inexpensive, very user friendly, functional, protect data, and are designed to reflect their very specific needs.
Amplify is an open-source data management software developed to make their vision of a popular culture where technologies and education are democratized and accessible to all communities come true. It is designed to enhance the missions of community-based organizations by reducing the cost and reliance on closed and privately owned technologies. Amplify has already been successfully implemented during the 2020 Census and it proved to be key in diminishing the impact the Covid-19 pandemic had on the work of grassroots organizations.
