Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://digital.greengale.com/i/94797
VIEW FROM THE TOP Tolva believes it's important to listen to what Chicagoans want. continued from page 53 brief conversation, Tolva asked Emanuel about open data, cost sav- ings, and smart cities. The inquiry piqued Emanuel's interest, and after taking office he asked Tolva to officially join the team. Says Tolva, "I wasn't looking for a new job, but this was hard to turn down." One of Tolva's top priorities is increasing accountability and trans- parency. "I want people in Chicago to be able to peer into the way the city works." He launched the Open 311 app, enabling users to text photos of city structures or facilities in need of repairs instead of call- ing a service line. The goal of making it easier to interact with the city extends to the launch of the Chicago Broadband Challenge, which is democratizing access to free high-speed Internet in heavily trafficked public places, including Millennium " I want Chicagoans to be able to peer into the way the city works." —JOHN TOLVA Park. "We want digital natives to feel at home. There's an economic bent to improve our residents' lives and also rebrand Chicago." Tolva's efforts city's to improve connectivity enthusiastic the and infrastructure extend to the local technology com- munity; he compliments its commitment to add 2,000 new jobs by 2015. "Tech companies locally are off the hook. New digital compa- nies are being created daily. We have been ignored by the venture community for a while, but that's changed. We have coastal firms opening offices here, and it's great local investment. We're going strong because we have the resilience of a diverse industry base." Tolva credits the emergence of digital media, Web- and mobile-focused firms like Belly, MarkITx, and Food Genius, and the growth in the clean technol- ogy and bioscience sectors, as playing important roles local boom. "Chicago has investment, infrastructure, land- scape of customers, and centrality in the nation." in the the In the midst of balancing large-scale projects and coordi- nating makes daily A deconstruction of the Chicago flag hangs in Tolva's office. requests, Tolva time for one important and often overlooked task—lis- tening. He checks on the city's vital signs, from government- generated statistics to market information to Twitter updates. Tolva strives to change our culture and make it more reliant on data. "We want to highlight and develop systems to make people rely less on anecdote and gut instinct, and more on what the city is actually telling us. You can learn a lot by listening online." MA 54 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM the similarities between reefs, cities, and the Web. They're all richly linked ecosystems with no central brain. It's a careful balance. I've done my best to instrument the tank to collect data and keep it healthy—like what we're doing in the city." LINKED IN John Tolva shares his online and offline obsessions. *ALTERNATE CAREER PATH "I probably would have been a writer. I love it and don't get as much time to do it. I would write by day and attempt to make music at night. Twitter is for unformed thoughts, so I turned my blog into a forum for long-form pieces." *MUSIC MAKER "I deejay with my brother and am partial to dubstep and electro music. I'll play anything, but I mess with it greatly." *GADGET GUY "The social network that's the most fun right now is [fitness app] Fitbit. I was one of the first people in my social circle to use it, and now there are probably 20 friends on there. It's a heated competition." *MARINE MAVEN "I have a saltwater coral reef [in a tank] that I've gadgeted-out. It's a closed ecosystem, and you have to get it right. There's been writing on