About
An operator, not a vendor.
Open·Civ is run by Jacob Ramos — a decade in political advocacy, marketing, and organizing, building civic software where he lives. The work isn’t drafted in a coastal office; it runs in the Saint Paul skyway every day, then travels. No venture capital, no exit pressure — aligned with the communities it serves.
That background matters: the hard part of downtown isn’t the code, it’s getting a community to show up. We build the software and run the programming — and we measure what works so your board can see it.
We listen, we organize, we challenge expectations, we build.
Choosing a one-person studio shouldn’t feel risky. Here’s why it isn’t.
Operated locally
You talk to the person who builds and runs it — not an account manager or an offshore queue. An operator, not a vendor.
Your data, portable
Built on open standards (OpenStreetMap + OSRM). Your content and data are yours and exportable — no lock-in if we ever part ways.
Live in weeks
The platform already exists. A pilot is a short, reversible engagement with clear success criteria — not a multi-year custom build.
Privacy-first by design
Measurement is anonymized and aggregated. We count activity, not individuals.
How this travels
Proven in the hard case. Easier on open streets.
The skyway is an unusual environment — a five-mile indoor network. The platform underneath it isn’t skyway-specific: it runs on open standards, so it works for any street grid. The activation playbook — dinners, mixers, surveys, volunteer drives — is geography-agnostic.
We’re early and one downtown deep, on purpose. The method is proven, not theoretical — and your district is the next deployment, designed with you. You get the founder’s direct attention, not a ticket queue.
See your downtown run like this.
Book a working session, or just open the live map and click around. A pilot is short and reversible — live in weeks, scoped to a civic budget.