Company
The seeds that eventually grew into Collaborare took root in mid-2002.
That year, Austin, Texas attorney Brian L. Burgess was recruited to help the Austin Bar Association (ABA) evaluate online voting software for members' use in judicial reviews, officer elections and voting on critical, sometimes contentious, issues. The association wanted to increase participation in its elections without losing the confidentiality and integrity of its traditional paper balloting. It could not find a product on the market that met all of its needs, so Burgess began drawing specs for a new application.
What he originally intended to be a rough mock-up of an online voting solution became, many development hours later, BallotBox. In its first year of use at ABA, voter participation jumped from 3% to 16% of voting members - a 435% increase.
In 2003, he partnered with long-time colleague and gifted software engineer Stepan Riha to form Collaborare LLC.