President Preckwinkle answering tweets from Cook County Residents
President Preckwinkle has just launched a New Media Council in order to help the County better interact with citizens through digital channels. The council is co-chaired by Smart Chicago Executive Director Dan O’Neil.
One of the very first initiatives to come from the new council is a twitter chat that was held today.
In case you missed the chat, we’ve created a Storify page of the chat.
Here’s some new Smart Chicago items from the last week or so:
The launch of the Civic User Testing Group
Last Friday we started the CUT Group, where regular Chicago residents get paid to test civic apps. Here’s a pretty good take on the nascent program from Michael Lipkin at WTTW: Civic Hackers Want You. We’ve had a pretty good response— 54 signups from 29 wards.
Launch of the Illinois Open Technology Challenge
Last Friday we helped launch the Illinois Open Technology Challenge, There are five $15,000 prizes, for a total of $75,000. There will be winners from each of the four pilot communities (Champaign, Rockford, Belleville, and the south suburbs of Chicago) as well as one prize for the use of statewide data.
Mobile Dev Day at U of I
Last week was Mobile Development Day sponsored by the Research Park at the University of Illinois. Great event with lots of interesting speakers and panels. I got a lot out of one panel that helped you think out platform choice (iOS, Android, Web). I wrote a talk on the importance of mobile in urban flow, below.
Cook County New Media Council
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle announced the Cook County New Media Council. Along with Blagica Bottigliero, I am co-chairing the council, whose goal is “to develop a digital strategy to better engage, serve, and connect with the public”. I expect great things here!
Today we’re excited to launch the Civic User Testing Group, a set of regular Chicago residents who get paid to test out civic apps.
If you live in Chicago, sign up today and get started.
Here’s how we explain the program:
There is a large and growing community of “civic hackers” in Chicago — technology developers who make websites, mobile apps, and other tools that often have specific use in Chicago. The goal is to make software that helps make lives better in the city.
The problem is that lots of civic apps get attention among a smallish group of other developers and people interested in the world of open data, but do not get wide acceptance by the people they were made for — regular residents of the city of Chicago.
You are going to change all that!
We need people from all over the city, using all sorts of devices, browsers and operating systems.
One of the reasons I’m excited about in this project is it is the first launch with my colleague Chris Gansen, who is working with us as a program manager. He last served as an engineer for Obama for America, where he was responsible for their Dashboard tool, which helped get hundreds of thousands of people involved in the election process. We’re privileged to have him focused on our work here in Chicago.
I recently wrote a post, Turning Civic Hacking Into Civic Innovation, where I laid out the immense assets that are available in this city to support this work, and identified a gap:
What’s currently missing? The people.
All of this is great. Two important components for civic innovation, government and developers, are here in force in Chicago. But dozens of developers looking at each other in conference rooms over pizza is never going to lead to making lives better in Chicago without the active involvement of real residents expressing real needs and advocating for software that makes sense to them. The good thing is that Chicago has assets in this area as well.
We think this is a great step in establishing sustained, meaningful collaboration with residents around the data and technology. CUT Group is a lightweight way to get people involved. The hope is once everyone is involved in this world, we’ll find new ways to innovate that we can’t possibly conceive at this time.
