Month: April 2014

Developer Resource: Twilio

Smart Chicago

We love text.

And as big fans of texting, Smart Chicago has had Twilio as part of our offerings for civic developers since the say we started the program.  We’ve recently expanded our partnership with Twilio, and their local developer relations guru, Greg Bagues, to offer Twilio as a separate service through Smart Chicago. Twilio is a great product that makes it easy to create apps that can make and receive both calls and texts.

 

Healthnear.me

We use it in our own products:

We are also a customer of Textizen, which uses Twilio, including around the Creative Chicago Expo. Civic software developers like Chris Gansen use it to power apps like HealthNearMe.

Like we said, we’re big fans of texting. If you’re new to Twilio, we’ve put together a how-to post of how the app works.

If you’re a civic developer and are interested in using Twilio for your app, please fill out the form below.

Tonight’s live stream of OpenGov Chicago Meeting: OpenData =! OpenGov

Christopher Whitaker

We’ll be live streaming and live tweeting tonight’s OpenGov Chicago Meeting starting at 6:15pm CST.

Springfield sunset

Springfield Sunset, Photo by Ann Fisher

This meetup will focus on open records. Here’s a description of the meeting from our two speakers:

The open data movement in Chicago provides a wealth of opportunity to analyze, publicize and criticize the functions of city government. But it falls short of the kind of transparency that lets the public see how Mayor Rahm Emanuel actually governs. For that, you need open records. And those are too often in short supply. Join Chicago Tribune investigations editor Jim Webb and Tribune investigative reporter Dave Kidwell for a discussion about government transparency, why records are worth fighting for and what works or doesn’t under Illinois’ weak Freedom of Information Act.

Smart Chicago and the National Day of Civic Hacking

Smart Chicago

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is proud to be a contributing partner to the National Day of Civic Hacking effort. We’ve been providing content to the national  website, starting with the Civic Hacking 101 video put together by Smart Chicago consultant and Chicago Code for America Brigade Captain Christopher Whitaker. Our goal is to help spread the lessons we’ve learned in Chicago to the rest of the country.

National Day of Civic Hacking at 1871

Additionally, we’ll be hosting a hackathon May 31st – June 1st at the offices of kCura in the Chicago Loop in partnership with Code for America and Random Hacks of Kindness. Each day will be broken down into two sections.

During the first session, we’ll hear from people on the front line of civic work as they talk about their day to day challenges in the fields of education, housing, hunger, disaster response, public safety , and child protective services. In the afternoon, we’ll break out into group and prototype apps that may help address these challenges.

You can register for the event here.

Join us Saturday for OpenStreetMap Spring Editathon!

Christopher Whitaker

Smart Chicago Collaborative will be hosting an OpenStreetMap Spring #editathon on Saturday, April 26, 2014 from 12:00 – 5:00 PM CST. Ian Dees, a member of the OSM US Board, will be the host of this event. We’re excited to have regular Chicago residents -people who know all about their communities and want to share with the world – to get involved in OpenStreetMap.

Using Google Maps to make a neighborhood map

Photo by Steve Vance

If the weather is nice, we’ll also be going outside to do some hands-on mapping in the Loop. We’ll supply some paper maps, pens, and clipboards to make mapping easier, but bring a phone to take pictures.

This should be a great event for anyone to get involved in mapping their communities and to learn about OpenStreetMap.

If you’ve never used OpenStreetMap, here’s a short video by Ian Dees about how it works.

Let’s start mapping!