Year: 2016

Reporting Back on City Bureau’s Open House

Chris Walker
City Bureau people in public meeting

An attendee exploring one of City Bureau’s articles in front of orange-capped Editorial Director, Darryl Holliday

On Wednesday, January 27th, our partner City Bureau hosted their first open house at Experimental Station, a curious wing-shaped building in Woodlawn, Chicago. A number of south-side focused grass-roots organizations call Experimental Station home, including 61st street Famers Market, Blackstone Bikes, Link Up Illinois, and South Side Weekly.

Experimental Station

Southside Weekly’s workroom in Experimental Station

City Bureau is a community newsroom that aims to divest from the traditional journalism model and regenerate civic media. The integral part of that is placing the narratives of the west and south sides back into the hands of its most overlooked residents– the youth.

City Bureau operates with a level-based model where reporters are placed into three tracks. Level three is the most experienced track of reporters in which the journalists work in the field and also act as mentors to the level one reporters. Level one reporters are the least experienced, but are also the youth that have the most intimate stake in the action in their own neighborhoods.

“This training [rubric] fosters social and emotional learning in conjunction with trauma training,” explained Educational Director, Andrea Hart. She designs and writes curriculum for the level one program. She further explained that “these people, because of historically racist/classist policies, are experiencing complex trauma and therefore it is important to contextualize curriculum accordingly. Trauma informed education doesn’t harm anyone. It’s a benefit to all whether or not they have gone through traumatic experiences.” The training and mentorship that the youth receive operate within this framework.

City Bureau

Level 3 reporter, Xavi, speaking to an attendee

They were joined on Wednesday by their partners Illinois Humanities and the Invisible Institute.

Read more on City Bureau’s Police Accountability highlight in the Reporting Back series with Illinois Humanities here.

The Invisible Institute was there showcasing the Citizen’s Police Data Project, a digital map which showcases a database of 56,000 misconduct complaint records for more than 85,000 Chicago police officers.

citizens police data project

Screenshot of  cpdo.co

Chaclyn Hunt, head of the Youth / Police project at the Invisible Institute explained the Citizens Police Data project. Users of this tool may search by officer name and badge number. An interesting catch that they learned while collecting this data, is that badge numbers are recycled, so a search of a single number may come up with the compiled complaints of three different officers. To assure accurate information, names and numbers must be cross checked.

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Chaclyn Hunt explaining the Citizens Police Data Project to an attendee

Some search categories of this tool include: Bribery/Official Corruption, Verbal Abuse, Drug / Alcohol Abuse, Illegal Search, and dozens more. One may search by outcome i.e. allegations, sustained, or unsustained and also by race and gender.

If you are abreast of the current unconscionably racist climate in Chicago, it is unsurprising that a black person is twice as likely to file a complaint against the a police officer, but half as likely to have the complaint addressed. Additionally, black police officers are twice as likely to be punished versus their white counterparts.

Read more on the work of the Invisible Institute here.

Editorial Director, Darryl Holliday

Editorial Director, Darryl Holliday

For more on City Bureau follow them on Twitter, Facebook, or follow their blog.

Smart Chicago Documenter Work on the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force Community Forums

Smart Chicago

The Smart Chicago Collaborative has been documenting the four community forums hosted by the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force and held across the city in the month of February.

The purpose of the meetings is to provide residents the opportunity to speak or submit written comments on improving the accountability, oversight and training of Chicago’s police officers.

We care about justice and we care about accountability, so we have sent text documenters, videographers (Community TV Network), and a photographer (me) to these convenings under our Documenters program, which “an essential tool for us to add new thinkers, generate ideas, and expand the field for civic tech.”

We show up at public meetings and document the proceedings because we’re interested in paying as much attention as we can to what others are saying, what their concerns are, and how they interact with official government structures. These community forums give us a great opportunity for this. We have a number of goals for this series:

  • Document the actual proceedings, with special attention, in this instance, to the speakers from the public— exactly what questions were asked, what documents were referenced, and what answers were offered by the task force
  • Research the questions and answers to the greatest degree possible. This includes learning more about the speakers, many of whom have decades of experience in their communities. Research and link to their organizations, their work, and the external documents, cases, and other matters that they reference
  • Aggregate the information and draw some rudimentary conclusions. This means simple things like counting attendees and speakers as well as some more sophisticated analysis like grouping comment types and themes

Toward that end, here’s our documentation for meeting #1, held at on Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church JLM Life Center, 2622 W. Jackson Blvd.

The meeting notes:

The video (as taken by the Task Force and placed on their youtube channel), and this one, taken by Community TV Network, posted on the Smart Chicago youtube channel):

And photographs taken by me (download them all here in hi res) under Creative Commons 4.0 license).

Lastly, we want to document the format of the meetings— the exact mode of engagement. This includes things like location type, timing, room setup, speaker format, microphone placement, comment rules— all the things that make up the meeting so that we can help build an overall typology for public meetings. That’s next.

For now, please consider attending one or both of the last two meetings

Meeting 2: Notes from Police Accountability Forum at South Shore Cultural Center

Smart Chicago

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is documenting the four community forums hosted by the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force and held across the city in the month of February.

The purpose of the meetings were to provide residents the opportunity to speak or submit written comments on improving the accountability, oversight and training of Chicago’s police officers.

We sent a number of people to this second meeting, hosted by the Chicago Urban League at South Shore Cultural Center at  2622 W. Jackson Blvd.

One text documenters: see the notes here. These meeting notes are incomplete. If you would like to participate in Smart Chicago’s Documenter program and get paid to complete them, contact us.

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 Two videographers (Community TV Network, video here)

One photographer (Daniel X. O’Neil, images here, download them all here in hi res). The meeting was conducted by the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force, and they used the video we created to prepare and post on their Youtube page as well. 

All of this material is posted under Creative Commons 4.0 license. You are free to use it for any purpose, with attribution.

On location:

One of the joys of attending community meetings in our deeply segregated city is that one gets to all sorts of new places. The South Shore Cultural Center is a brilliant place. It was built as a private club that was later made public for all. Here’s what it looks like when a former country club for the rich is pressed into service as a meeting room for all.

A winter meeting at 6PM means nighttime in Chicago:

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 The location is on the lakefront. When it was built in 1905, it was a “country setting” of unimproved south lakefront property, often used for fishing and duck hunting. The Nature Sanctuary remains.

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We covered the meeting with videographers from CTVN, and news organizations covered it as well.

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Here’s a CTVN apprentice taping from the media dais in the back of the room.

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The task force members sat on a stage in the front of the ballroom.

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The tile floor has been trod by many.

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And people stepped to the lectern to speak in two-minute stints about their experiences.

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Many were dismissive of the work of the task force.

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And everything’s quiet outside.

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Come to the February 2016 Connect Chicago Meetup: Chicago Public Library’s Internet to Go Program

Denise Linn

Our next Connect Meetup will feature the Chicago Public Library’s hotspot lending program, Internet to Go.

At the event, the Connect Chicago community will learn about Internet to Go, hear about the program’s goals & impact, and have a larger discussion about 21st Century Library resources addressing digital equity. Lunch will be served.

Event: Chicago Public Library’s Internet to Go Wi-Fi Hotspot Lending Program

Where: The Chicago Community Trust

When: Friday, February 26th from 11am to 1pm

RSVP at this link.

Our special guest will be Michelle Frisque, the Chief of Technology, Content and Innovation at the Chicago Public Library.  

You’re invited to join this cross-sector discussion on libraries and Internet access projects. Come meet and network with computer trainers, nonprofit professionals, and fellow residents who care about the digital lives of Chicagoans.

LearnReadDiscover

About Internet to Go

Chicago Public Library’s innovative Internet to Go program lets patrons check out a Wi-Fi hotspot for three weeks. Launched in 2015, the lending program targets neighborhoods with low Internet use and adoption, giving patrons in that neighborhood free access they can take outside of the library’s walls. Supporters of the programs include the Knight Foundation & Google.

“To increase engagement with the Internet in communities with extremely low Internet use, Chicago Public Library will test Wi-Fi hotspot lending from six neighborhood libraries in combination with robust digital skills coaching. Laptops and tablets will also be available. Devices will be loaned for three weeks, and digital and information literacy services will be made available to patrons at checkout. Internet to Go will allow the library—already the city’s largest provider of free Internet access—to test the idea, refine it and ultimately expand the project.” – The Knight Foundation

Hotspots are available for check-out at the following Chicago Public Library branches:

  • Austin
  • Brighton Park
  • Daley Richard M.-W, Humboldt
  • Douglass
  • Galewood-Mont Clare
  • Greater Grand Crossing
  • Legler
  • North Pulaski
  • Vodak-East Side
  • Woodson Regional Library.

You can read more about the Internet to Go Program here. You can access the program’s FAQs here.

Austin

The Launch of the CUTGroup Collective

Sonja Marziano

Today, three years after we started the CUTGroup, we are announcing a new initiative called the CUTGroup Collective where we will convene organizations who are interested in our CUTGroup model to connect with each other, share information, and collaborate to improve what we know and the work that we do.

If this is something you want to be a part of, please fill out this form.

CUTGroup Test Discussion on Digital Skills

Smart Chicago started the Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup) to engage with residents around technology, build digital skills, and conduct usability testing to ensure that technology being built for people, actually worked for the people they tried to serve.

We think this is a great step in establishing sustained, meaningful collaboration with residents around the data and technology. CUTGroup 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. 

-Dan O’Neil from the launch blog post for the CUTGroup, February 1, 2013

Over the last few years, the CUTGroup grew to over 1,300 testers, extended from Chicago to the rest of Cook County, and our twenty-fourth test will happen early next month. While we are growing in numbers, we continue to reflect and develop this program and our processes to be accessible to more people and have a greater impact in the technology we test.

The CUTGroup has been a leading example of civic engagement through UX testing, and many cities have expressed interest in our model or started their own CUTGroup. Chattanooga Code for America Brigade started one in May 2014, Open Oakland began a CUTGroup in December 2014, Code for Miami was recently announced as a Knight Cities Challenge finalist for their Civic User Testing Group, and KC Digital Drive announced the start of their own CUTGroup just a couple of weeks ago!

It’s exciting when groups in other cities see the value in the work that we do and replicate it. Being open is a leading principle at Smart Chicago:

We are open. In the technology industry, the primary manifestation of that is the use of open source code. We have dozens of repositories on Github, for every piece of software we’ve made over the last three years. But being open means more than using a particular license for our software. It means having open processes, so that people know what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and how they can affect it. This is about allowing others “in”, wherever that may be in any particular situation.

For the CUTGroup, the first part of this was easy. The code for our website and management tool are on GitHub. We share all of our test results, our tools, the questions we ask, and the responses from our testers. We wrote the CUTGroup book in September 2014 as a resource and set of best practices to run a CUTGroup. These steps were crucial, but we wanted to find a way to allow more people in—to engage directly with workers in other cities not to only to replicate our model, but also establish a network that helps create sustainable and successful CUTGroups. 

CUTGroup Collective

Smart Chicago’s goal for the CUTGroup Collective is to convene organizations and institutions in cities to help others establish new CUTGroups, create a new community, and share and learn from one another.

First, we will broaden the ways we communicate by having a Slack channel dedicated to CUTGroup work. We will also host monthly calls to discuss processes, successes and challenges. This will lead to even more documentation that will be useful to other cities.

We will promote a system for sharing information and stories from before, during and after the test so we can learn about the different technologies being tested and what is and isn’t working for residents.

We will host a meeting in Fall 2016 that focuses on the intersection of UX testing, digital skills, and community engagement that is present in our CUTGroup model. More to come on this!

We are grateful to the Knight Foundation, which makes the CUTGroup Collective possible. They are funding this work through our Deep Dive, where we are part of a cohort representing a diverse set of approaches to expanding community information and increasing community engagement.

If you are interested in a model, or have already established a CUTGroup, we want to hear from you. Questions? Email me here:

Fill out the form below and let’s get in touch!

Connect Chicago January 2016 Meetup Recap: Co-Creating a Digital Access & Skills Ecosystem

Denise Linn

On Friday January 29th, trainers, program coordinators, and public sector leaders from all across Chicago came together to Co-Create a Digital Access & Skills Referral Network for Chicago.

We were pleased to see friends and collaborators from Chicago Public Library, Microsoft, Safer Foundation, Blue 1647, YWCA Chicago, Jane Addams Resource Corporation, Literacy Works, LISC Chicago, Chicago Housing Authority, and many other institutions in attendance.

Why build this network? First, there is obvious value in taking inventory of all of the digital/tech skill-building programs in the city. Second, after the inventory is taken, we, as a sector, can begin to understand how our work fits together. By simply knowing where Adler Planetarium can recruit new youth, or where the Cara Program can refer its patrons to next, we illuminate learning pathways for Chicago residents.

To see a growing list of Connect Chicago people and programs, see our Twitter list.

You can read about our inspiration for hosting this event here and read more about the taxonomy that organized the event here.

Discovering Learning Pathways Across Programs

This was a highly interactive Meetup. Every program in attendance had a poster complete with detailed program information (from this survey), a flyer, an envelope for business cards or feedback, and space for others to mark if:

“I would refer my patrons to this program”

– and / or –

“I would recruit patrons who completed this program”

See Career Transitions Center of Chicago’s poster for an example:

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This was a “low tech” method of getting rich, hard-to-collect data from scattered sources.

If you enlarge the image above, you’ll see a hypothetical learning pathway for a resident. A digital learner in Chicago might start at Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH). POAH might then might refer that patron to Career Transitions Center of Chicago for both emotion/professional support as digital skills are improved. Then, if that patron is interested in the manufacturing field, they can go from Career Transitions Center of Chicago to the Jane Addams Resource Corporation (JARC). That is just one route to a goal. We want to illuminate more.

At the end of the Meetup event, we raffled off funds to one of the participating programs. We were pleased to award $1000 in funds to the Jack Ehrlich Literacy Program at the Anixter Center – a training program that provides one-on-one mentoring to adults with disabilities. According to Anixter’s Digital Access & Skills Referral Network Survey Response:

“We have a general computer class to teach internet navigation, typing, mouse usage, etc. Learners can work 1:1 on any computer skills they wish. We have iPads and touchscreen computers, and accessible technology, all of which people can learn to use.”

The city is filled with programs like Anixter. These programs and training sites work everyday, playing their specialized role in strengthening the digital access & skills ecosystem of Chicago.

Resources from the Meetup

You can access all the resources from the January Meetup in the Connect Chicago Shared Google Folder. In this folder you’ll find:

  • A spreadsheet of the Digital Access & Skills Referral Network Survey responses. Note: If you are a participating program and see an email address or item that you would prefer not to be shared publically, please email
  • High resolution pictures of every featured program poster at the Meetup (including
  • Every program flyer featured at the Meetup
  • Notes from the Meetup. There is a section in the notes where organizations can post announcements and resources — we encourage everyone to contribute.
  • The presentation from the Meetup.

The work isn’t over. We plan to build on this material with your help. Digital/tech training programs or access programs can still fill out the Digital Access & Skills Referral Network Survey to be included.

Thank you to all of the training sites and programs that participated in the January 29th Connect Chicago Meetup! More data and tools will be released as a result of this great work. Follow the Smart Chicago blog for news and updates.