4 days after Divvy launch, an app prototype and an API presented at OpenGov Hack Night

Christopher WhitakerJuly 8, 2013 1 Comment

Lots of Divvy bikes lined up on Daley Plaza on the eve of the launch of Divvy Chicago

Just four days after the launch of the Divvy Bike Sharing program, Chicago’s civic technology community had already put together a prototype app and an API using bike share data.

Chicago OpenGov Hack Night played host to representatives from both Alta Bicycles (The company that manages Divvy) and the Chicago Department of Transportation to talk about the new bike share program and the data that’s available.

divvydatascreenshot

A screenshot of the raw data obtained from the Divvy website.

The first data set, available at (http://divvybikes.com/stations/json), gives information on real-time usage statistics and availability of bikes per station.

This data set reflects the same format from other bike share systems across the globe. This enabled Chicago’s data to be merged into other bike apps such as Oliver O’Brian’s Global Bike Share Map.

globalbikeshareview

Locally, Ian Dees and Steve Vance have been hard at work building applications with this new data set. They have put together google document that contains a list of resources for the civic innovation community who are interested in working with bike share data. Dees has built an API that makes it easier to access the bike data. Vance has already taken advantage of this API to provide bike share information in his Chicago Bike Guide. (As a reminder, this was presented to OpenGov Hack Night just FOUR DAYS after the launch of Divvy.)

Steve Vance and Ian Dees discuss apps that are built using bike share data

Daniel Gohlke from Alta bikes answered questions about the in and outs of the data as well as plans to release information on the most active routes and where people are biking. Gohlke’s stated that in most cities this data is released quarterly, but if CDOT wants to release this data at an increased frequency that it should be possible.

Daniel explains about the data provided by the Divvy system

Question and answer session with representatives from Divvy and CDOT

Given that Divvy was only launched for a little over 2 weeks ago, we’re excited about what’s to come in terms of potential uses for this data. John Tolva, Chief Technology Officer for Chicago, would like to see data from different transportation systems integrated into a single app:

“The speed with which our civic innovation community seized on Divvy data gives me great hope that a truly multi-model, hyperlocal journey planning service — across cabs, public transit, shared bikes — can be assembled fairly easily. Most of the data is there. All that’s needed is an intelligent stitching-together.”

For those interested in working on bike share data, you’re invited to attend the next OpenGov Hack Night – every Tuesday at 6:00pm inside 1871.

Moving Forward After National Day of Civic Hacking

Christopher WhitakerJune 5, 2013

Derek Eder teaching at Migrahack #hackforchange
National Day of Civic Hacking is over. It was a great event that brought web developers, journalists, designers, community activists, data gurus, and government officials together for a weekend civic hacking. Chicago was the most active city with 412 people taking part in events at Cibola, 1871, and the Adler Planetarium.
Youth Hackathon at Adler Planetarium #hackforchange
As a city, we should be proud of what’s we’ve accomplished. And not just for what happened during National Day of Civic Hacking, but proud of how far we’ve come since the days where the data portal only showed FOIA requests. We should celebrate these wins and in the coming days, we’ll be featuring these successes on the blog.
The City of Chicago's @ryanbriones talking about the idea for a civic needs app #hackforchange
However, it’s far more important to ensure that these efforts continue past this weekend. Civic issues are complicated, complex, and difficult to solve. It will take more than a single weekend to find solutions to these problems. As a community, we need to continue to connect civic technologists to community activists who are wrestling with civic issues on a daily basis. We must continue to outreach to every neighborhood in Chicago and ensure that the apps we build help the everyday Chicagoan and not just the geeks. While this weekend has been a fantastic weekend to organize around civic innovation there is still a lot of work to be done.
.@JazminBeltran learning data animation at @migrahack #hackforchange

We met a lot of people over the weekend: Journalists, scientists, community organizers, web developers and designers. We need to connect the dots and form new partnerships to help solve problems in our neighborhoods. We would love to stay in touch with everyone who participated in National Day of Civic Hacking. If that sounds good to you, please fill out this quick contact form so we can reach out to you about different projects.

On our end, the Smart Chicago Collaborative is offering the following to any and all participants of Chicago’s National Day of Civic Hacking.

1) We encourage everyone to continue their projects at the OpenGovChicago Hack Nights. They’e every Tuesday at 6:00pm inside 1871. The events are free and these nights are a great way to work on long term projects.

2) If you have a civic app that benefits the people of Chicago, you can get the app hosted on Smart Chicago Collaborative’s servers for free.

3) Smart Chicago will provide user testing to any Chicago civic app for free. Through the Civic User Testing Group, civic developers in Chicago have access to hundreds of testers to help test your app in order to improve it and make the best app possible.

4) We will help you tell your story. At the national level, the organizers are accepting submissions for stories about what came out of National Day of Civic Hacking. Teams with the best stories will be invited to The White House to be featured at an event in late July. If you need help writing your story, email cwhitaker(at) cct (dot) org and we’ll help you get your story ready. We’ll also help put together a short video to include with your submission.
Youth Hackathon at Adler Planetarium #hackforchange
It’s an exciting time to be involved in this movement. There are more and more cities getting involved in civic hacking thanks to the efforts of the Code for America brigade and through events like National Day of Civic Hacking. We’re looking forward to continuing this effort in the future.

Thank You

Smart Chicago Collaborative would like to thank all those that made this weekend possible:

Event locations: 1871, Cibola, and the Adler Planetarium.

Lead Organizations: Institute for Justice Journalism, The Adler Planetarium, and Code for America.

Event Sponsors and Partners: Azavea, Center for Evidence-Based Mentoring, Chicago Architecture Foundation, The Chicago Community Trust, the City of Chicago, Free Spirit Media, Hive Chicago, Knight Lab, The MacArthur Foundation, Mikva Challenge, Rob Paral, and Open City Apps

National Civic Day of Hacking at 1871

Christopher WhitakerMay 22, 2013

Chicago will be hosting three different events during National Day of Civic Hacking.

ChicagoMigrahack: A hackathon focused on immigration issues at Cibola. (May 31st – June 2nd)
Hack for Youth: A youth centric hackathon hosted by the Alder Planetarium. (June 1st – June 2nd)
Hack for Chicago: A general hackathon at 1871.

Here are a couple of the projects that will be going on during the Hack for Chicago event.

Civic Needs App: (9:30 IMSA Room)

Safer Communities Hackathon at Google Chicago

One of the challenges of civic innovation is matching the resources provided by open government data, and talent of the civic hacking community with the needs of the community. This app is led by a team of Ryan Briones, Scott Robin, and Chris Gansen. The idea behind this app is to help provide an easy interface for community members to recruit web developers for civic projects.

Civic.json:

A branch of the civic needs app will be focused on creating a database of all civic app projects in Chicago using a new template. This will enable people to search for civic projects already in existence in order to either find a solution to a problem or to help improve an existing app.

App Design Workshop with Knight Lab: (9:30am Auditorium)

.@jmm teaching app design at Chicago #OpenGov Hack Night

Miranda Mulligan will be giving an app design workshop at 9:30. This design process doesn’t start with the latest data set, but instead focuses on user needs.

Everyone partners up for the workshop and takes turns interviewing their partners about a particular problem they face. The workshop encourages participants to dig deeper by determining the user’s needs, insights on how they feel about the issue, and then designing an app that fits those needs.

Chicago-Area Red Cross Tech Recruitment: (11:30 Auditorium)

Red Cross Digital Operations Center - Powered by Dell

Red Cross Digital Operations Center, Dell/Creative Commons

Jim McGowan from the Chicago Area Red Cross will be at the event to recruit tech volunteers for the Red Cross. Jim is the manager of the Red Cross Operations Analysis and Disaster Dispatch for the region.

He’ll also be on hand to talk about the Urban Disaster Planning hackathon with Geeks without Bounds occurring June 21st – June 23rd.

Edit-a-thon with OpenStreetMap

12 bike and ped crashes at the highway

Steven Vance/Creative Commons

Ian Dees will be leading an Edit-a-thon for Chicago’s OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is an open source map that anyone can edit. Users can add data to the map including information about their favorite restaurants, cultural venues, and more. We’ll be adding more data to the map as part of the OpenStreetMap Meetup Group. You can register for the event at the Chicago OpenStreetMap Meetup Page here.

Chicago Councilmatic Launch: (12:00pm Auditorium)

OpenCity Apps will be launching the Chicago Councilmatic for National Day of Civic Hacking. Councilmatic was originally a Code for America project built for the City of Philadelphia that makes it easy to track city legislation.

Whatever you want:

Hacking on Edifice

Steven Vance, Creative Commons

The Hack for Chicago event as 1871 is not limited to any specific project and so people are more than welcome to come in and work on any civic app they like. Civic problems are tough and there is plenty of work to be done on a variety of issues.

To register for the Hack for Chicago event, simply RSVP on the OpenGov Chicago Meetup page and tell us what you’re interested in working on.

Breakfast will be provided by Azavea at 8:45am. Lunch will be provided by the Smart Chicago Collaborative and will be served at 11:30am.

The Schoolcuts.org teams school us on how to build a civic app (even after launch)

Christopher WhitakerMay 21, 2013

Since schoolcuts.org first launched two months ago, the team has been working around the clock to add new features and information to the site.

One of the weakness of the civic hacking movement is a tendency to launch a new civic app based on some newly released data set and then never touch the app or the issue again.

It is a rare instance when a civic problem can be solved by one simple app release – particularly when the civic problem is something large and complicated like crime, sustainability, or education.

So while the schoolcuts team launched their app two months ago, they have continued to add more information and features to the site as questions continued around the issue of school closings in Chicago. (Most recently, they’ve translated the site into Spanish.)

The team presented how they went about building the app in three separate acts.

Act One: The Problem

The team started with the problem. (Not the data set) In this case, the team was hearing from Chicago Public School parents who wanted more information about the impending school closing. CPS had released data about each school on the closing list, but the information was scattered across different websites and PDF documents.

The problem was compounded when Chicago Public School announced the list. Not only were certain schools closing, but some schools were having their locations changed. For parents, this meant that even if their school wasn’t closing – their routes to school would still change.

Additionally, the school attendance boundaries were not matching what Chicago Public Schools had designated to be the receiving schools. In effect, your oldest child may be going to a different elementary school that your youngest when they reach school age.

Further, the criteria used to closed schools used an additional value added system that further confused parents and community members.

Act Two: Opportunity

The schoolcuts.org team saw an oppurtunity to use build a site that clearly displayed the data around the school closing issue in a way that was easy for parents to understand.

Because team members already had connections to concerned parent groups, the team was able to understand the needs of the community and build the site around their needs.

Act Three: Solutions and Challenges

To help parents, they decides to try and ensure that the user experience was very localized to their school.

The site not only displays the data around school closings, but also does a good job of explaining what the terms mean.

Since their launch, the team has continued to add features such as a simple way to compare closing schools with receiving schools and has translated the site into Spanish.

Discussion

The schoolcuts team shows the right way to approach civic apps. They address a community concern using open data and educate the public about the issue.

The schoolcuts team will continue to work on this project even after the final school closing list is announced by creating a website that displays data for all schools called schoolcircle.

The site was also just nominated for a Moxie Award for best civic app.

Join us for the National Day of Civic Hacking in Chicago

Smart ChicagoMay 7, 2013

On May 31st – June 3rd, Chicago will have three separate events in coordination with the National Day of Civic Hacking.

National Day of Civic Hacking is a nationwide effort being coordinated by Random Hacks of Kindness, Code for America and the White House to help organize civic minded developers, designers, writers, and data scientists help create innovative solutions to civic problems.

This day— the first of its kind in the nation— has been a long time in coming. Back in January, I wrote about what it takes to turn civic hacking into civic innovation. Here’s a snip:

The civic hacking community in Chicago has produced a variety of civic web applications based on open data provided by local government here in Chicago. These apps do things like show economic indicators in fun ways, let you know if your car was towed, and how & where to get a flu shot.

There are lots of reasons why civic hacking works here in Chicago— a rich baseline of data and technology, an engaged developer community, real discussions with government about policy and data, and the support of institutions are all important factors.

But what we’re missing most is sustained engagement with the residents of the city of Chicago. That’s how we can turn mere hacking into real innovation. The magic combination of government, developers, and community members is what we’re after.

So that’s our focus here in Chicago. While cities across the nation participate in the essential baseline tasks of civic hacking, we’ll be tackling this broader work, seeking to expand the movement we’ve built.

It’s time for all Chicagoans to “meet the movement”– to work hand-in-hand with hackers in order to make our communities better. We hope you’ll join us. Here’s a list of events:

ChicagoMigrahack at Cibola (May 31st – June 2nd)

The purpose of Chicago Migrahack is to foster the use of technology and open data to innovate information around immigration. In Spanish, the word “migra” refers to immigration.

We want to bring together our communities to create innovative platforms around one of the most debated topics today: Immigration

This event will kick off Friday, May 31st with a day of training around civic hacking and data. There will be $7,000 in cash prizes given away for the best projects.

Civic Hack Day for Youth at Adler Planetarium

Image courtesy of Greg Briggs – Creative Commons License

The Adler Planetarium is holding a youth-focussed Civic Hack Day on June 1/2 where Chicago youth, mentors, and highly skilled STEM professionals will work together in teams towards solutions to Chicago Issues. Youth team members will bring problems with them that they, or members of their communities, face on a daily basis, as well as a vision for a technological solution. This unique, youth-focused event is being run in collaboration with the Hive Chicago, Mikva Challenge, the Chicago Architecture Foundation and Free Spirit Media Working. Young people, their mentors and STEM professionals will shape and build working prototypes of their solutions over an awe-inspiring 28-hour period.

Hack for Chicago at 1871 (June 1st)

We’ll be having several different events at 1871 during the weekend. You can register for these events here.

App Design Workshop with the Knight Lab

Miranda Mulligan from the Knight Lab will give a workshop on designing apps that meet the needs of users.

National Civic Hacking 101 Workshop with Code for America

Christopher Whitaker will give a short primer on civic hacking to help orient people who are new to hackathons and civic innovation. This class will be broadcast nationwide in cooperation with other cities.

OpenStreetMap Edit-a-thon with Ian Dees

OpenStreetMap is an open source map that anyone can edit. Users can add data to the map including information about their favorite restaurants, cultural venues, and more. We’ll be adding more data to the map all weekend long. You can register for the event at the Chicago OpenStreetMap Meetup Page here.

General Hack Session with OpenCity Apps

We’ll also be having a general hack session if you’re already working on a civic app.

We’ll be sending more information about the event as time gets closer. Look forward to seeing you at one of the events!

PRESS

Here’s some coverage of the event.

Chicagoan’s prep for massive civic hacakthon
WBEZ Datum blog

Chicago: City of Big Data and National Day of Civic Hacking
Code for America Blog

This Week’s OpenGov Hack Night: App Design Workshop with Knight Lab’s Miranda Mulligan

Christopher WhitakerMay 3, 2013

.@jmm teaching app design at Chicago #OpenGov Hack Night

This week’s OpenGov Hack Night featured an app design workshop by the Knight Lab’s Miranda Mulligan. This design process doesn’t start with the latest data set, but instead starts with establishing empathy with the user.

Everyone partners up for the workshop and takes turns interviewing their partners about a particular problem they face. The workshop encourages participants to dig deeper by determining the user’s needs, insights on how they feel about the issue.

More hacking at the design workshop

Miranda then encourages users to think of radical ways that app designers can meet the users needs. After this, participants get feedback from their partners to help refine their ideas.

Then comes the fun part – arts and crafts time!

Arts and Crafts time at the OpenGov Hack Night

Using a variety of multi-colored paper, participants build mock-up designs of their apps. We then went around the room showing off our work.

Now that's what I call a wireframe

More demos of designs at #opengov hack night

If this sounds like a fun workshop (and it is!) then you’re in luck! Miranda will be giving this workshop again as part of National Day of Civic Hacking June 1st at 1871. The event is free and everyone is welcome. Registration for the event will open up later this week!

And as always, you can join us each and every Tuesday at 6:00 for OpenGov Hack Night at 1871.

1871