Matthew Shaxted dropped by Chicago’s OpenGov Hack Night to talk about how data visualizations can be used to create smarter cities.
Shaxted started his talk with the ways that data visualizations can help make cities more effective and efficient.
Chi Hack Night
Chi Hack Night t is Chicago’s weekly event to build, share, and learn about civic tech. Smart Chicago livestreams this event and writes up blog posts about the presentations on a regular basis.
Hack Night Live: Smart Cities and Simulation
Tonight’s live stream of the OpenGov Hack Night will be a presentation by Matthew Shaxted on Smart Cities using data analysis, webGL visualization, and agent based simulation.
Behind the scenes of the Go2School App
As a new school year begins in Chicago, there’s an app to help parents find directions to their new school called – appropriately enough – Go To School!
The app was built by Tom Kompare who initially wanted an easy way to determine when he needed to leave to get his daughter to school. When CPS announced that they intended to close a great number of schools, it added an extra impetus to create a tool to help parents find ways to get their kids to new schools.
Data Science Fellowship for Social Good Demos
This summer thirty-six data scientists from across the country to work on social good projects in Chicago. The Data Science for Social Good fellowship was led by Obama for America’s Chief Data Science Rayid Ghani and the University of Chicago’s Computational Institute. The fellowship was funded by a donation from Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
During the course of the summer, the fellows formed into teams that worked on 11 different projects. The DSSG team stopped by the OpenGov Hack Night to talk about the achievements made over the summer.
Englewood Codes Demo Day is Tonight
Englewood Code students working on their projects, photo by Demond Drummer
Tonight, 25 teens from Englewood Codes will demonstrate their websites at Kennedy King College. Englewood Codes is a 10 week summer program run by Demond Drummer of Teamwork Englewood. The program teaches kids not just web development, but teamwork and leadership.
Last week, Demond dropped by the OpenGov Hack Night to talk about the program, what the group was able to accomplish, lessons learned and the future of Englewood Codes.
Hack Night Live with Englewood Codes
Join us tonight at 6:15 pm CST for the live stream of tonight’s Chicago OpenGov Hack Night. Recently featured on Fox 32, the hack nights are a place where web developers, designers, data scientist, community activists, and city staff come together to work on civic projects.
This week will feature a presentation by Demond Drummer of Teamwork Englewood. In the spring, Drummer created a Kickstarter campaign for a summer youth program teaching kids to code. The Kickstarter attracted donations from all over the city, including Smart Chicago which kicked in $1,000.
The program has been going strong all summer and will host thier demo day on August 29th to present the projects. Drummer will talk about his experience running the program and what’s next for the project.
