Fox 32 News Covers Chicago Civic Hacking Community

Smart ChicagoAugust 13, 2013

Tonight Fox 32 9 o’clock news did a story on the civic hacking community here in Chicago. Great stuff, including extensive coverage of OpenGov Hack Night and the presentation about a possible app for restaurant workers.

Hackers use their skills to make Chicago more “user-friendly”

FOX 32 Chicago News Story: Hackers use their skills to make Chicago more `user-friendly` from Daniel X. O’Neil on Vimeo.

Here’s the Rap Genius annotation for the story, with lots of links and some clarifications:

Fox 32 News Chicago – Hackers use their skills to make Chicago more `user-friendly’ Lyrics

And complete text:

Hackers use their skills to make Chicago more `user-friendly`

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) –
Usually when you think about computer hackers, you think of people doing something illegal with your bank account, but now, a group of people are redefining the term by using their technology skills to develop useful websites that will benefit people living or visiting Chicago.

It’s called “civic hacking” and the city is partnering with private groups and volunteers to try and make life better in Chicago. It’s part of the Smart Chicago Collaborative that has already developed more than 50 apps all aimed at solving city problems, while fostering open government.

All the information used in the apps comes from public city data bases. It’s a trend that more and more cities across the country are doing, but Chicago is among the leaders.

If you’ve ever had your car towed and wondered where it was taken, you are not alone. Who can forget the frustration shared by hundreds of people after the blizzard of 2011 when their vehicles were towed and it took days for some people to find them?
Wasmycartowed.com wasn’t available then or it might have alleviated a lot of angst. Now, using city data, the website allows you to find your towed car simply by putting in the license plate.

It’s an app developed by volunteers working at hack nights sponsored by Open City Apps in cooperation with the Smart Chicago Collaborative.

“We have web developers, designers, data analysts and community organizers that come together to come together to talk about civic issues and how we can use our technology skills to solve those problems,” Smart Chicago Collaborative’s Christopher Whitaker explains.

One of the projects some hack night teams are working on is an open trip planner app similar to Google maps, but one that making using the new Divvy Bikes a lot easier by incorporating info about bike stations.

“So it can give you walking directions to that particular spot, and then it can also give you biking directions from one station to another, so it’s all, sort of encompassing in one spot,” Derek Eder of Open City Apps says.

Other available apps include chicagocouncilmatic.org which allows people to track legislation by subject or by alderman.

There’s another to help find flu shot locations, and one to track complaints about food poisoning on Twitter.

“So if you go to Twitter and complain about food poisoning we have a listener for that, some software that listens for that and we tweet back at you including people from the
Chicago Department of Public Health,” Executive Director Daniel O’Neil says.

That app would provide info to the Health Department so it could send an inspector to the restaurant in question.

Tonight: Social Justice + Civic Technology

Smart ChicagoAugust 13, 2013

There’s a lot of action in the world of civic innovation here in Chicago. Just today, Foodborne Chicago was the cover story for the Red Eye and the focus of a front-page news story in the Tribune and there’s a Wall Street Journal story highlighting some of the great things going on here in Chicago.

#DirtyDining: Food-poisoning tweets get city follow-up Health authorities seek out sickened Chicagoans, ask them to report restaurants

It’s fun to focus on the more scatological aspects of the work that’s going on. And lots of the work, while certainly helping people live better in Chicago, fails to directly address the lives of working people.

But tonight, at the weekly OpenGov Hack Night, we have a great opportunity to do that (and happens to be in food industry!) Here’s a note from OpenGov Hack Night showrunner Derek Eder:

The next Open Gov Hack Night is tomorrow, Aug 13th at 6pm!

Matt Bruce with the Chicago Community Trust and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United will talk about the US Labor Department’s app challenge for creating a smartphone app that integrates the department’s publicly available enforcement data with consumer ratings, geo-positioning, and other relevant data sets. More details here.

Food will be provided by the Smart Chicago Collaborative! Please RSVP so we know how much to get.

Social justice is where it’s at.

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.

Chi Hack Night