Eliminate the Digital Divide

Smart Chicago Collaborative and the City’s Technology Plan

Smart Chicago

Earlier this month, Chicago Chief Technology Officer John Tolva unveiled the city’s very first technology plan. The plan was a result of a year-long process of research, brainstorming, and thinking about how to make all of Chicago competitive in the new digital economy.

This plan is a comprehensive framework for growing Chicago’s technology sector , getting broadband connectivity for everyone, and  ensuring that Chicago remains a leader in open government data .

The plan also highlights the work that the civic technology community has been doing in Chicago. From the weekly OpenGov Hack Nights, the Smart Communities Program, and youth STEM programs; Chicago already enjoys a strong set of technology strengths and this plan will enable the city to advance even further.

Smart Chicago Collaborative is proud to have a key role in many of these initiatives and is dedicated to  implementing this plan. Here’s a look at our role in the plan and the aspects of our existing work in this context.

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Update on Our Smart Health Centers Project

Kyla Williams

Smart Health Center Day with Chicago Health Corps at the Chicago Community TrustThe Smart Health Center project places trained health information specialists in low-income clinics to assist patients in connecting to their own medical records and to find information about their health online. The project is a joint effort led by the Alliance of Chicago in collaboration with the Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute and the Smart Chicago Collaborative. We’d like to share a few updates about how the program is doing.

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Girls Do Hack – An all girls hackathon at the Adler Planetarium

Christopher Whitaker
Youth Hackathon at Adler Planetarium #hackforchange

This summer, the Adler also hosted a youth hackathon as part of National Day of Civic Hacking

On November 9th, the Adler Planetarium will be hosting an all girls hackathon for young women who are considering STEM careers called Girls Do Hack. This is the third hackathon in a series of hackathons that are being hosted by the Adler. Previous hackathons have included the Youth Civic Hack Day and Science Hack Day.

Participants will be divided in teams of four and paired with two mentors and will have the opportunity to explore a variety of things that can be done with a career in science and technology. These will include everything from hunting for exo-planets to mobile phone hacking.

High school students can register for the hackathon at the Adler’s website.  Registration is free, but space is limited. Additionally, the Adler is looking for mentors to help the teams. If you’re interested in becoming a mentor, you can register here.

You can follow this event on Twitter and learn more about the Adler by following them on Twitter @adlerskywatch.

Growing our own talent

Christopher Whitaker
Englewood Codes

Englewood Codes Demo Day

In recent months, we’ve highlighted several efforts to teach young people how to code and about technology. These efforts have included Englewood Codes, Civic Summer, and Adler Planetarium’s Youth Hackathon. Smart Chicago is proud to have supported these efforts and looks forward to supporting more STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) programs like these in the future.

It’s vital that Chicago grows its own talent. According to the US Department of Labor, STEM jobs are projected to grow 17% over the next decade.

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US Ignite Summit: Building the next digital world (and what it means for Chicago)

Christopher Whitaker

Ballroom Crowd at the US Ignite Application Summit at the Allegro Hotel, Chicago

The US Ignite Summit highlighted the potential and the opportunities that the next generation internet will bring to the United States. The next generation internet will have upload and download speeds above 1000MBps. (For comparison, the average download speed in Chicago is 50Mbps and the average upload speed is only 10MBps.)

The summit highlighted the potential of next generation apps and the economic development that’s possible with gigabit internet. The summit was attended by 300 people, 53 of whom hailed from the City of Chicago. Through Smart Chicago’s sponsorship of the event we were able to give out several free passes to Chicago residents to ensure that there was a wide variety of fields represented at the conference.

Pallavi Anderson leads a group at the Ideation session of US Ignite

Smart Chicago Collaborative also ran an ideation session as part of the summit. With so much money, time and effort being invested into the gigabit internet it’s important to gain a wide variety of perspectives on what we could do with the next generation internet. Several fantastic ideas where generated out of this session including apps centered around emergency response, healthcare, and library systems.

Smart Chicago Collaborative was also proud to host a reception where internet advocate Susan Crawford spoke about the progress of communication technology – and how we can support real world ties with technology.

Susan Crawford Addresses the US Ignite Application Summit at the Cultural Center in Chicago

Gigabit internet is coming to Chicago. Smart Chicago Collaborative looks forward to assisting in efforts to bring the next generation internet here and looks forward to the economic and social opportunities that it will bring.

 

U.S. Ignite Application Summit and the Future of Gigabit Chicago

Smart Chicago

Last year I attended the US Ignite launch event at the White House (see full video here), where a number of Obama administration officials made a series of announcements about programs around broadband policy. It was a wide-ranging and mind-boggling series of speakers, and I wrote up some thoughts about what it all meant for Chicago.

Executive Office Building, Washington DC

This is an age of conception— we are limited only by our imaginations

Since then, I’ve continued to take interest in US Ignite and their efforts to foster the creation of next-generation Internet applications that provide transformative public benefit. The investments made here in Chicago, including the Gigabit Squared project that includes $2 million of investment from the State of Illinois as well as the Broadband Challenge from the City of Chicago— show that Chicago is very much a part of the Gigabit future.

What has struck me most, as I follow this work, is how far we have to go in terms of conceiving what this next-generation network looks like for regular people.

That’s why we’re a sponsor of the US Ignite Application Summit being held in Chicago June 24th – 26th.

What could you build if you weren’t restricted by the limits of network speed and latency? What if your network could support gigabit download and upload speeds? What if the power of cloud data centers wasn’t located on the east coast, but placed in your own backyard? What would you build?  What businesses could you launch if there were no limits?

That’s what we want to find out at this three-day event, running from June 24th to June 26th at the Allegro Hotel and UIC. We’ll be posting regularly from the Summit, so follow along on our Twitter and Facebook accounts.