Civic Tech Hero: Scott Robbin

Since October 2013, civic tech pioneer, Chicago web developer, and good friend Scott Robbin has been working with Smart Chicago as our lead developer. If you have worked at all with us since then, you have benefitted from his work. Let’s take a look:

• He’s managed our Developer Resources program, helping dozens of local projects succeed. He was especially key projects like mRelief, Chicago Crashes, Roll With Me, HealthNear.Me, Chicago Flu Shots, Chicago Buildings Map, Crime and Punishment in Chicago, DivvyBrags, Affordable Care Outreach App, Expunge.io,  Distance Matrix for NYC and DC bike stations, Illinois Sex Help App, Crimearound.us, See Potential, Flavored Tobacco Search Engine, and My Building Doesn’t Recycle
• He worked on Connect Chicago, including adding an embed feature so people can share their work
• He’s managed our Foodborne Chicago site, for which he also created the admin tool and user interface
• He has been the lead developer and technical thinker behind phase three of Chicago Early Learning
• He’s worked in Kimball, our back-end tool for the CUTGroup, designing a new system that we hope to implement soon
• Reduced our monthly bill to Amazon web services by optimizing our EC2 instances
• Created a proxy for our Google Apps for Nonprofits program, allowing any Chicago developer to use our mass geocoder, higher page serving limits, and other map features
• Performed dozens of other important behind-the-scenes things like moving Chicago Works for You over to Mapbox when CloudMade changed their model, consolidating domain names and hosting services, and all of the essential technical tasks required for an operation like ours.

This is a ton of work. But at Smart Chicago, we’re not all about the technology. Scott has been a patient mentor for developers, teaching them how to use our resources, advising them on how to build their sites. He’s helped us work with non-technical consultants to keep them on the path to being bona-fide Web project managers. And he’s generally shared his vast knowledge in a patented, gentle, learned way. Scott Robbin is a treasure.

On a personal note, I’ve known Scott for many years, and we’ve worked on a volunteer basis on all sorts of projects. Most recently, we worked together to scrape, display, and make available for download every Comment on FCC Filing 14-28, Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet. We work. All we care about is work.

All hail Scott Robbin.