There was no presentation at this week’s OpenGov Hack Night, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything going on.
Here are a few events that are coming up!
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National Day of Civic Hacking: Save the date! On June 1st and 2nd, Chicago will be joining civic hackers across the country to Hack for Change! We’ll have three events.
- Immigration Hackathon at Cibola
- Youth Hackathon at Adler Planetarium
- Hack for Chicago at 1871
More information about these events will be released soon.
- OpenStreetMap Hack Weekend: If you know your way around a compiler, feel comfortable with JSON and XML, or know the difference between an ellipsoid and a geoid, then the Hack Weekend is for you. We’re looking for those with technical know-how to help make a difference in OpenStreetMap’s core software by writing patches and new software to help make mapping faster and easier.
- Safe Communities Hackathon at Google: The City of Chicago is partnering with Google to host a hackathon centered around community safety on May 11th.
- Work for Chicago’s Department of Innovation and Technology – Make the awesome happen: The City of Chicago is hiring a new Managing Deputy Chief Information Officer to help run the city’s enterprise applications. The City of Chicago’s efforts in releasing data and leveraging technology have been the keystone to the entire civic innovation effort in Chicago. If you’ve got the chops, drop what you’re doing and apply now.
Datasets of the week: Energy Usage and alternative fuel locations
In honor of Earth Day, the City of Chicago released two new data sets.
The first is a new API that lets users see what the energy usage is throughout the city. This data set uses data aggregated by ComEd and People’s Gas to display energy uses by census track pairs. (For privacy concerns, the City doesn’t want to release data that can point out energy use for just one building. By having the data by census tract pairs, it protects privacy while still giving great information on the city’s energy usage.)
This data set also comes with an API. As with all new API’s released by the City, this API is well documented telling developers what all the fields are, what the error messages mean, and giving samples of code that use the API.
The other data set that was released is alternative fuel locations. This data set will be particularly important to companies that want to make electric cars more viable in the city.
Come join us next week at OpenGov Hack Night! Every Tuesday at 6:00pm inside 1871.
