Developer Resources

Smart Chicago Collaborative (SCC) supports development of innovative civic applications in many ways. In some projects, such as We Connect Chicago and Chicago Early Learning, SCC acts as a fiscal agent, managing development and funding sources. This arrangement allows Smart Chicago to hire top development talent, such as DataMade and Azavea, to tackle challenging civic problems. In other projects, SCC supports development by donating infrastructure resources. SCC maintains infrastructure on Amazon Web Services, Heroku, and Google Apps for Business.

In addition to server space, Smart Chicago offers several useful tools for developers:

1. Civic User Testing Group: the CUT Group is a first-of-its-kind effort to connect civic developers to real community members to foster co-creation and more usable, useful civic applications. CUT Group can provide large groups of citizens to help design and validate applications, and smaller focus groups to provide direct application feedback to developers.
2. Google Apps for Business: SCC manages a Google Apps account through Google Apps for Nonprofits. This includes access to the Google Maps for Business API, which allows for very large daily geocoding limits, real-time transit information, larger static map images, and more.
3. smartchicagoapps.org wildcard SSL: SCC owns a wildcard SSL certificate, which means that any application hosted using a *.smartchicagoapps.org subdomain can implement industry-standard SSL support free of cost.
4. Github organization: SCC hosts many code repositories on its Github organization page, and coordinates development using the project issue trackers.
5. Access to subject matter experts: SCC staff have deep connections with experts and policy makers within municipal government, and with technical experts with experience in building very large applications. SCC can work with developers to liberate data, solve tough technical challenges, go “behind the scenes” to see how technology can be used to solve civic problems, and place solutions in front of stakeholders and policy makers.
6. Seats at 1871. We are founding tenants of 1871. the digital co-working space, and often have seats available for developers and other thinkers interested in civic innovation. More here.

SCC maintains a gallery of applications that it hosts and develops at http://www.smartchicagoapps.org.

The overall mission of SCC is to make the lives of Chicagoans better through the use of technology. By giving application developers tools and assuming a portion of the financial burden, SCC allows developers to focus on doing what they do best: building amazing, useful applications to make the lives of Chicagoans better.