Code for America

Leaving Smart Chicago. Also: The @Civicwhitaker Anthology!

Christopher Whitaker
Whitaker speaking at the Civic Tech Forum in Tokyo, Japan

Speaking at the Civic Tech Forum in Tokyo, Japan

Over the past three and a half years, I’ve been a consultant for the Smart Chicago Collaborative helping with research, writing, and manage events, Chicago’s National Day of Civic Hacking, the CivicWorks Project, and helping to organize and document the Chi Hack Night. Today will be my last day consulting for the Smart Chicago Collaborative.

Before I joined Smart Chicago, I was working at the Illinois Department of Employment Security (during the height of the recession) and getting my Master’s in Public Administration (International Non-Profit Management) from DePaul University. That experience would prove to be quite the education into the state of government technology.

When I began to do consulting work here, first with writing for the blog and later managing the CivicWorks Project, I began to learn a whole other side of things. I learned how a civic organization should be run.

Perhaps the favorite thing about consulting for Smart Chicago is that through the work I was able to learn a lot of things – and write about it.

The @CivicWhitaker Anthology

That means that all together, the Smart Chicago blog has a wealth of knowledge about civic technology. Smart Chicago has taken many of these lessons and is combining them into a book—  “The @CivicWhitaker Anthology”, which will be available next week during the Code for America Summit. Stay tuned.

Here’s a look at some highlights of my work here that will be included in the book:

The CivicWorks Project

The CivicWorks Project  was funded by the Knight Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust to spur support for civic innovation in Chicago. The program goals are to produce 200 content pieces, 5 apps that solve government problems, and 5 apps that solve community problems. I served as the project manager for Civic Works.

These projects were small scale projects with budgets of about $10,000, and I worked with high capacity organizations who do great work in their community. This also enabled me to support the work of many emerging organizations and companies including Textizen, LocalData, Postcode.io, FreeGeek Chicago, and mRelief. Some of these projects were simply connecting existing technology in ways I knew would support their work (Providing LocalData to SWOP) while others were more on the experimental side (Crime and Punishment in Chicago and Convicted in Cook). If anyone ever asks you what a Master’s of Public Administration degree is good for – it’s for being able to understand problem solve inside governments and non-profits.

Being able to do this in the context of technology tools for organization was a tremendous privilege.

Chi Hack Night

In addition to managing this project, a large part of my work with Smart Chicago involved covering Chi Hack Night. By being paid to go to Chi Hack Night, it enabled me to take a much greater part in the event. (Before, I would run from my office on Chicago’s north side and race downtown to make the event in time.) It also meant being able to be one of the more productive Code for America Brigade Captains since I could wake up in the morning and think only about civic tech things instead of a different day job. One of the things that’s been interesting for me personally is watching other Brigade members also transition into full time civic tech positions. To me, one of the biggest benefits of Brigades is that they act as “farm teams” that help develop talent for civic technology organizations.

Chi Hack Night is a fantastic learning environment. The convergence of developers, non-profit employees, designers, government employees, data scientists in an environment that discourages jargon and sets up opportunities for each side to learn from the other. One of the most fascinating things to watch at Chi Hack Night is the technologists becoming more knowledgable about civic issues and those from the civic sector becoming more technically savvy. As part of my role at Smart Chicago, I’ve been blogging about hack night and have written over a hundred blog posts covering hack night presentations.

National Day of Civic Hacking

Another aspect of the work that I’ve done has been with National Day of Civic Hacking, which has been one of the biggest magnets for getting people into the civic tech space. As part of my work, I helped to write how-to guides for newer communities on everything from how to run a hackathon to an introduction to civic technology.

Why I’m leaving Smart Chicago now

When I first started with Chi Hack Night it was still in its early stages and now has grown beyond anyone’s expectations and is fully sustainable on its own. (With its own blog and twitter handle!) With Chi Hack Night growing in leaps and bounds, Smart Chicago will be stepping back from its coverage of the event.

National Day of Civic Hacking is another event that’s grown tremendously since its inception. The event now helps to spur civic innovation communities across the country. With it now being managed by Code for America Communities (which I’ve been doing consulting for since last year), there’s also less of a need for Smart Chicago to provide the same level of writing than it was before. With so many groups doing their own event locally, Smart Chicago will focus on other things and will not be hosting another National Day of Civic Hacking event.

Additionally, Smart Chicago will be expanding their Documenters program to include more people. This post from the Knight Foundation is a prime example of why the documenting the work is so important. Without the documentation aspect of the work that we do, there’s not a real way to learn from our it.

I’ve learned a lot from my work at Smart Chicago, but now it’s time for other people to have the same opportunity to learn from working with the organization. Smart Chicago will be expanding the number of documenters continuing to write down lessons learned from Smart Chicago’s work.  Having learned all I can from doing this type of work, it’s time to move on to other adventurous and new learning opportunities.

If you’re interested in keeping in touch, you can follow me on Twitter at @civicwhitaker or email me at [email protected]. You can also catch me at the Chi Hack Night every Tuesday at 6:00pm.

National Day 2015 Round-up

Christopher Whitaker

logoLast week was a busy week for civic technologists in Chicago with several events being held throughout the city as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking. We’ve provided a quick roundup of everything that happened last week as well as some thoughts to next steps.

CitySDK Launch at Chi Hack Night

jeffathacknight

The Census Bureau launched their open data software development kit (SDK) at Chi Hack Night on Tuesday.  They also helped to break the current attendance record with 124 people coming in to hear Presidential Innovation Fellow Jeff Miesel demo the CitySDK. (You can catch the full demo here and the meeting notes for the event here.)

Steve Vance has already updated his Cityscape app to take advantage of the new CitySDK. He’s created a webpage as part of Chicago Cityscape that gets the median home value and median rent for the Census tract containing your GPS-based location.

You can get more updates on the CitySDK project by following them on Twitter.

Urban Sustainability Apps Competition 

On Friday, the Center for Neighborhood Technologies kicked off the weekend with the Urban Sustainability Apps Competition. The event was hosted by Stephen Philpott and took place over the entire weekend.

In attendance at the event was the CTO for the US Census Bureau Avi Bender as well as the City SDK team. The competition kicked off with some advice from Eve Tulbert – Founder of FreedomGames.

Eve’s group didn’t win the CNT Apps competition, but through the event they launched their company and now have paying customers. This year’s winner was Purshable – and app that helps grocery stores sell produce that is about to expire. You can get the full details on the event from the CNT blog. 

Organize! Civic Tech Leader Training

For Civic Tech Leader Training, we wanted to provide training for people already active in their communities – but wanted to learn more about the technology side of things.

We kicked off with David McDowell from the Southwest Organizing Project who gave us an orientation into community organizing. From there, we learned about the ins-and-outs for FOIA from Matt Topic of the Better Government Association. Before we got into the tech portion of our training, we had a brainstorming session about what problems we should be focusing on in the city and how we could leverage technology to address them. We took collaborative notes during the day so that you can see all of the ideas that we generated. Our brainstorming session was later joined by US Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil who also gave some short remarks and answered questions from the audience. In the afternoon, our own Josh Kalov taught about data portals and Microsoft’s Adam Hecktman gave a class on how to use Excel to analyze open data.

We also spoke about how to use tech tools and shared some tips on social media. To cap off the day, Claire Micklin from mybuildingdoesntrecyle.org talked about how to run a hack night project.

Adler National Day of Civic Hacking

To cover the Adler National Day of Civic Hacking event, we sent our Documentor Nicole Cipri to the Adler event. Here’s an excerpt her dispatch:

On June 6th, the Adler Planetarium joined venues across the world to host Civic Hack Day. Organized by Hack For Change, Civic Hack Day brings together community members, developers, programmers, and organizers to tackle tough problems and present practical solutions. Hackers come from a variety of backgrounds and bring diverse skill sets. Problem-solvers, makers, coders, tinkerers, anyone is invited to join the events.

Last year, Hack For Change saw 123 events in 13 different countries, including at Adler Planetarium. Kelly Sutphin-Borden, an educator with the Adler who also handled logistics for the Hackathon, said this was the third year the Adler had participated in Civic Hack Day. Last year, groups created several seed projects, including an app to help link homeless LGBTQ youth to resources, and a searchable and simplified website explaining the CPS code of conduct to students and parents.

This year, six different people pitched issues facing Chicago. Among the proposals:

  • A website to help engage citizens on proposed legislative regulations.
  • A media campaign to protect Chicago birds.
  • An online archive for photographs by Vivian Maier, a Chicago-area street photographer, which would complement a brick-and-mortar archive of her works.
  • A more accessible and streamlined portal to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Handbook
  • A data collection app for Cancercodebreaker.org, which would collect cancer patients’ treatment histories and share them with researchers.
  • An app to help hospital patients with follow-up care after their discharge

The last of the problems presented, about helping discharged hospital patients, was proposed by Dr. Pam Khosla, an oncologist at Mount Sinai. She had not planned on participating in Civic Hack Day, but only on keeping her daughter company there for a few hours. She became inspired after listening to some of the other proposed issues. She confessed that she’d heard about Hack For Change first on WBEZ, and had been confused by the term. “I thought all hacking was bad,” she explained. “Who are we hacking? Why?”

Mount Sinai is a hospital on Chicago’s West Side, an area of the city that suffers from high rates of poverty. Many of Khosla’s patients have trouble navigating the labyrinthine process of longterm cancer treatment. Some of her patients have limited English, or low literacy, or no support network to help them. She envisioned an app or device in which a patient could input their treatment plans, and would then remind them to book transportation to their appointments, take their medication, or help explain procedures or processes. The point was to get better patient compliance, and thus, better quality of care.

After presenting the problems, Clint Tseng of Socrata offered a crash course in accessing open data provided by Chicago, Cook County, and the state of Illinois. He also stayed on hand to help groups utilize this data for their projects. Individuals broke up into teams to tackle each of these issues, usually starting with a brainstorming session. Problem Owners were interviewed about what kind of solutions would be practical, while everyone pitched in to come up with ideas for formats, funding possibilities, and organization. After a rough idea is drafted, the group had the next 24 hours to fine-tune their proposed solution, presenting it the following morning.

Lexhacks

To cover LexHacks, we sent Stephen Rynkiewicz to cover the legal hackathon that happened at WeWorkChicago. Here’s an excerpt from his dispatch:
At LexHacks, developers, designers, lawyers, lean thinkers, project managers, data analysts and other professionals were challenged to work together to create solutions that improve the efficiency and delivery of legal services, as well as the access to legal services.
“I want lawyers to step up and embrace these technologies, so that we don’t have 80 percent of folks who have a need go without legal services,” explains Daniel Linna, an organizer of the Chicago Legal Innovation & Technology Meetup group. “We can do work with developers, designers, technologists, data analysts, lean thinkers to do that.” Lisa Colpoys, executive director of Illinois Legal Aid Online, organized one of two crowdfunded contests. “Our mission really is to break down the law, make it simple enough so people who can’t afford a lawyer can handle their legal problems,” Colpoys says. “This system is scary. It’s complicated. If people want to go to court on their own, they typically don’t do very well, at least without education and some support,” Colpoys says. “Our challenge is to create some sort of a tool for people to evaluate whether it’s worth it to pursue some case or claim, or defend their case or claim.“
Jon Pasky first organized legal hackathons to recruit developers to resolve a complaint he heard from tech startup founders. “They want to talk to their lawyer,” Pasky says, “but people I found in the small business and startup side don’t, because they’re afraid of the bills.”

With Ric Gruber, who worked his way through law school as a developer, Pasky launched Openlegal, the flat-fee website that recruits clients for their law office. “Every time we automate part of the process, we’re able to hire more lawyers instead of more admin staff,” Gruber says. “We’re saving our clients 30 to 50 percent because we’ve cut administrative waste.”

You can view all the submission for the LexHacks event here.
For more information about National Day of Civic Hacking, visit the main page at Hack for Change

U.S. Chief Data Scientist visiting Chicago for National Day of Civic Hacking

Christopher Whitaker 1 Comment

dj442U.S. Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil will be making a trip to Chicago for National Day of Civic Hacking.

As Chief Data Scientist, DJ helps to shape policies and practices to help the U.S. remain a leader in technology and innovation, foster partnerships to help responsibly maximize the nation’s return on its investment in data, and help to recruit and retain the best minds in data science to join the federal government in serving the public.

DJ’s Chicago trip will start out at our Civic Tech Leader Training at Blue1647, and will try to make as many National Day of Civic Hacking events in Chicago during his visit. Before he comes to Chicago, he’ll also be visiting Code for America’s Michiana Brigade in South Bend, Indiana.

National Day of Civic Hacking is a nationwide event will bring together urbanists, civic hackers, government staff, developers, designers, community organizers and anyone with the passion to make their city better. Together we’ll collaboratively build new solutions using publicly-released data, technology, and design processes to improve our communities and the governments that serve them.

You can follow along on all the National Day of Civic Hacking events by following #hackforchange on Twitter. 

Hack for Change

Christopher Whitaker

Poster_hack-for-changeOn June 6, 2015, thousands of people from across the United States will come together for National Day of Civic Hacking. The event will bring together urbanists, civic hackers, government staff, developers, designers, community organizers and anyone with the passion to make their city better. They will collaboratively build new solutions using publicly-released data, technology, and design processes to improve our communities and the governments that serve them. Anyone can participate; you don’t have to be an expert in technology, you just have to care about your neighborhood and community.

Smart Chicago has been supporting National Day of Civic Hacking since the start. The first year helping to organize multiple events in Chicago. Last year, Smart Chicago also started to write training blogs for the hackforchange.org website. We’re continuing the tradition this year with our longtime partner Code for America with providing additional training material.

As a city, Chicago is hosting multiple events all this week including our very own Organize! Training for new civic technology leaders. Below, we’ve broken down the list of events, training posts, subject primers, and who you should be following as the week kicks off.

Civic Tech Events in Chicago

CitySDK Launch at Chi Hack Night 

Hosted by Chi Hack Night – Braintree 6/2 – 6:00pm 

The Census Bureau has developed an open data software development kit (SDK)to enable a community, public, or private sector individuals and organizations to more easily extract value from Census data through user-friendly Application Program Interfaces (APIs). Through the SDK we are aiming to provide a user friendly “Toolbox” for civic hackers to connect local and national public data in order to bring forth innovative solutions for our communities. This national effort is being done to time with National Day of Civic Hacking.

The Census Bureau plans to launch the CitySDK on June 1st and present theCitySDK at the Chi Hack Night on June 2nd.

The Chi Hack Night (formerly known as the Open Gov Hack Night) is a free, weekly event in Chicago to build, share and learn about civic tech, or tools to create, support, or serve public good. It’s one of the largest weekly gatherings of civic innovators and takes place every Tuesday on the 8th floor of Merchandise Mart.

Code for America Fellowship Info Session

Hosted by Code for America at DevBootcamp  – 6/3 6:00-7:30pm 

Applications for the 2016 Code for America Fellowship are now open and due July 15, 2015. If you’re thinking about applying, but have questions, or you just want to find out more about the program, then this info session is for you.

Urban Sustainability Apps Competition 

Hosted by the Center for Neighborhood Technology – 6/5 -6:00pm

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) invites you to make Chicago’s neighborhoods smarter, greener, and more affordable at the 4th Annual Urban Sustainability Apps Competition.
Over the course of the event, community activists and app developers will work together to create workable prototypes of apps that make our neighborhoods more sustainable, both environmentally and economically.

We welcome participants from all corners of the city, whether you’re a local activist working to improve your neighborhood or a coding whiz looking to make a difference in the community.

Organize! Civic Tech Leader Training

Hosted by the Smart Chicago Collaborative – Blue1647 – 8:30am 6/6

For National Day of Civic Hacking, Smart Chicago will be hosting Civic Tech Leader Training to help leverage the power of technology to organize in their neighborhoods. The event will be held at Blue1647 on June 6th, 2015 and is designed to help train new civic tech leaders. We’ll be providing resource and training guides before the event.

Training will include FOIA training by the Better Government Association,community organizing training from the Southwest Organizing Project,Microsoft Excel training from Microsoft’s Adam Hecktman, data portal training by Josh Kalov, and more.

Adler National Day of Civic Hacking

Hosted by the Adler Planetarium – 9:00am 6/6 – 6/7

All Hack Days need problems to solve and those problems need domain experts – that’s where you come it! Civic Hack Day, as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, focuses on issues to improve our communities. As the problem owner you’ll give a two minute pitch at the beginning of Civic Hack Day to attract hackers interested in creating a technology-based solution to your problem.

Need some inspiration? Check out some of the projects from Civic Hack Day 2014. We also encourage you to share your ideas before the event on the Civic Hack Day Ideas Hackpad.

Civic Hack Day will kick off bright and early at 9:00 am on Saturday June 6th. and will finish at 12:00pm on Sunday June 7th. Problem Owners and Hackers are invited to spend the night at the Adler to hack the night away. You’ll be provided with plenty of food and caffeine to keep the momentum going! If you prefer sleep to hacking you can always go home and return on Sunday morning for the event wrap-up, project demos, and prizes.

Lexhacks

Hosted by Michigan State University and OpenLegal – We Work Chicago – 6/6 – 6/7

Teams of lawyers, developers, designers, and other professionals will work together to develop software-based tools to solve legal problems over the weekend and compete for cash prizes.
Software is eating the legal industry. Join the hackathon accelerating the advancement of the legal industry.

Training Guides

Social Media Accounts to follow

  • @CodeforAmerica – Operation Partner for National Day of Civic Hacking
  • @ChiHackNight – Chi Hack Night will be hosting the US Census for the launch of CitySDK
  • @CivicWhitaker – Our consultant will be running our Organize! Civic Tech Leader Training
  • @CNT_Tweets – CNT will be hosting the Urban Sustainability Apps Challenge this weekend
  • @AdlerHacks – Hosting a general hackathon at the planetarium
  • @Shedd_aquarium – Hosting a hackathon focusing on fisheries
  •  @DJ44 – The US Chief Data Officer
  • @ChicagoCDO – Tom Schenk Jr, CDO of Chicago
  • @fishathon – Nationwide hackathon focusing on sustainable fishing

 

For more information about National Day of Civic Hacking, visit the main page at Hack for Change

Multiple Events for National Day of Civic Hacking in Chicago

Christopher Whitaker

logoFor the third annual National Day of Civic Hacking, Chicago will be playing host to multiple events. We’ve broken down the current events and we’ll be giving more updates as we get closer to the event.

CitySDK Launch at Chi Hack Night 

Hosted by Chi Hack Night – Braintree 6/2 – 6:00pm 

The Census Bureau has developed an open data software development kit (SDK) to enable a community, public, or private sector individuals and organizations to more easily extract value from Census data through user-friendly Application Program Interfaces (APIs). Through the SDK we are aiming to provide a user friendly “Toolbox” for civic hackers to connect local and national public data in order to bring forth innovative solutions for our communities. This national effort is being done to time with National Day of Civic Hacking.

The Census Bureau plans to launch the CitySDK on June 1st and present the CitySDK at the Chi Hack Night on June 2nd.

The Chi Hack Night (formerly known as the Open Gov Hack Night) is a free, weekly event in Chicago to build, share and learn about civic tech, or tools to create, support, or serve public good. It’s one of the largest weekly gatherings of civic innovators and takes place every Tuesday on the 8th floor of Merchandise Mart.

Urban Sustainability Apps Competition 

Hosted by the Center for Neighborhood Technology – 6/5 

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) invites you to make Chicago’s neighborhoods smarter, greener, and more affordable at the 4th Annual Urban Sustainability Apps Competition.
Over the course of the event, community activists and app developers will work together to create workable prototypes of apps that make our neighborhoods more sustainable, both environmentally and economically.

We welcome participants from all corners of the city, whether you’re a local activist working to improve your neighborhood or a coding whiz looking to make a difference in the community.

Organize! Civic Tech Leader Training

Hosted by the Smart Chicago Collaborative – Blue1647 – 8:30am 6/6

For National Day of Civic Hacking, Smart Chicago will be hosting Civic Tech Leader Training to help leverage the power of technology to organize in their neighborhoods. The event will be held at Blue1647 on June 6th, 2015 and is designed to help train new civic tech leaders. We’ll be providing resource and training guides before the event.

Training will include FOIA training by the Better Government Association, community organizing training from the Southwest Organizing Project, Microsoft Excel training from Microsoft’s Adam Hecktman, data portal training by Josh Kalov, and more.

Adler National Day of Civic Hacking

Hosted by the Adler Planetarium – 9:00am 6/6 – 6/7

All Hack Days need problems to solve and those problems need domain experts – that’s where you come it! Civic Hack Day, as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking, focuses on issues to improve our communities. As the problem owner you’ll give a two minute pitch at the beginning of Civic Hack Day to attract hackers interested in creating a technology-based solution to your problem.

Need some inspiration? Check out some of the projects from Civic Hack Day 2014. We also encourage you to share your ideas before the event on the Civic Hack Day Ideas Hackpad.

Civic Hack Day will kick off bright and early at 9:00 am on Saturday June 6th. and will finish at 12:00pm on Sunday June 7th. Problem Owners and Hackers are invited to spend the night at the Adler to hack the night away. You’ll be provided with plenty of food and caffeine to keep the momentum going! If you prefer sleep to hacking you can always go home and return on Sunday morning for the event wrap-up, project demos, and prizes.

Lexhacks

Hosted by Michigan State University and OpenLegal – We Work Chicago – 6/6 – 6/7

Teams of lawyers, developers, designers, and other professionals will work together to develop software-based tools to solve legal problems over the weekend and compete for cash prizes.
Software is eating the legal industry. Join the hackathon accelerating the advancement of the legal industry.
For more information about National Day of Civic Hacking, visit the main page at Hack for Change

 

 

 

Getting sponsors for your local civic hacking event

Christopher Whitaker

logoPreviously, we had talked about how to plan and run a civic hacking event. Today, we’re going to go into a little more detail about getting sponsors for your event using resources from Code for America’s Brigade toolkit and asking a number of companies that have sponsored events in the past.

Terms to know before we get started

Donations vs Sponsorships

First, it’s important to understand the difference between donations and sponsorships. Donations are tax-deductible and cannot have business benefits for the donor (giving) company. If you’re an official Code for America Brigade Chapter, then Code for America can help intake donations for your local brigade.

Sponsorships are not tax-deductible, require a signed agreement, and will often include specific deliverables.  These deliverables are usually worked out in advance and will include what’s getting purchased and if the company is paying or reimbursing the organizer.

Fiscal Agents 

If you’re working with a local non-profit partner, it may be easier for that partner to accept donations or sponsorships money than for you to handle it as individual organizers. Depending on the organization, they may even be able to pay for things upfront (like food or venue costs) and have the sponsor(s) reimburse the organization. If you do partner with a non-profit partner, it’s recommended that you sign a Memo of Understanding stating what each party will do. (A memo of understanding is a signed document that just lays out 1) the scope of the project or agreement and 2) lays out what everyone agreed to do and when.)

Asking for money – Who to ask

Asking for money can be intimidating, but it’s something that comes with the territory. There are a lot of funders out there – be sure to figure out which ones are most relevant to your organization and interested in your work. They might be corporations, foundations, or wealthy individuals, and they might give anywhere from $1,000 contributions for an Annual Campaign to $500K grants for General Operating Support.

It also helps to know if the company or organization has sponsored similar events in the past. Have they sponsored hackathons for other groups? Have they ever expressed an interest in civic hacking? If they have, then they’re good candidates for sponsoring your event.

The other thing to check on is if any of your non-profit partners have an existing relationship with the organizations you’re thinking about asking for sponsorship. They may be able to make an introduction.

Asking for money – Being prepared

One of the best things that you can do to increase your chances of getting a sponsorship is being prepared.  You should have information about your group and your event that can fit on a single sheet of paper. You should also include information about your group’s previous wins. If this is your first National Day of Civic Hacking event, you can also show what’s been done during National Day of Civic Hacking during previous years.

Once you have all that, all that’s left to do is to reach out and make the ask. The key in making the ask is to show your genuine enthusiasm and passion for your cause, while not being afraid to directly ask for their financial support. You want to be clear when describing how much financial support you are seeking and how you will use their money.

After the event

After the event, be sure to reach back out to the sponsors with a thank you note and to let them know what the results of the event were.

For additional reference, here’s the Code for America Brigade Training video regarding fundraising. You should also check out Code for America’s fundraising toolkit as as well!

 

The Code for America finance and communities team contributed to this blog post.