Code for America

Smart Chicago teams up with Code for America for National Day of Civic Hacking

Christopher Whitaker

logoOnce again, Smart Chicago Collaborative will be a national partner for National Day of Civic Hacking providing training content as well as running our own National Day of Civic Hacking events here in Chicago.

This year, the national organizer for National Day of Civic Hacking is our long-time partner Code for America. Our consultant, Christopher Whitaker will be helping Code for America’s communities team with organizing as well as helping Smart Chicago to provide training content. Our training content will include things like our How to Run a Civic Hackathon and How to Livestream an Event.

Last year, we provided a number of blog posts and videos to help train civic technologists. These blog posts included:

We’ll be updating our old content to ensure it’s current. We’ll also be adding new content to help train civic technologists including lessons on GitHub, Mapbox, WordPress, and more. Additionally, we’ll be writing primers on how to work effectively with governments and nonprofits – as well as primers on subject areas like health, safety and justice, transportation, and education.

Stay tuned for more!

Christopher Whitaker Presents at Japan’s Civic Tech Conference

Smart Chicago

header_idOur own Christopher Whitaker will be giving a keynote speech in Tokyo this weekend at the Civic Tech Forum.

The Civic Tech Forum is a billed as a place to talk about resolving regional issues through the hands of citizens who take advantage of the technology. It is organized in partnership with Code for Japan and will feature civic innovators from around Japan to talk about the future of civic innovation in Japan.

Christopher will talk about the Chicago experience in helping build a civic innovation ecosystem and how it takes collaboration from both government agencies, non-profit foundations, civic technology startups, and community activists to make it work.

Here’s his slides from his talk:

You can get more information about the event on the Civic Tech Forum website or follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #civictechjp.

 

Smart Chicago to Host Civic Design Camp

Christopher Whitaker

CSmart Chicago is set to host Chicago Civic Design Camp on April 25th at the offices of kCura.

Chicago Civic Design Camp is a one-day gathering of practicing designers of all stripes with local government officials interested in using design to improve the services they provide to citizens. Partly structured session format for skill shares and case studies, and partly un-conference format for free exchange of ideas and challenges, the day will cover topics ranging from user research to service design to citizen engagement.

This will be the third Civic Design Camp. The previous events being held in San Francisco and New York City.

Cyd HarrellThe event is being run by Code for America’s UX Evangelist Cyd Harrell. Harrell is a highly versatile and collaborative user experience expert with 12+ years of success improving online and software products. As Code for America’s UX evangelist she works with fellows and staff to ensure Code for America is creating inventive and cost-effective solutions to serve the needs of real users.

You can find out more information about the event here.

Join mRelief at Chicago’s #CodeAcross Food Stamp Hackathon

Christopher Whitaker

CodeAcross2015_Postcard

On February 20th, the mRelief team will be hosting a Food Stamp Hackathon as part of Code for America’s Code Across event.

mRelief.com empowers Chicagoans with a tool to access the welfare system in unprecedented ways by determining food stamp eligibility through text messaging and web tools which direct people to their next step in the application.

Sponsored by Microsoft and in partnership with the Harris Food Policy Advocacy Group, Code for America, and Women of Code, mRelief’s hackathon invites thought leaders in policy and computer programming to expand current eligibility screening for food stamps in Illinois. The event will focus on policy rules that impact overall eligibility, accessibility for students and applicants of varying types of citizenship, and documents that people need for food stamp eligibility.

As part of Code for America’s national Code Across event, mRelief has also set up a national repository for food stamp hackers across the country to view code for their web and SMS tools and submit the code for their states so that mRelief can sustain the work beyond the weekend. CodeAcross is a weekend of civic hacking events hosted by nodes of the Code for America network around the world. It is timed to coincide with both the last weekend of the Code for America Fellows residency and International Open Data Day. The goal of CodeAcross is to activate the Code for America network and inspire residents everywhere to get actively involved in their community.

The local event and mRelief’s national challenge on Github was organized by the all-women software development team at mRelief. mRelief’s tools simplifies the social service qualifying process with for food stamps and many other immediate needs. Illinois residents can check to see if they’re eligible for a variety of healthcare, rental assistance, cash assistance, transportation, and child welfare related programs.

Full details of the event can be found here.

Follow, the team on twitter at @mrelief_form

Attend the local event at: bit.ly/chifoodstamps

Sign up for the national event at: bit.ly/foodstampsusa

Brigade Training: Leveling up Your Civic Hacking Event by Christopher Whitaker

Christopher Whitaker

Editor’s Note: Today, Smart Chicago Consultant and Brigade Regional Coordinator Christopher Whitaker will be giving a training on how to level up your civic hacking event. Christopher is one of the co-hosts of the nationally renowned Chicago OpenGov Hack Night as well as running a number of events for Smart Chicago including Chicago’s National Day of Civic Hacking.  We’ve put his slides and training notes below the fold.

OpenGov Hack Night 1/21/13

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