May – 2015 – Archive of Smart Chicago Collaborative Work

Thoughts on the Knight Community Information Challenge: Design Thinking and Learning Together

adminMay 19, 2015

Today I was on a panel at the Knight Foundation Media Learning Seminar along with colleagues from three other foundations, along with the Chicago Community Trust, who have formed a cohort doing work around the principles of design thinking. We’ve participated in a number of workshops and we’re sharing our deep dive with others. The hope is that we can move forward the practice of community foundations as they discover and serve the information needs of communities.

Susan Patterson, Program Director at the Knight Foundation, is moderating the panel and she sent along some prompts. This post lays out some thoughts as my primer to the panel.

At Smart Chicago, we’re in a unique position. We’re housed at The Trust, which is the actual partner for the Knight Community Information Challenge (KCIC). The Trust provides matching funds and has been deeply invested in this work, long before Smart Chicago even existed, centered around the journalism ecosystem in Chicago. You can see the river of work that went into that here. There’s also a complete evaluation of the program: “News that Matters: An Assessment of Chicago’s Information Landscape”.

Smart Chicago has been doing work under the KCIC banner since 2012, starting with our Civic Works program, designed to spur support for civic innovation in Chicago. Christopher Whitaker has led that project for us, and it has been hugely successful, helping projects like Roll With Me (accessible transit directions in Chicago), mRelief, (a text-based way to check your eligibility for benefits in Chicago & Illinois), and. We’ve used it to give seats to innovators at 1871 and support collaboration between local government and emerging companies like Textizen.

Our current project under KCIC is the Deep Dive. There are four components; two to expand existing programs for engagement and two that are brand-new:

Support for the 2015 On The Table— a community-wide conversation involving more than 20,00o people in a single day
Expansion of the Civic User Testing Group, a set of regular Chicago residents who get paid to test out civic apps. This has allowed us to add hundreds of testers, expand the program to all of Cook County, and conduct more tests
Our project on Experimental Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech,led by Laurenellen McCann, which includes deep research and explication of community-driven processes for creating technology with real people and real communities
Lastly, our Un-Summits, which are mass neighborhood convenings around digital skills and data

One of the coolest things about this deep dive cohort is the support and structure that the Knight Foundation has fostered. There are a number of components.

We’ve gotten together, as a group, three times now to learn specific methods for design thinking— formal methods problem-solving. The best thing I’ve learned on this is interview tactics— how to find hyper-users, how to design a questionnaire, and how to conduct interviews that yield actionable information.

It’s the specific skills— not aphorisms, anecdotes, or notions— that I really value.

We’ve also done some online collaboration, which frankly hasn’t worked all that well. I’ve learned that choosing and imposing new software or processes on people never really works. It’s the genuine expressions of an organization that really make an impact. Again, that’s why I value specific modes, specific actions, that are genuine.

Lastly, I really appreciate the work of ORS Impact— the formal evaluators of our program. They’ve created a theory of change that really makes sense and pulls together a set of threads into a coherent narrative.

We look forward to continuing our work in this cohort. In fact, we’re hosting our next meeting here in Chicago in September.

KCIC Inspiration Workshop in San Mateo, CA

Here’s the panel in full:

KCIC Deep Dive Presentations; Design Thinking and Learning Together
Moderators: Susan Patterson, co-director, KCIC, Knight Foundation
Panelists: Daniel X. O’Neil, Chicago Community Trust/Smart Chicago Collaborative; Kelly Ryan, CEO, Incourage Community Foundation; Emmett D. Carson, Ph.D., CEO, Silicon Valley Community Foundation; Chris Daggett, president & CEO, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Join Maptime Chicago & ADA 25 this Friday!

adminMay 18, 2015

ADA25logo Please join us on May 22nd to discuss opportunities to improve public and open accessibility data in our community.

In particular, we would like to identify ways in which OpenStreetMap, the free, open, and community-built map of the world, can better capture characteristics of the built environment that impact how people with disabilities move throughout the city.

This is being done in partnership with ADA25 Chicago. ADA 25 Chicago will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2015 and leverage this milestone to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities—often considered the last frontier of civil rights. The Chicago Community Trust is the lead funder of this initiative.

Maptime Chicago is the local chapter of Maptime – whose mission is to open the doors of cartographic possibility to anyone interested by creating a time and space for collaborative learning, exploration, and map creation using mapping tools and technologies.

Maptime Chicago and Smart Chicago are working to both improve the data in OpenStreetMap and empower community members to contribute to and benefit from the map. We need your insight and feedback to ensure this work reaches the right members of the community and is primed to create lasting impact. We look forward to meeting with you.

The outcomes of this meeting will help Maptime Chicago and Smart Chicago plan a future Maptime event centered around adding and maintaining accessibility data in OpenStreetMap.

You can register for the event here!

Meeting Details

When: Friday, May 22nd, 12-1:30pm. Lunch will be provided.
Where: Chicago Community Trust (map) – 225 North Michigan Avenue, #2200. Hosted by Smart Chicago.
Contact: maptimechi@gmail.com or smarziano@cct.org.

Foodborne Chicago is a Top 25 Innovation in Government

adminMay 8, 2015

Today our product, Foodborne Chicago, was recognized by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Here’s their writeup:

FoodBorne Chicago
City of Chicago, IL

On March 23, 2013, the Chicago Department of Public Health and the SmartChicago Collaborative launched the FoodBorne Chicago web application with the goal of improving food safety in Chicago. FoodBorne Chicago tracks tweets using a supervised machine-learning algorithm that identifies the keywords of “food poison” within the Chicago area. This tool allows residents to report a food poisoning incident through 311 after the program identifies tweets with possible cases of food poisoning. The team then tweets back a link to submit an online web form where residents can identify where they ate, the date and time they frequented the restaurant, their symptoms, and send it through Open311. The information is sent directly to the Department of Public Health and, if warranted, an inspection team visits the restaurant in question and then lets the resident know the status of the investigation via e-mail. The algorithm gets smarter at identifying related tweets as the team replies to residents that are suspected to have a potential case of food poisoning to report. If several complaints occur together, these clusters can be investigated to prevent further illnesses from developing.

And here’s a snip from a press release from Mayor Rahm Emanuel:

The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) has been recognized as a Top 25 program in this year’s Innovations in American Government Awards competition by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University for its FoodBorne Chicago program.

Two years ago, CDPH and the SmartChicago Collaborative launched the FoodBorne Chicago web application with the goal of improving food safety in Chicago.

“The Department of Public Health and the Department of Innovation and Technology used social media and technology to create a tool that makes food consumption in Chicago safer,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “It is innovative thinking like this that enhances and leverages available resources to make the most impact.”

Summer Job Opportunity: Instructors for Youth-Led Tech Program in Five Chicago Communities

adminMay 7, 2015

UPDATE: All positions are filled.

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is getting ready to launch “Youth-Led Tech: Summer 2015”, a youth coding school in five locations across the city of Chicago in summer 2015.

We are working to get this program funded through Get IN Chicago, whose mission is to identify, fund and rigorously evaluate evidence-based programs that lead to a sustainable reduction in violence for individuals and communities most affected by violence and poverty. Read more here on our project page and complete this form if you are interested in a position.

In the interest of time, and an acknowledgement that the summer learning season is right about nowish, we are looking to start building staff for this potential program.

We are recruiting seventeen people to take serve as instructors, coordinators, and other key roles. Each of these roles are an 8-week summer job opportunity. The start date is Monday, June 15, 2015, with two weeks of orientation and preparation. Instruction begins Monday, June 29, 2015 and ends on Friday, August 8, 2015, which is the last day of employment. We will perform background checks on all applicants.

The five communities are Austin, Englewood, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, and Roseland. Here’s are the job descriptions:

Instructor

Instructors lead all instruction at a location. There is one Instructor for each of the five locations. All instruction materials will be provided, with detailed lesson plans to guide your day. A dominant mode of instruction is “kinesthetic learning”, a learning style in which learning takes place by the students carrying out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations.

We practice “youth-led tech”, which means that we teach technology in the context of the needs & priorities of young people. We will train you on the fundamentals of youth-led tech, but experience in working with youth in the context of needs & priorities is a plus.

The main technology we’ll teach is WordPress, a free open-source content management system. Familiarity with WordPress is a plus, and you can become familiar with WordPress very quickly. We will also offer “whet your appetite”- style training in gaming and app development.

Each instructor will be given a lesson plan for each day breaking down activities and explicitly laying out training content. Most of the actual training content will be taken from existing tutorial and instruction that is already available on the Internet in the form of teaching content and development environments. Instructors will also be responsible for documenting the program material so that it can be accessed, downloaded, and reproduced anywhere. Instructors will be responsible for filing daily reports about on-site activity.

In choosing instructors, we value strong classroom management, interest in and aptitude with technology, and the ability to listen to youth voice and make sure it gets heard and represented the the tech we make over the summer. Pay is $20 per hour.

Assistant Instructor

Assistant instructors will help Instructors to teach the material and also have other key responsibilities. These include activities like preparing the location each day (set up chairs, tables, computers), check the wi-fi, temperature, and other ambient details, order and manage lunch and snack, and assist in classroom management throughout the day.

We are seeking 10 Assistant instructors— three instructors for each location. Pay is $15 per hour.

Please apply today and share this opportunity as far and wide as possible. Questions? Contact us.

“Organize!”— Tech Training for New Civic Tech Leaders on National Day of Civic Hacking

adminMay 5, 2015

One of our three main areas of focus at Smart Chicago is digital skills. In the past three years, we’ve learned a lot of things from our experience running events, building projects, conducting user testing, and writing extensively about civic innovation.

As part of our work around National Day of Civic Hacking, this year we’re going to be focusing our efforts around teaching these digital skills both locally and nationally. As usual, this effort will be led by Christopher Whitaker.

Christopher has written a number of tutorials and guides to help volunteer civic technology groups for the national Hack for Change website.

Here in Chicago, he will run a training camp at Blue1647 for new civic technology leaders centered around the theme of community organizing. (Register here!) On June 6th, we’ll be bringing in experts around the city to help train new civic tech leaders on the tools and techniques used to leverage the power of technology to help our neighborhoods. The event is specially set up for people new to civic technology regardless of their technology proficiency. This is a learning event— so bring your questions!

This event will be just one of many National Day of Civic Hacking events happening in Chicago including hackathons happening at the Adler Planetarium, Center for Neighborhood Technologies, the Chicago Public Library’s Maker Lab, and OpenGov Hack Night. We’ll be blogging about these events and more as we get closer to June 6th.

You can register for our event here.

Results of Our PACER Postcard Campaign

adminMay 1, 2015

Today our colleague Elizabeth Bartels collected 31 postcards from law students, lawyers, and interested residents sharing their thoughts about making the PACER federal court document system more accessible and open to all.

One reason we’re so happy with these results is that everyone who completed a postcard is an actual registered user of PACER. It’s one thing to be an open information advocate, writing to a distant federal official about the concept of openness. It’s another thing altogether to be an actual user of the software, someone building their career, someone who will be working directly with Judge Ruben Castillo on important matters of justice.

When we approached this campaign, in which we joined with people in San Francisco and New York, we did so with a focus on building real relationships with people here in Chicago who are passionate about this issue of open law. We hired Oprima-1 to research contact information for law school interest groups.

Some examples: the Muslim Law Students Association of the University Chicago Law School, the Justinian Society of John Marshall Law School, the Student Funded Public Interest Fellowships Program of Northwestern University, the American Civil Liberties Union of Loyola University Chicago, the Journal of Intellectual Property at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and the DePaul Entertainment and Sports Law Society.

The point: there are a lot of people (in 187 student groups and 449 law firms) who care about this topic. Moving beyond our own circles, our own tight spheres of civic tech and open data, our own Slack channels and our own favored blogs, is essential. As we’ve re-learned, in great detail, in our Experimental Modes project, if we want to be of impact, we have to meet people where they are.

That’s hard work. We’re happy we do it, because it’s all that matters. Here’s pictures from our day.

Our first cards

On the agenda at John Marshall Law School

Postcard from Daniel X. O’Neil

Elizabeth Bartels working with students who are completing postcards at John Marshall Law School

Some postcards!

Swartz Law Day 2015

Our final results

We gave away copies of In Re: PACER to all

Many postcards to choose from.

Custom stamps (and buttons!)

Here’s a look at every completed postcard— lots of great comments:

Completed Pacer postcards from May 1, 2015 Law Day Event at John Marshall Law School from Smart Chicago Collaborative

Finally, a very special shout-out to my friend, sister-in-law, and John Marshall Law School valedictorian Elizabeth Bartels for leading the way on this project.

Elizabeth Bartels