Civic Works

The first of four community kickoff meetings for the Illinois Open Technology Challenge is set for next Tuesday, November 27, at Governor’s State University. If you are interested in helping the municipalities of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association to use data to make lives better in Southland, you should sign up for the Meetup event here. Here’s the agenda:

6 – 6:15 Introductions

We’ll go around the room, introduce ourselves, and say a brief statement about what you’re interested in achieving. Examples: “I have an idea for a app, and I need to meet a developer”, “I’m an expert at land use and I’m interested in talking with community members”, “I’m a government official and I’m looking to connect with developers”—things like that.

6:15 – 6:30 Kickoff

We’ll hear from ILOpenTech Challenge team about the current state of the contest and review the requirements. We’ll talk about timelines, judging, and so on. Our role is to manage the Challenge and help guide participants as they form teams and brainstorm ideas, so we want to hear from you.

6:30 – 7 Ideas + Matching

This is the time for anyone with an idea to present it to the group in a more complete fashion and make a pitch for people to join them. We will have lots of materials that will help you express yourselves—easels, large postits, markers, etc. You’ll want to talk about what data you’d like to use and what community issues you want to solve. One way to get an early jump on this is to use post to the discussion on the Meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/Illinois-Open-Technology/events/89383552/. We also ask you two questions when signing up for the Meetup—the more thinking you do before the event, the more you will get out of it

— Do you have an idea for an app that you’d like to submit? Let us know!

— Do you have a community issue you’d like to address through data and technology? If so, can you describe?

7 – 8 Team Work

Teams will split off into groups and start planning their work. Since this is just the planning stage, feel free to walk around and hear from lots of people and teams.

8 – 8:30 Reports

We’ll regroup and hear from each of the groups and plan next steps.

This is all about the south suburbs of Chicago. Take a look at the data available at www.data.illinois.gov, www.metrochicagodata.org, and www.ssatlas.org to start thinking of ideas.

Recently I helped out in judging for the Urban Sustainability Hakathon hosted by the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). The event focused on a subset of the data available from the City of Chicago data portal under sustainable development, energy, transportation, water, buildings, parks/ open space/ food access, and climate.

It was a really great event. I haven’t been at a hackthon since the Knight-Mozilla-MIT “Story and Algorithm” Hack Day back in June, and it has been even longer since I’ve been to a local hackathon. CNT wrote a comprehensive blog post about the event. They have details on all six entrants, including the winner (Edifice) and the two runner-ups (Jitney Driver and Hidden Value in Abandoned Property).

Here’s some thoughts:

Community matters

CNT Hackathon: Hidden Value in Abandoned Buildings

The great value of this event is the community that results from people meeting and working together. A great example is the Hidden Value in Abandoned Property team of Audrey Henderson and Dan Fehrenbach. Derek Eder made a great tool for viewing reports of vacant and abandoned buildings, but Audrey had a great idea for this data that goes beyond just seeing the data on a map by pairing it with other data that shows its value. She met a great CNT developer in Dan and they executed on a beta of the idea. That kind of connection is worth everything in this world.

Policy is implicit in apps

CNT Hackathon: Jitney Driver

I was impressed by the team and the thinking behind Jitney Driver. Paula Robinson led us through a presentation about the social and economic benefits of jitney drivers. She referenced August Wilson’s play Jitney, play is set in a worn-down gypsy cab station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in early autumn 1977. Since I actually lived in Pittsburgh in 1977, and well-remember the idea of jitney cabs.

She spoke of how shared rides lead to more connection among neighbors, how jitney driving could lead to local jobs and keeping money in the neighborhood, and how this type of service could fill an existing gap in transportation service. Some in the panel and audience talked about how this plays within the licensing requirements of the City, and even talked about whether we would be customers of such a service.

It was a refreshing example of people coming together to talk about how technology can affect a wide range of areas in society.

Civic Data is Big Business

The winner of the contest was Edifice, created by Cory Mollet and Juan-Pablo Velez. It is a great example of a product that pulls together a series of free things (four types of public data, Open Street Map, Tile Mill, and so on) in a way that creates a whole lot of value. It’s a good reminder that mining public data can lead to great businesses. I have high hopes for Edifice and the entire civic innovation industry here in Chicago.

Here’s a complete set of photos I took during the wrap-up of the hackathon. Congratulations to all participants– keep it up, and consider taking part in the Illinois Open Technology Challenge.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn announced the Illinois Open Technology Challenge last week. Here’s an excerpt:

The State of Illinois Open Data site, Data.Illinois.Gov, is a searchable clearinghouse of information from state agencies that is helping inform residents about the operation of state government and encouraging the creative use of state information, including the development of applications for mobile devices that can be built around the data. This site, which the governor launched in June 2011, now contains more than 6,500 data sets.

Sponsors of the Illinois Open Technology Challenge include The Chicago Community Trust, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Google, and the Motorola Mobility Foundation. Additional support is being provided by Comcast. Administrative support for the project is provided by the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition and Smart Chicago Collaborative.

This is an important project for Smart Chicago, and it is deeply embedded into our entire program around data. Smart Chicago is housed at the The Chicago Community Trust, which has partnered with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to create the Civic Innovation in Chicago project, which brings together government, developers, journalists, and nonprofits to better understand data and use it to solve community problems.

The Trust and Knight has jointly pledged $50,000 to support prizes for the Illinois Open Technology Challenge because it brings governments, developers and communities together in a common mission to use public data and create digital tools that will serve today’s civic needs and promote economic development.

If you’re interested in participating, join our list and let us know.

Update: Friday, August 24, 2012 at 5PM is our deadline for these slots.

Smart Chicago is looking to engage two consultants for Civic Innovation, a two-year project funded by the Knight Foundation and The Chicago Community Trust. The successful candidate will have a part-time contract with The Chicago Community Trust, a funder and sponsor of Smart Chicago, to perform this work over the course of the project. Here’s some background:

The Smart Chicago Collaborative is a civic organization devoted to using technology to make lives better in Chicago. Created by its founding partners (the City of Chicago, the MacArthur Foundation, and The Chicago Community Trust), Smart Chicago works as a center of gravity for municipal, philanthropic, and corporate investments in civic innovation.

Smart Chicago is looking to engage a consultant for a long-term, part-time project. The successful candidate will work under a contract with The Chicago Community Trust, a funder and sponsor of Smart Chicago’s Civic Innovation project, to perform this work over the course of two years.

And details on the positions:

Project Manager

The Project Manager will have primary day-to-day responsibility for managing this project. The successful candidate will have experience in one or more of our core areas of focus (government, technology, community) and will have experience in and passion for bridging gaps among communities. See full job description.

Community Engagement Manager

The Community Engagement Manager will work directly with nonprofits, churches, and community members to ensure that the information needs of Chicagoans understood and served by developers. The successful candidate will have experience in both technology and community development, and be able to help translate between technical and non-technical people. Useful software that serves communities is the ultimate goals of the Community Engagement Manager. The successful candidate will engage non-profit organizations on efforts to find community solutions that are based on public data and data collected by their own organizations. See full job description.

If you are interested, please send an email indicating your relevant background & skills and why you’re interested in filling one of these roles to Daniel X. O’Neil, doneil@cct.org.

Update: We have selected a consultant for the Project Manager position and we are actively planning how to approach community engagement in this project. Stay tuned to our project page for more. –DXO, 11/13/2012

Today the Knight Foundation made an award to The Chicago Community Trust to “create apps and other tools to help increase the utility of local government data to benefit community organizations and the broader public.”

The Trust is matching this grant and will provide the combined funds to Smart Chicago so that we can work with the civic tech community in Chicago to deliver on this project.

First ILOpenTech Meetup is Set for Governor’s State University

Center for Neighborhood Technology Urban Sustainability Hackathon

The Launch of the Illinois Open Technology Challenge

Two New Consultant Positions: Project Manager and Community Engagement Manager

Kick-Starting Civic Innovation Award to The Chicago Community Trust