Events

This week in Chicago Civic Tech Events: Cook County, Court Data and more

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opengovchicagoThis week we’ve got three civic tech events happening in Chicago.

Cook County at Chi Hack Night

Tuesday at 6:00pm at Braintree (8th floor of Merchandise Mart)

Cook County employees will be presenting at Chi Hack Night about their progress in opening up county data.

Representatives across several of Cook County’s 65 agencies will give a quick overview of their data, where it lives and who’s in charge of it.

We’ll be hearing from:

Afterwards, they will take your questions and hear your open data wish lists.

The Smart Chicago Collaborative has a partnership with the Cook County Bureau of Technology to assist them in the creation and publication of open data in the context of the County’s Open Government Plan Ordinance and Open Government Plan. Our consultant Josh Kalov has been working with Cook County to open up Cook County data for the past year and a half.

You can RSVP for the event by clicking here.

OpenGov Chicago: Local Court Data

Wednesday at 6:00 PM at the Chicago Community Trust (225 N Michigan, 22nd floor)

At the next meetup, OpenGov Chicago will cover the Chicago Justice Project’s (CJP) ongoing engagement with the Office of the Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Timothy Evans.

CJP’s engagement is seeking to open access to all the data created by the Court since they started collecting the data in the 1980s (the courts have told CJP they started collecting data either in 1980 or 1988). This means that when approved CJP would receive about 30 years of Court data. CJP requested all the data maintained by the Clerk’s Office on each criminal case filed, appropriately de-identified. CJP is seeking an agreement that would require regular updates of court data be released on an ongoing basis moving forward removing all the current barriers to this data.

The evening will also cover the results of Smart Chicago’s recent PACER postcard campaign, where we helped send dozens of postcards to Chief Judge Ruben Castillo of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, asking him to look into issues with PACER , the system run by the federal judiciary that provides access to court dockets.

You can RSVP for OpenGov Chicago here!

Technology, Government, and the Public Good Panel Discussion

Wednesday at 6:00pm at General Assembly: After World Books (23 E Illinois Street)

Curious what civic tech is all about? General Assembly will be hosting an expert panel on the growth of collaboration between government and technology in Chicago and how these two industries are working together to serve and support the public good. Learn more about the various innovative initiatives happening in the Chicago area, and how you can get involved to support the community, no matter your experience. Whether you’re a techie or not, the panel will discuss how everyone can contribute to civic engagement.

The panel is made up of Chicago Chief Data Officer Tom Schenk Jr, Datamade/Chi Hack Night Founder Derek Eder, Evanston Digital Services Coordinator Luke Stowe, mRelief Founder Rose Afriyie,  and our own consultant Christopher Whitaker.

You can register for the event here.

Join Maptime Chicago & ADA 25 this Friday!

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ADA25logoPlease 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

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

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logoOne 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.

Speakers announced for this weekend’s Civic Design Camp at Smart Chicago

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rvprofileSmart Chicago and Code for America are pleased to announce our first two speakers for Civic Design Camp. Civic Design Camp is an annual event designed to bring together government employees, nonprofit partners and professional designers.  This year’s event is being held in Chicago on April 25th at the offices of kCura.

Our first speaker will be Raphy Villas from 18F’s Chicago office.

Raphy Villas began his public service as a Presidential Innovation Fellow working on MyUSA, a platform for accessing government services. He is now a product manager and co-founding member of 18F. Raphy lives in Chicago with his wife and two kids.

Villas will speak about the work of 18F with examples of how their using design thinking to transform government.

Our second speaker is Sonja Marziano, Project Coordinator at Smart Chicago Collaborative.

CCT Headshots-380-editedIn this position, Sonja manages projects including the Civic User Testing Group (CUTGroup), the Chicago Early Learning Portal, Expunge.io “Plus,” and the Chicago School of Data. Before Smart Chicago, she worked in customer service and community programs at the Chicago Children’s Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Sonja has a Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies from Allegheny College.

Sonja will speak about the methods and processes of the CUTGroup, and how CUTGroup is a new model for UX testing, digital skills development, and community engagement in civic tech.

You can register for Civic Design Camp right here on our SplashThat Page!