Last weekend, I got to take part in Hack for MN, the Minnesota version of the first-ever National Day of Civic Hacking, and had an amazing time.
National Day of Civic Hacking — a nationwide initiative spearheaded by the White House, orchestrated by organizations including SecondMuse, Code for America and Random Hacks of Kindness — is part of a larger movement of people internationally working to make civic technology collaboratively to help both local and global communities.
Minnesota joined in the activities by holding Hack for MN, which drew more than 70 participants from around the metro area. Hack for MN was organized by local business DevJam and Open Twin Cities (a community organization that I helped found) and many other private and public local sponsors.
We worked on 13 unique projects, including transit applications, a telephone-based poll-finding tool, a tutoring website for kids, a street parking analysis tool and an application to help individuals find technology centers. One team was even able to make a working, mobile-ready website over the two-day event that provides up-to-date information on bus arrivals at specific stops (you can check right now at mspbus.org).
My team worked on a similar subject but focused on visualizing real-time bus arrival information that would be installed at actual bus stops (it might be a little buggy, but you can see it at zzolo.github.io/totoro).
Our event came just one week after a similar one organized by the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) and Open Twin Cities. Visualizing Neighborhoods: a Hackathon for Good brought together about 60 participants to focus on how data visualization can help strengthen neighborhoods or other place-based communities. Some of the projects tackled such subjects as getting kids outdoors, public transit availablity analysis, and better connection of students, teachers and parents through texting.
The National Day of Civic Hacking was the largest effort of its kind, with 95 events in 83 cities in 38 states and two territories that engaged more than 10,000 people. Individual events ranged from a few people hacking in a single room to 300 hackers at Hack for L.A. to more than 5,000 people who came out to support the CityCamp event in Palo Alto.
What is a Civic Hacking?
When most people hear the word "hacking," they think of seedy people in dark places huddled over a computer trying to break into the Pentagon's computers to steal government secrets. In fact, the term "hack" in the context of computers has been around for quite some time — well before it ever got a negative perception.
Nowadays it refers generally to the act of solving problems, usually with little resources, or by using systems not for their original purpose — not necessarily in a computer context. In fact, many programmers use the term "hacker" very positively.
"Civic Hacking" is a somewhat new movement that focuses on solving civic problems with technology and collaboration. Civic problems can range from public education to campaign finance to zoning permits to just about anything that affects our civic lives.
This community has seen great growth in recent years because of the prevalence of public data in machine-friendly formats and technology improvements that lead to rapid prototyping. It’s also grown because of the realization of elected officials and public servants that with shrinking budgets and increased transparency, reaching out to the community at large to leverage their expertise can create a better citizen experience for all.
Who are civic hackers?
The National Day of Civic Hacking site does a good job of describing who civic hackers are:
Civic hackers, as we think about it for the National Day of Civic Hacking, are engineers, technologists, civil servants, scientists, designers, artists, educators, students, entrepreneurs — anybody — who is willing to collaborate with others to create, build, and invent open source solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country.
Both Twin Cities events were more heavily attended by technologists (coders, designers and engineers) but a large number of community leaders and experts came to share ideas and vision. Having a large range of participant backgrounds ensures that real problems can be addressed from varied perspectives.
Many public servants attended the Hack for MN event, including the chief information officer of the City of Minneapolis, the director of the Office of Technology and Communications of the City of St. Paul, the CIO, as well as the innovation program director, of the State of Minnesota, and others from agencies like the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.