Civic hacking 101

First things first...

Who am I?

CPS (bureaucrat, digital projects)

Starter League (learned Ruby on Rails)

DivvyBrags (first civic hack)

Start Up Chile (learn lots, fail lots)

Code for America (2015)

What is civic hacking?

Civic

Hacking

Here are 10 ways

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you can help out by civic hacking

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and civic hacking can help you

1 Start a civic side project

(Personal example: DivvyBrags...)

Only qualification is that you care

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Stirring up a wee bit of civic trouble can be good

2 Work at a civic tech company

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A few in Chicago: Civis Analytics, 270 Strategies, DataMade, Purple Binder, Public Good Software, many more

Check out this (incomplete) Chicago list:

www.smartchicagocollaborative.org/an-incomplete-list-of-chicago-civic-technology-groups/

3 Go to #opengov hack night

Tuesdays, 6:00pm, 1871

4 Explore Chi data portals:

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www.data.cityofchicago.org

www.opengovhacknight.org/resources.html

5 Open up the Civic Issue Finder

www.codeforamerica.org/geeks/civicissues

Side benefits of helping out:

Meet smart people and mentors

Expand your tech network

Build that Github profile

6 Respectfully redesign government

7 Join your CfA Brigade:

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www.codeforamerica.org/brigade/

8 Start a civic tech company

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...for all the future entrepreneurs in the house: Gov-focused incubators (ex. CfA Accelerator), YC "RFS"

9 Join a tech company and make it civic

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Ridesharing to the polls? Facebook organ donation? There's a civic angle to everything.

10 Government needs web developers too...

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Work for @ChicagoCTO! (Or at least follow her)

Attribution:

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Roman forum photo, Flickr user William Hall MIT hack photo, flickr user Richard

Find me on Twitter:

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@alexsoble

Talk to me about things

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CfA Code education Bikeshare Chicago/Chile/SF Good books etc...

Thanks! Now get out there and hack your city!