Code for Fort Lauderdale

What do you get when some of South Florida's best and brightest are brought together and asked to "hack" for change? Well, if you were lucky enough to take part at one of the 106 locations across the United States hosting local National Day of Civic Hacking events, you just might have witnessed history.

[photo via @LienT)

Designed to spur collaboration in communities using technology, open data, and the support of volunteers and government agencies alike, these (sometimes multi-day) hackathons ask anyone in the community to team up, contribute their skills, and learn something new about the places they live. The following is a brief recap of my local NDoCH experience at The LAB Miami. 

On Saturday morning, Code for Miami's Rebekah Monson, along with the City Manager of Miami Daniel J. Alfonso and Florida's Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, announced to the hackers, designers, and techies that filled the LAB Miami's main room the importance of our day ahead. "Imagine if we could turn loose upon the people of Florida an understanding of how this all works," referencing the $80 billion dollar budget and the complexity of navigating government agencies and services. "What if they had access to that information, and understood it, and could create value for them, in their work." He also reflected on Florida's history of transparency reporting, "We've made a lot of data available, and we've gone from a D, to a A-, to an A, but what if people could actually use the data," which led to cheers in the audience. Closing his remarks, he insisted our actions are taking Florida "in a whole new path."

CFO@JeffAtwater kicks off #hackforchange w @CodeForMiami @CodeforFTL @CodeForOrlando @CodeForTampaBay @codeforamerica pic.twitter.com/yzYOltDNYt

— Ashley Carr (@FloridAshley)

June 6, 2015

The day resulted in websites, mobile apps, visualizations, and hardware hacks to address five different challenge areas: Disaster Preparedness and Relief, Climate Change, Transportation, Open Data (Working Group), and for a very first in Florida's history, Vendor Payment Data from the last six years was made available for download (Special thanks to Jeff Atwater, C.F.O and his team).

Below are the pictures of the groups presenting their projects, many made in less than five hours, with many first time hackathon participants included. This was a vital step in recognizing the state-wide development of civic hacking brigades and to support those working towards better data access, usability, and transparency in their community. I was honored to take part and look forward to the projects, happy hacking Floridians! If you want to relive the opening remarks, they can be found here [starts at 1:05:49].

[View the story "#HackForChange hits Florida - NDoCH, Code for Miami" on Storify]

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL. - April 26th, 2014 has been officially proclaimed Fort Lauderdale Cares Day. To accompany this proclamation, Code for Fort Lauderdale, a volunteer, citizen-led technology group has teamed up with the city’s Chief Service Officer, Jorg Hruschka, to create an easy to explore map with volunteer locations and donation collection sites.

Displayed on the fortlauderdale.gov/volunteer website, visitors can browse over 25 planned volunteer events including beach clean-ups, home restoration projects, landscape renewal efforts at local parks, and a variety of others open to participation.

If you are a volunteer interested in making a difference this April 26th, find a location on the map, click the RSVP link in the description, and complete the required contact fields.

Code for Fort Lauderdale organizer and project lead, Rob Davis, used Google Maps engine, a free service for making custom maps to create the pilot volunteer map the city is now using. “It was a real learning experience,” he mentioned. “We didn’t really know how it would work out, but we knew this would be a useful way to share the variety of volunteer events locally.” This is Code for Fort Lauderdale and the City of Fort Lauderdale’s first joint-collaboration, which will serve as a great example of what citizen volunteers and government counterparts can ally together for mutual benefit. 

The City of Fort Lauderdale’s Neighbor Volunteer Office has shown great interest in identifying new ways of engaging our neighbors with meaningful volunteer opportunities in a cause that is important to them. Jorg concludes, “Volunteerism is the spirit of Fort Lauderdale, and everyone can make a difference on April 26th.”

Follow our efforts on #FLCaresDay.

Join the Fort Lauderdale Cares Day Facebook Group. 

About Code for Fort Lauderdale

Here's our handy guide for tonight's meetup.

And to set the mood, here's a NYC light gif. 

Entering the elevator, my mind raced as I thought back to just 6 short months ago when this localized experiment began; a citizen-led brigade of passionate people ready to use their skills and technology for good. I just hoped it would go smoothly and some interesting things would be learned. Thankfully, it was better than I’d even imagine.

We had a great night brainstorming @ City Hall. New faces, new ideas, new opportunities! #cfabrigade #fortlauderdale pic.twitter.com/tDH6ZPpL3t

— Code Fort Lauderdale (@CodeforFTL)

January 23, 2014

After a short battle connecting to WiFi, introductions were made and ideas were flying. Developers, city staffers, designers, and local students rounded out the group making for some very interesting discussions. Shari Parris, a student at Broward College shared her passion for helping people and getting involved, “I’m just here to offer what I can.” Evan Johnson and Zachary Levi, also from Broward College attended because they were “just curious,” and currently intern within the city’s IT department. 

With a unique opportunity to gain valuable perspectives on city operations, we concluded that ongoing collaboration between cities, civic groups, as well as local students can yield amazing results, much like what we found out that night.

The discussion bounced from homelessness to access to social services, new mobile phone apps for citizen engagement and feedback, GIS maps, educational websites, publicly available data, and the Civic Hacking movement at large. As others have realized, many issues the City of Fort Lauderdale is currently facing other cities have attempted to solve or are in the process of working toward a solution as well. No topic was off the table and as we progressed, three main projects were defined as a focus for the coming year:

Visualize the Fort Lauderdale budget (Check out the OpenOakland budget)

Florida Legislation Tracker: A better way to track important FL legislation. – Next Phase

Fort Lauderdale Local Wiki:  A local information source written for anyone by locals. (http://localwiki.net/ftl)

Code for Fort Lauderdale is just one of many citizen-led brigades across the globe collaborating and sharing technology for the betterment of others.  These efforts are ongoing and we invite anyone in the area to stop by our next meetup and check out our website, http://codeforftl.org. You can also jump on a project or add your own suggestion on this hackpad. Want to help another way? Email: codeforftl (at) gmail.com

Thank you to everyone who attended and Kevin for booking the room: Chris, Ryan, Shari, Serkan, Zachary, Evan, Kevin, Devin, and Ian.

Rob Davis - @robdotd

Code for Fort Lauderdale will be turning 5 months old in January. 

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