July – 2013 – Archive of Smart Chicago Collaborative Work

Volunteer at Smart Chicago: Be a CUTGroup Test Proctor

adminJuly 31, 2013

We need volunteers to help us with our next few CUTGroup tests. Here’s the commitment:

Help us out for 2 hours, 6-8pm, sometime during the week at a public computer center somewhere in Chicago
You will be working with CUTGroup testers to review a website about restaurant inspections
You’ll be completing some simple forms to gather the tester input and overall results of the UX test

We need testers from all over the city in both English and Spanish.

There is no compensation for being a CUTGroup Test Proctor, but it’s a great opportunity for developers, designers, and UX specialists to get in front of real Chicago residents using honest-to-goodness civic technology.

Interested? Complete this simple form and we’ll take a look.

Chicago Developers: US Department of Labor Launches Smartphone App Contest Around Fair Labor

adminJuly 24, 2013

My colleague Matt Bruce pointed me to this new app contest: US Department of Labor launches smartphone app contest. Here’s a snip:

The DOL Fair Labor Data Challenge, which can be accessed at http://fairlabor.challenge.gov, calls for creating a smartphone app that integrates the department’s publicly available enforcement data with consumer ratings websites, geo-positioning Web tools, and other relevant data sets, such as those available from state health boards. The winning app is expected to be creative, innovative, easy to use, and will incorporate data from http://ogesdw.dol.gov/index.

“The app we would like to see developed would work with existing social media and would allow consumers to see if an establishment that they want to frequent has been in compliance with federal labor laws,” said Laura Fortman, principal deputy administrator of the Wage and Hour Division. “The app could also prove a useful tool for job seekers and for companies that are deciding which firms they may want to do business with. It could also help individuals get in touch with the Labor Department if they have any questions. As we mark 75 years of the job protections afforded by the FLSA, we are looking forward to using new technologies to encourage compliance with the law in the 21st century.”

Matt runs the just-launched Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance (CWFA) that is housed here at the Chicago Community Trust, just like Smart Chicago. One of the issues he’s working on is the deterioration of labor standards in low-wage work.

A national group called Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROCUnited) has the ROC National Diners Guide, which is an app that shows national data around labor practices around national food chains. It would be great if we could see all local restaurants, allow patrons and employees to report issues, and include local labor data in an app that takes this concept further. There is great leadership here at Restaurant Opportunities Center of Chicago (ROC-Chicago) as well.

I’d be happy to look into the types of data available at state, county, and city sources that could be used in such a system I think this would be a great use of civic technology energy and I hope to find some co-collaborators on this, If you have any ideas or are working on similar issues, hit me up at doneil@cct.org.

Christopher Whitaker is a White House Champion of Change for Civic Hacking

adminJuly 23, 2013

Christopher Whitaker, a researcher, writer, and organizer for the Smart Chicago Collaborative, is being named a Champion of Change for Civic Hacking this morning at the White House.

The White House Champions of Change program was created as part of President Obama’s Winning the Future Initiative. Through this program, the White House highlights individuals, businesses, and organizations whose extraordinary stories and accomplishments positively impact our communities.

Here’s the note on Christopher from a White House press release:

Christopher Whitaker, Project Management Consultant at the Smart Chicago Collaborative
Chicago, IL

Christopher Whitaker is a project management consultant at the Smart Chicago Collaborative, utilizing his experience in government and community organizing to advance civic innovation in Chicago. Whitaker also serves as the Chicago Brigade Captain for Code for America, supporting civic hacking events and teaching a weekly Civic Hacking 101 class. He is a graduate of DePaul University (MPA) and Sam Houston State University (BA, Political Science). Previously, Whitaker served with the US Army in Iraq as a mechanized infantryman.

The entire program, which focuses on both Open Government and Civic Hacking, is being streamed live this morning starting at 9AM Central time.

Today marks the third time that a Smart Chicago person has been named a Champion of Change. Prior to today, the most recent was Advisory Committee member John Tolva, recognized for local innovation.

We’re super-proud of Christopher and really grateful for the work he’s done here in Chicago, both on his own and as a member of the Smart Chicago team. His signal accomplishment in this domain revolves around his work around the National Day of Civic Hacking. He lead our efforts to help pull of three huge events. Chicago was the most active city with 412 people taking part in events at Cibola, 1871, and the Adler Planetarium.

Forest Gregg and Derek Eder of DataMade, two of the leading lights in civic hacking anywhere, have also been invited to participate in today’s event at the White House. Their Councilmatic Chicago is without a doubt the best piece piece of finished work that was launched on the NDoCH. Arfon Smith, Director of Citizen Science for the Adler Planetarium, was also invited as a citizen hacking star. Chicago is lucky to have them represent us in the nation’s capitol.

Head on over to Twitter and congratulate Christopher for this great recognition!

#CivicSummer is in Full Swing: Recap of our Friday Session Held at 1871

adminJuly 22, 2013

Civic Innovation Summer— the experimental summer jobs program for teens focused on civics, media, and technology— has been rolling all through July. This program, funded by Smart Chicago based on a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is largely run by the Mikva Challenge, which develops the next generation of civic leaders, activists, and policy-makers and Free Spirit Media, which provides education, access, and opportunity in media production.

But on Fridays, we pull together all of the youth into one room and teach them about technology and the concept of open. We had our first such session last Friday at 1871. Smart Chicago is a founding member of the digital startup center located in the Merchandise Mart, and days like Friday are exactly we why decided to be one of its first tenants.

Here’s the complete set of photos from our day, and a quick look at some illustrative ones:

The raw space inside one of the largest commercial buildings in the world provides a great palette for teaching youth.

Jacqui Cheng put this entire program together, including arranging for a tour of the space and lining up all of the speakers:

It was quite an experience to run 150 youth through a space where hundreds of people are running businesses. We appreciate everyone’s patience!

That’s a lotta people.

Mari Huertas of Mozilla talked about her path to a career in technology

Rayid Ghani showed a video about self-driving cars. Teaching computers how to do things is hard.

Jason Kunesh talked about the importance of designing technology to meet the needs of humans.

Is there anything more important than lunch?

Gene Leynes spoke of his business, Yolobe

We went ahead and got limbered up over lunch

Jeff McCarter of Free Spirit Media got everyone fired up about what we’re doing.

Dirk McCoy talked about Spendbot and his path to starting the company.

Jimmy Odom of WeDeliver talked about starting a business.

I talked about the importance of real Twitter accounts and having an authentic voice all day, every day.

Lastly, here’s the curriculum we used to guide our day:

Next up: our Friday session this week will be at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy and will have lots of special guests!

The Launch of Smart Chicago Annotations

adminJuly 11, 2013 2 Comments

Today we’re launching our Annotations program, where we publish rich text-based annotations of dense government documents like municipal code, RFPs, contracts, and other documents of this nature.

People in the open government / open data world like to poke fun at documents. Often published in PDF format, and containing stilted language and legal provisions, these files are easy targets for those of us who are unfamiliar with what they say and what they can lead to.

But these documents are important. In many cases, they are lifeblood of cashflows in and out of government. They are the sum total of the rules— the code, so to speak— that we use to run things. They are the objects with the signatures & the stamps, the legal descriptions and the scopes of work. They matter; enormously. And we have to understand them.

At Smart Chicago, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to create sustainable infrastructure for civic innovation. Programs like the CUTGroup (resident-centered design that engages hundreds of Chicagoans), Hosted Web Space (free server space and configuration for people working in open data), and our Github account (open source code from myriad web projects that put real money into the hands of civic developers) are deliberately designed to build this infrastructure.

This annotation project is a step toward addressing another infrastructure issue— funding. We believe that government spending on technology could be used to fund civic innovation while reducing overall spending. Small civic developers— the ones we hire to do our projects— should be bidding on any enterprise software system that comes down the pike. Introducing open technologies, agile methods, and new mindsets to government contracting will lead to more efficient spending and economic expansion.

What we’re trying to do is build the civic innovation sector of the technology industry.

We use News Genius as the platform for our Annotations program. It has a number of features that make it great for our purposes:

Rich annotations (links, images, video embeds, etc.) that allow for deeper understanding of specific words and phrases
Direct, sharable hyperlinks to specific annotations to stimulate discussion
Open platform that allows anyone to improve the annotations
There’s a large and growing community of people on the platform, annotating all sorts of text

Join us!

Here are the items we’re annotating upon launch:

City of Chicago – RFP for Municipal Code Printing, Sales, Web Hosting, and Editing Supplementation Services: this covers a specific RFP covering the publication of the municipal code. We thought it was a good example to start with because it has all of the boilerplate language and the project also has a technological component
City of Chicago – Sample Contract with City of Chicago: this is a boilerplate contract attached to all RFPs. This is somewhat less annotated – we definitely could use your help!

News Genius is a project of Rap Genius, which focuses on annotating the lyrics of rap songs. As you can imagine, the content on that side of the site can get somewhat off-color. If you stay focused on the above-reffed items, you should be able to steer clear of any of that. As we like to say here at Smart Chicago, “open means open”.

One side effect of this project is that we’ve started the first “Artist” page for our favorite municipal government: http://rapgenius.com/artists/City-of-chicago as well as the Department of Law (http://rapgenius.com/artists/Department-of-law) and Department of Procurement Services (http://rapgenius.com/artists/Department-of-procurement-services). Those are some great URLs.

Much, much more to come.

Free Spirit Media Documakers Technology Session at Tribeca Flashpoint

adminJuly 9, 2013

Today Jacqui Cheng and I talked with the #CivicSummer youth working as Documakers for Free Spirit Media about open technology as it pertains to the media industry. We talked about the building blocks of the web and some specific technologies and standards that help media makers do their jobs.

Here’s a complete set of photos and some representative images:

Jacqui talked about different social networks and how they can be used to spread messages and find content:

The huge monitors and great equipment at Tribeca provides a great basis for the youth as they make their media pieces:

#CivicSummer Custom Session on Open Technology with the Mikva Aldermanic Fellows

adminJuly 2, 2013

Today Jacqui Cheng and I hosted the Mikva Aldermanic Fellows (“30 youth interning in Chicago aldermanic offices this summer. We are working to bring a larger voice to youth across the city.”) at the Chicago Community Trust.

Here’s a complete set of photos and some highlights of what we covered:

Jacqui reviewed the basics of the Internet, including TCP/IP, as a platform for talking about how open technology and standards can pave the way for innovation:

The Trust board room, with its nearly 100-year history of Chicago leadership, provided a great setting for our session:

The Aldermanic Fellows are staffed all across the city and come together periodically to share experiences:

Vint Cerf looks on as Jacqui enlightens:

I covered lots of examples of civic technology that helps Aldermen serve constituents, including Open311 and the yet-to-be published Chicago Works For You.

Here’s the presentation we used to guide our time together:

Civic Innovation Summer Aldermanic Interns Curriculum from Daniel X. O’Neil