Oct 17 -- Next Civic Hacking Event For NE Wisconsin

Schedule Change: The date for the next NE Wisconsin civic hacking meetup is October 17. The event will be held at the Appleton Makerspace and will run from 9 AM until we drop -- probably going until at least 5 PM, maybe running later if we're having fun and being productive!

The next NE Wisconsin civic hacking event will tentatively happen on Saturday, October 24 October 17, 2015 in Appleton at the Appleton Makerspace.

What Time:  The goal is an all-day event so people can come and hack for a few hours when it fits in their schedule. We’ll start at 9 AM. If you haven’t been to a civic hacking event and can roll out of bed early enough on a Saturday, it would probably work to your advantage if you can show up for the start so you can hear what people are going to be working on. But no worries if you come later as your schedule allows. This will be an informal day of civic hacking; no agenda. No definite end time, either; we’ll go as long as people are having fun, which probably means at least until 5 PM, and maybe until midnight! You can check the #dhmncivichacks channel on the NE Wisconsin Slack website during the day to see if the event is still in progress and what the civic hackers are working on during the event. Click here to join this Slack team if you’re not already a member.

Who Should Show Up:  Everyone who’s interested in civic hacking, or thinks they might be, should come to this event. You should definitely come if you participated in the DHMN Civic Hackathon/Appleton 2015 on June 6 or if you registered for that hackathon but couldn’t be there. Anybody interested in the concept of civic hacking should show up. Maybe Diane and Michelle can organize a crew of civic hackers from Women In Technology to participate in the October 17 festivities!

So what IS this concept of Civic Hacking??:  If you are not familiar with civic hacking, listen to the Catherine Bracy TED video below, “Why Good Hackers Make Good Citizens.”

If you want to read more about what civic hacking is, scan through the titles of other posts from past months on this blog for ones that are of interest to you -- see the list of titles in the right column under Blog Archive.

Coders will enjoy the fun at the civic hacking meetup, but non-coders are also encouraged to participate, as discussed in “What Are Some Non-coder Activities In Civic Hacking?” and “Do Non-Programmers Participate In Civic Hacking?” There will likely be at least one designer there on October 17 and at least one person who's neither coder nor designer, so you definitely don’t need to be a coder to participate in civic hacking.

What Will We Do:  Mike Putnam will be there leading the charge again on civic hacks related to the AppletonAPI and the “Is It Recycling Week?” Android app he wrote. We had lots of people working on stuff related to the AppletonAPI at the June 6th civic hackathon. Mike Rosack will be at the October 17 event and will be working on his civic hack API locator or maybe his GreenvilleAPI. Ross Larson built a recycling-related Pebble smartwatch app and will likely work on that. Chris Jaure can fill us in on his progress on Kaukauna and Outagamie County recycling-related matters. I’m hoping some of the Oshkosh crew, the De Pere / Green Bay coders, and others who worked on projects related to AppletonAPI and “Is It Recycling Week?” (IIRW) will show up on October 17 to work on recycling and garbage pickup civic hacks. Maybe this time we can get some local garbage pickup people (cities or private companies) to show up.

It would be great if we can launch, or make plans to launch, a new civic hack project on October 17. For some ideas of what other civic hacks for NE Wisconsin could be worked on at this meetup, read “Seed Projects For Civic Hackathons.”

If you weren’t at the June 6th civic hackathon in Appleton or the civic hacking meetups on July 22 and August 19, no worries. We’ll bring you up to speed and answer your questions about civic hacking, then get you connected with an existing civic hack project or help you get your own project started.

What Should I Bring:  The main things to bring are (1) yourself, (2) friends or acquaintances who might enjoy civic hacking, (3) laptop and charger (or other tools for the type of civic hacking you want to work on), and (4) willingness to either lead a civic hack project or work on someone else’s civic hack project. If you're going to stay all day, you might want to skim through “Last Minute Prep & What To Bring To Hackathon.” Check out “Day-After Report: DHMN Civic Hackathon/Appleton 2015” for some idea of what was worked on during the June 6 hackathon.

As always, if you have civic hacking questions or suggestions, email Bob Waldron at bwaldron (at) gmail [dott] com.

Hope to see you at the NE Wisconsin civic hacking meetup on October 17, 2015!

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