With help from Dan Sinker, we've secured space at Columbia College to participate in Sunlight Labs "Great American Hackathon '09" We'll be in the 5th floor lounge at 33 E. Congress from 9 am to 6 pm. This is very flexible, so feel free to come and go at any time during this window.
We should have wireless networking accounted for. If you have a spare powerstrip or extension cord, it might not hurt to bring it. Also, BYO office supplies, etc. I'm not sure at the moment if we'll have any easels, white boards, or what not. Feel free to annotate the wiki page to indicate anything you might be bringing along.
Project Ideas [list]
What's this all about?
From the OpenGov mailing list:
Q: "As an advocate for open government, I would like to support this cause; however, I'm not sure what this is. Can you provide more detail than the web site offers?"
A: Good question. This reminds me that much of the world has a very different idea of what "hackers" and "hacking" mean than I have. For starters, "hackers" aren't bad guys or pirates. They're passionate pragmatic craftspeople who relish doing interesting work and doing it with style.
A hackathon is a time for people who share common interests to come together and get stuff done. They emerge from the open source software world, where they are often used to concentrate focus on bigger challenges like adding a major new feature or officially making a new release. The real-time interaction provides focus and improves relationships between folks who may know each other mostly via the internet.
The folks at Sunlight Labs have been pushing the idea of adapting the hackathon spirit to civic technology and open government activism. They have organized hackathons in conjunction with several tech conferences. I worked with a couple of dozen folks for a couple of days in March after PyCon (the Python programming language conference). It was a great chance to meet like-minded people and learn more about open government and technology. (Coincidentally, it also put me on the road to my current job, as I met my team lead at the event.)
As noted, the idea of a hackathon comes from the open source software world, but there's no reason this needs to be a purely technical thing. Folks could come together to write a manifesto or develop an action plan, or to design a flyer campaign. People could collaboratively critique a government website and draft a recommendation about how it could be better. They could research grant funding opportunities, or just make time for a personal research project, like adapting this neat trick for easily visualizing county- by-county data on a map.
So, in short, if you have time and interest, you can come to a hackathon and find something to do. If you have a project in mind, you can work on it on your own, but enjoy having like-minded folks nearby for when you need a break, or maybe a second opinion. Or you can start pitching it and planning around it in hopes that some other folks will come looking for something to help out with.
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