This weekend, June 4-5, Random Hacks of Kindness will bring together hackers, developers, coders and designers to build at Drexel University, as we told you last month. RSVP here.
This Friday night, at Indy Hall, we want you all to come grab a (free) beer and talk about what we can accomplish — whether you have any development background or not. Free reservation here.
The international weekend hackathon is targeted for practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges and here in Philadelphia we’re using the recently unveiled resource OpenDataPhilly.org as inspiration. [Full Disclosure: Technically Philly is co-organizing Random Hacks with Drexel PhD student Michael Brennan.]
To get your juices flowing, we looked back at another, bigger event Technically Philly held in February with Code for America and Young Involved Philadelphia to bring out new perspectives on data, trolled through other suggestions we’ve started getting and spoke to the good folks at Azavea, who are behind the development of OpenDataPhilly.org. During the Friday reception, we’ll have some prompts to get down to the real process of making some of this happen.
To use the Random Hacks phrase, here are some Problem Definitions and directions we’ve heard bubble up:
- How could various disasters affect Philadelphia? OpenDataPhilly.org features flood hazard lines and 10-foot and two-foot contour lines that could show flood impact, and there are maps of active nuclear reactors in the region. Relatedly, there are regional evacuation routes and an interactive map of the same.
- Is there a more complete tool for disaster management and resource coordination in the City of Philadelphia? We’re looking at the city’s Managing Director’s Office of Emergency Management and wondering if something could tie it all together.
- How is Philadelphia reacting to climate change concerns? Find aerial photography from 2004 and perhaps compare to 2008. Compare to the city’s Walk Score or its Walkshed and use CommonSpace with bicycle commuter routes and an overall Bike Network.
- How do we build toward the ‘Carfax for Philly properties’ that was a hot topic at the February data event? At the BarCamp NewsInnovation, the ‘OPA Data Liberator’ made property owner searches more flexible and there is a city resource tracking real estate taxes — sorta — so perhaps work could be done to continue to liberate and connect this related data across competing city departments.
- How can city, volunteer and other social service employees be more aware of available resources for marginalized Philadelphians? Code for America fellow Mjumbe Poe started scraping homeless facility information andthere’s an annual ‘Philadelphia Street Sheet’ here [PDF] (and other lessons), so perhaps there is an application or scrape of complete resources. Something like this could be shared in other cities.
In the comments below, let us know what else you want to see accomplished, and be sure to come out Friday to push the conversation forward.
Someone told me there were 70 groups within Philadelphia who were geared toward helping entrepreneurs. How inefficient is that? How many different grant and financial assistance programs are there for entrepreneurs and start-ups, and who really knows where to find them? How many programs does the State of PA have to help businesses with job training, job creation, business financing, business growth, etc? Hundreds. And hardly anybody knows about them or even where to find them. What about area universities with scholarships or internships available for their students, and local tech businesses desperate for smart help? How many groups have their own event listings, but too many people don’t even know these groups exist nor that the event would be perfect for them? As the President of The American Society of Inventors, I see how our all-volunteer non-profit organization is positioned to assist the independent inventor and entrepreneur and educate them on intellectual property and licensing we evaluate their inventions, and get them networked with other people. The problem is, if we’re successful, they outgrow us, but we don’t know who are the right people or organizations to direct them to for continued growth. We don’t know where to direct them for funding (both private and public). How many people would avoid spending thousands with some illicit invention marketing company if they had just come to us first? How many kids never learn to be inventive and possibly pursue a technical career because they weren’t exposed to the exciting things scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and researchers come up with? What I’m leading up to is a need for a series of processes — to help people and companies identify where they are and where they fit in the process, and what resources are there to help them progress through the process or become known to the people or companies moving through the process. Once the framework is defined, I envision a centralized database with an application front-end that provides a visual framework for that process (e.g. for a new business, things like business planning, business formation, equipment or real estate procurement or lease, legal and accounting services, funding sources, business networking groups, designers, manufacturers, investors, etc.)with links to support services throughout the process, and tools to help you determine where you are in the process. The database houses the structure for the many processes, and provides a directory for the organizations, groups, helper organizations, private and public companies that exist for that part of the process and in their geographic area. We have way too much duplication of effort and duplication of organizations, with way too many places to look, and too little time for the volunteers or employees to figure out how to tie in to this critically important stream that takes bright people with good ideas and repidly and efficiently moves them toward success. This is needed everywhere, so if it started in Philly, it can grow or be replicated in every other city. But likely it’s not just a technical exercise — it probably requires creation or acquisition of the various processes and frameworks to provide the contextual glue that the code and databases can then work with. I think of it as a search engine with a structure that helps you to know what to search for and when you need to search for it.