Random Hacks of Kindness: 5 ideas for THIS weekend, featuring reception

Technologists and non-technologists alike, build technology solutions together this weekend at Random Hacks of Kindness in University City.

On Friday, we’ll develop ideas and teams over beer and pizza at the cool new First Round Capital space, and over Saturday and Sunday, we’ll throw down in the sleek new ExCITe Center on Drexel’s campus.

RECEPTION: Fri. Nov. 30 7-9 p.m @ First Round Capital, 4040 Locust Street // RSVP

HACKATHON: Dec. 1-2 @ ExCITe Center, 3401 Market Street, Suite 101 // RSVP

Check out coverage of past Random Hacks events here. And below, just to get your mind rumbling for Friday, find a few ideas that could be worthwhile projects or inspire others.

1. L&I web app data extraction — The City of Philadelphia Licenses and Inspections Department unveiled a mobile app to access its data. Staff from L&I will be on hand to offer help, and they’ve expressed specific interest in add data extraction functionality that allows users to select from permits, cases, licenses, and/or appeals, and pull all related data for a specific Ward, Council District, Census Tract, Zip Code, or Address. Excel is the preferred format. Says L&I spokeswoman Maura Kennedy, “THIS WOULD BE AMAZING IF SOMEONE COULD GIVE US THIS. Caps totally warranted. ”
   
2. “Race to Reuse” — Take on the Code for America challenge to locally lift existing civic apps that are being used in other cities. (City Chief Data Officer Mark Headd specifically mentions Adopta, given recent weather problems)
   
3. “Female school attendance tool” — Creating a dashboard and tools for monitoring and visualizing school attendance for girls after menstruation education. Read more from the Sanitation Hackathon here and find others.
   
4. “Qdoba rewards feed the hungry” — With the permission of Qdoba’s corporate headquarters, continue a project to share a universal rewards card from Qdoba and use the points to offer free food to the hungry. via Chris Overcash
   
5. “RoadWatch” — A publicly accessible web service which allows companies and utilities to register their desire/intent to tear up any given road or pedestrian pavement to allow companies to coordinate efforts so that Comcast, Verizon, PECO and whomever else can do all of their maintenance in one hit. it’s a super-simple GMaps mashup, maybe even just an extension to the neat existing 311 website. (This fits into a growing culture of ‘Dig Once’ executive orders around broadband infrastructure) via Nicholas Reid

And, more broadly, What City of Philadelphia data do you wish you had? Come with something in mind and this can be a challenge for our partners in city government and other related data collecting agencies to look at what we could do if more specific information was available.

Judges: Alicia Llewellyn, NASA, Mark Headd, City of Philadelphia, Dr. Jeremy Johnson