September 15, 2012

Meet our 2012 winning apps!

We’re about to send out details of the final demo and prize ceremony for September 27th where our wonderful teams will show of their finished or working projects and we can celebrate these awesome collaborations. We’ll post links and videos of the apps after this event, but for now these are the winning apps from the hackathon along with what they each receive upon launch/MVP.

Grand prize plus Community Engagement Bonus: OpenBudget ($1500+ Socrata support package)

A web app for visualizing and interacting with city budgets.

Second prize: 510eat.org  ($1000)

A website that helps diners find restaurants that have positive health inspection reports and avoid places with poor health conditions.

 

Code Reuse and Neighborland Bonus: Early Alameda ($750)

A website and app that allows families to find services for their young children and infants.

 

Educational and Neighborland Bonus: Hack Rack ($750)

A web resource to help developers connect to projects


Public Data: Edible Fruit (500) 

EdibleFruit is a web app designed to help locate neighborhood fruit trees using public records to help residents to identify public trees that can be harvested freely in season.

 

Multiple Channels: Topcop ($250)

A multi platform app to allow residents to rate their interactions with police officerss

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August 28, 2012

Code for Oakland Participants See Program Expand in Light of Successes

This year’s winners of the Youth prize came from the Mosswood Recreation Center. As a result of this prize, among other success, their City of Oakland program will expand with more after-school technology and computer science classes. Dan Finlay is seeking talented instructors to join their team “with the goal of reducing drop-out rates, and increasing college acceptance and scholarship rates.” He explains:

For about the last year, I’ve been teaching computer classes for the City of Oakland.  I started with basic game-programming using Scratch to 7-12 year olds, then moved up to teaching more advanced Flash game design using Stencyl to 10-13 year olds,  and my programs were so popular and effective, I was brought under a new grant to teach more useful life-skills to “at risk of dropping out” high schoolers, and we’ve had a great summer learning HTML, CSS, and some Javascript and jQuery for the more advanced students.

If you or anyone you know might be a good fit for teaching tech-related skills in an after-school program starting in January, send them over to this blog post, where Dan covers all the nitty-gritty details:

An Opportunity For You?
I’m looking for computer-savvy and talented instructors for a variety of subjects that could potentially be taught as soon as January 1, 2013.  These positions would hypothetically be paid between $18-$20/hr, for a few hours per class, each weekly.  I’m currently interested in a wide variety of topics, but am also open to arguments in favor of certain core topics being taught over others.

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August 9, 2012

Code for Oakland 2012: “Most diverse hackathon ever”

As one of the founders of Code for Oakland, and a member of the committee that planned the event that just happened on July 21st, seeing posts like this one: “Code For Oakland: The Most Diverse Hackathon Ever” | Mitchell Kapor Foundation Weblog http://bit.ly/NmrfOi  and this one: Code For Oakland: The Most Diverse Hackathon Ever - Forbes http://onforb.es/O43dYZmake me happy beyond measure.
I moved to Oakland in 2008, after a short start-up stint in Boulder and many years in Silicon Valley, and immediately started to wonder where the tech community was, how we could build more tech community and why a city like Oakland with good infrastructure and cheap commercial real estate didn’t have more of a start-up scene.
Fast forward 4 years and we’ve got alot more traction on all these issues—but we need to keep hammering on diversity and opportunity for everyone—and not re-create the old school view of what an entrepreneur, programmer, coder, or product developer is (and you probably know exactly what I am talking about.)
So we’re looking for ways to keep Code for Oakland going, and expand and build on it and get more partners and supporters. We’re also sharing our process with people from other cities who have made inquiries—if you’d like to do a civic hackathon a la CFO in your city—let us know.
Some photos from the event here:

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July 21, 2012

Code For Oakland Live Updates

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July 18, 2012

Meet our Judging Panel!

Our judges for the 2012 hackathon are now finalized:

Dan Turner: UCB Information Managment School
Alfonso Dominguez: Popuphood creator
Kiran Jain: City of Oakland Attorney’s Office
Libby Schaaf: Oakland City Council Member
Jason Young: Mindblown Lans and lead on the Hidden Genius project

Teams at this hackathon will be building native mobile apps, mobile web apps, or other mobile services that will be either fully or partially functional…

Teams should be able to show enough to demonstrate their full vision, and how they intend to implement it technologically. Incomplete parts of projects may be represented by wireframes or other plan documents.

The goal of this hackathon is to create or begin development of new resources and tools that:

  • Improve civic engagement
  • Improve digital education and literacy
  • Support, sustain and help to attract small businesses in Oakland
  • Support economic development in Oakland

Apps or tools that hit on at least one of these areas will receive bonus points!

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July 17, 2012

How can we support the winning apps?

As part of our prize package for the winning app on the day, we are offering not only a $1,000 cash prize but an amazing support package to help the team complete the app, develop a business plan, marketing strategy and to help prepare the product for a full launch! We feel this is a great way to help ensure that the great ideas and efforts can really have a strong, lasting impact and hopefully spawn a new start-up truly Made In Oakland!

Socrata will help you transform your application into the foundation for an effective and successful company. If applicable, your application could be featured on our website, in our newsletters and in future webinars. We’ll also be providing valuable consultative opportunities with three key members of the Socrata team:

 Business Strategy

Opportunity to get real-world civic startup coaching from Kevin Merritt, Socrata’s Founder & CEO. Coaching will include feedback on business strategy, building a team and bootstrapping and financing your civic venture.

Total time with Kevin: 2 hours

Marketing

Opportunity to meet with Saf Rabah, Socrata’s VP of Marketing and receive real-world coaching on go-to-market strategy. Coaching will include identifying market segments, creating a messaging platform, and executing a campaign strategy.

Total time with Saf: 4 hours

Product Development

Meet with Socrata’s Director of Product Development and Developer Evangelist, Chris Metcalf, to review all technical aspects of your application. Chris will discuss ideas for optimizing and building upon your application, and help you establish a product roadmap.

Total time with Chris: 2 hours

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July 17, 2012

Volunteer at Code for Oakland

If you’re not sure what you want to hack on on Saturday, but want to participate in the community, we are looking for volunteers.

Sign up here

We need logistical help with setup, cleanup, getting lunch, and so forth, as well as mentoring from experienced participants.  Mentoring can be about technical details, data knowledge, community participation, and more.

You can volunteer for as much or as little time as you want.  It’s a great way to participate if you can’t hang out the whole day!

Sign up here

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July 17, 2012

Sign up now! Limited ticket sales available on Saturday for $20

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July 13, 2012

New Data available from Alameda County

Alameda County has released it’s new OpenData platform in beta version in advance for our CodeforOakland hackathon on the 21st!

Presenting:  https://data.acgov.org/

This is the first time a county in California has published an OpenData catalog- since San Francisco pioneered this idea! It provides a number of selected datasets that hopefully are of interest to our hackathon attendees!

This initial release is a preview essentially, layout changes and more data are on the way. It’s a Socrata based platform- one of our event sponsors! In addition to a cash prize for our winning app team, Socrata are offering a great package of business support to help bring the winning app all the way to market!

The most interesting new data being released from my perspective are the:

We’re looking forward to what local developers, analyst and researchers can start to create and learn with this new wealth of data! There will be more juicy data released by urban Strategies Council and hopefully the City of Oakland for the event also!

  ACDATA

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June 14, 2012

Building Our Civic Web- Hackathon on July 21!

Come out for the 2nd annual Code for Oakland: Building Our Civic Web;  a month-long series of focused discussions and events that culminate in a one-day hackathon at the Henry J Kaiser Center!
Join Oakland’s community of civically engaged developers, coders, designers, entrepreneurs and innovators as we re-imagine ways in which collaboration and technology can help shape, grow, and sustain the healthy future of our City.
The focus of this year’s hackathon is on: building apps, hacking public data and building tools to support economic development in Oakland, improve civic engagement, improve digital education and literacy in our residents and provide tools to attract and sustain local business in the town.
Do you have ideas about how technology could help address these issues, but don’t consider yourself a techie? Come to one of these upcoming listening sessions to share your ideas, brainstorm community needs and help shape what is built at the hackathon. We want to hear from small business owners, community activists, teachers, city staff, nonprofit leaders and people from across the city- your ideas may just spark a great new app or tool to make positive change in our city!
On July 21, the second annual Code For Oakland event is happening at the Kaiser center.
Code for Oakland brings together members of the technology/software development community
with other Oaklanders for a “hackathon,” where ideas and/or apps (software applications)
will be discussed and developed.

 

To prepare for this event we are holding 4 community listening sessions where community members
technical and non-technical alike, can get together and discuss community needs and ideas for apps,
and or other techie projects which might be interesting to focus on during the event.
Code for Oakland is about having fun through building apps that our community needs and wants.
So get your ideas heard and come to one of the listening sessions held over the next six weeks.

Not technical ? Doesn’t matter, we want to hear from you. Don’t have time ?
Don’t worry you can post your ideas here  or at one of the locations below,
just look for our poster and stick your idea on it.

West Oakland Library –June 26th 5:30 – 6:30

Mosswood Recreation Center – July 11th 5:30 -6:30

Downtown Library – July 12th 5:30 – 7:30

81st Avenue Library – July 17th 5:30-6:30

Come win prize money for your ideas!

What will happen at the event?

This will be a day of talking, brainstorming, planning and hacking. We will:

Show and share the great apps built last year, and to discuss how we can sustain and scale their use in our city

Build connections between potential collaborators who want to build useful apps for local people and need to fill out their team/skills

Encourage the exchange of experiences, expertise and ideas between those involved in leading open government data initiatives around the East Bay and nearby.

Build & Hack new apps, tools and solutions driven by real needs and problems in our city

Celebrate we’ll end the event with a happy hour at a nearby watering hole to network, share and relax.

Engage On Sunday we will have some team events to get even more involved- stay tuned as we develop some ultra geeky but ultra fun events for everyone! Hint- Max Ogden and Matt Senate are conspiring…

Sustain We will be providing a light breakfast, plenty of caffiene and a great lunch and plenty of snacks.

** If you really would like to participate but can’t part with $15 please contact us, we’ll get you taken care of. We want you there!

Can I propose a new app or need?

Yes, we will be holding city and community listening sessions ahead of the event to solicit ideas and to uncover pain points in local government that we can build solutions for. There will be a pitch session early in the day to get ideas from everyone attending. These sessions will be listed here soon!

Get connected early: #CodeforOakland

Who’s behind the event?

Code for Oakland: A one day hackathon was conceived of and is being organized by a committee of Oakland-based business, city staff, developers and community based organizations. Those groups planning the event include

  • The City of Oakland
  • Oakland Local
  • Code for America
  • Lake Merritt / Downtown Business Association
  • Tech Liminal
  • Urban Strategies Council
  • more organizations are joining each month!
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