Contra Costa Civic Hackathon

Open Data Day (http://opendataday.org/) is a global celebration of freely available data that can be used for the public good. In 2018, Victory Workspace brought ODD to Contra Costa County for the first time.  Let's do it again!  Register now to guarantee your spot, and please come before 9:00 to register!

Join us at Victory Workspace in Downtown Walnut Creek for a day of civic hacking!  We will use publicly available data sets to analyze social problems and help local governments improve the quality of life in our communities.

Who should attend? Web Developers, Public Servants, Students, Designers, and anyone who wants to learn how to code, is looking for employment opportunities, and/or would like to volunteer their time to help our local community.

For experienced developers this is a great opportunity to give back to the community and meet other local technologists. For concerned citizens who don’t program, this is a good chance to learn about the force that has transformed the Bay Area over the last few decades and to see how it can be harnessed for the public good.

Oh, and did we mention the free food being donated by our sponsors!?

Before we start hacking, we will learn about open data from government officials and open source technologies from technical experts. We will discuss how open data can be used to improve our communities.

Organizers will then describe projects we can work on; we will also give you the opportunity to “pitch” project ideas of your own. We will then form teams and start hacking. We will have ample free wi-fi and access to free software development tools.

At the end of the day, teams will discuss their projects, give demos, and the winning team will receive a $250 gift card to the Apple Store!

We have limited capacity, so please RSVP if you are interested in attending!

Schedule:

8:30 AM Registration and breakfast

9:15 AM Opening presentation and lightning talks by government officials and tech experts

9:45 AM Project pitches

10:30 AM Start Hacking

12:30 PM Lunch

1:30 PM More Hacking

4:00 PM Project demos/Prizes

Corporate Sponsors Miller Media, Kha Creation, Sunrise Bistro and Extreme Pizza

City of Walnut Creek Projects:

1. Help create a visualization showing the state of Walnut Creek’s neighborhoods.
2. Help us visualize and interpret data from Walnut Creek’s permitting and entitlement process.
3. Help create a central calendar of Walnut Creek events, including Arts & Rec, City and non-profit activities.

Contra Costa County Census Projects:

1. Increase participation in the 2020 Census among undercounted communities by helping Contra Costa County develop a multilingual informational kiosk.
2. Empower volunteers to help increase Census participation by creating an Adopt-a-Block system. Volunteers would electronically select a Census block to work on and then report back on their outreach efforts for that block.