“The Dreamers will have to learn to struggle themselves, to understand that the field for their Dream, the stage where they have painted themselves white, is the deathbed of us all.” — Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Hackfort 3: Why Hack for the Community?
For the past two years or so, I have been slowly learning to code, and I’m doing it for one main reason: There are systems out there that I want to help fix.
One of those systems is the Idaho state legislature’s web site: it bothers me that bill and legislator information is buried so deeply and difficult to find and lacking in useful detail, and so I am working on an alt legislative website that will make it easier to find and track Idaho (and maybe other state) legislative info.
I also recently got involved in a grassroots election results hack, Open Elections, that is attempting to standardize election result reporting across the country. I helped build Latino208.com, and I’m working on civic-minded web projects in both of my day jobs, at Boise State and in the city’s IT department.
Next week I’ll be working, on my own time, on an app for the Hackfort Hackathon, the civic tech track at the Treefort Music Fest in Boise. I volunteered for the civic track committee, and, full disclosure, I also helped pull together the City of Boise’s Hackfort data offerings that may aid in the hackathon.
[Lots of Hackfort events on FB]
This year, Jimmy Hallyburton of Boise Bicycle Project put out a call for a bike crash reporting app, which inspired the general topic of “hacking Boise transportation” for this year’s hackathon. The idea is to crowd source a database of otherwise unreported bike crashes in order to help identify the causes and location of bike-auto collisions and ideally to prevent them in the future.
Inspired by a call to action from the Boise Bicycle Project, #Hackfort3 asks developers, designers and civic hackers to consider: What data and/or software do you need in your pocket in order to get around town better?
I really hope a team or several teams tackle this idea — it’s valuable data to collect, community driven, provides potentially life-saving information to cyclists as well as drivers, transportation planners, police officers and researchers and supports the mission of a kickass local nonprofit. Check the Hackathon page at Dev Post to find a team or start a new one.
Here’s nine ideas for apps, some based on available public data, for anyone to use (leave more ideas in the comments or at reddit):
- The Boise Bicycle Crash Reporting app, mentioned above, of course.
- Skateboard route finder, with skater friendly paths, byways, stairs and bowls marked — perhaps a Google maps hack for skater routing?
- Better Boise Bus Finder: ValleyRide now has a bus geolocator, but perhaps there is a better implementation of it out there?
- A Boise GreenBike dashboard that shows how people get around Boise by bike, as the Ada County Highway District considers more permanent bike lanes downtown and elsewhere (use the ACHD bike lane/route map and the Boise GreenBike 2015 ride data and realtime bike availability API!) –> See EXAMPLES
- Ridesharing, for real. Uber has already disrupted the taxi economy in Boise, but there may be a market for legit ride sharing (maybe not?) based on workplaces, recreation venues (Bogus?), etc. (Think Park & Ride meets Uber…)
- Tours: Lots of tour ideas, depending on your fancy, but last year the winning Hackfort team made a random date generator. This year, you could help people get to their dates: directions between park amenities, add Greenbelt data, Foothills trail data, mash up other APIs, or non-food Yelp amenities…
- Analyze crashes that involve cyclists and ARE reported to find patterns, seed the bike crash app mentioned in No. 1, save lives.
- Model future scenarios for transit in Boise, i.e. trains, planes and automobiles in 2030, 2040… perhaps a game?
- Put your favorite stuff on the map, the OpenStreetMap.
The hackathon has been open for some time, but convenes formally at Trailhead on Thursday, 3/24, after 7 pm, as kind of a formal kickoff (Hackfort opening party starts at 5 pm that evening). Finished apps are due at 9 am on Saturday, 3/26, and will be demoed at 3 pm, also at Trailhead, to be followed by the awarding of prizes.
See you @HackFortFest! (And remember that we also need designers, users, people who transport themselves, idea people — civic hacking is not just for hardcore programmers…)
A few (bunch o’) key Hackfort links:
- Hackathon announcement
- Hackathon page at Dev Post
- Hackfort sign up ($20)
- @Hackfortfest on Twitter
- /r/hackfort on Reddit
Other stuff I’m helping out with at Treefort this year:
- Flavor and Isolation: Tastes of Home in the Treasure Valley
- Civic Tech Roundtable Discussions
- And… still on the todo list: Find some new bands to see
“Journalism’s New Proof Texts” paper posted for critique
In this sense, the new rise of data journalism mirrors the age old spectrum of the news industry, from yellow to red. It matters little whether the bits or blobs are rendered in lampblack and gum arabic or 1s and 0s. What matters, what has always mattered, is the consciousness of the renderer, the corporate bounds within which he or she works and the attitude of the news consumer. Will data journalism progress along the lines of the corporate backed, market-driven Princeton Radio Project of the 1930s or will the new data journalists take heed of Adorno’s warnings against “stating and measuring effects without relating them to these ‘stimuli,’” the qualitative, objective influence of culture and society on consumers (Adorno, 1969, p. 343)?
From “Journalism’s New Proof Texts: The Peril and Promise of Data Storytelling,” a paper I wrote for Ed McLuskie’s Advanced Critical Theory class at Boise State, now posted for critique session at Academia.edu.
Elevator pitch for Knight #newschallenge on data and communities
I’ve been working on an idea for the Knight Foundation News Challenge on data and communities and wanted to share the evolution of our one line, elevator pitch for the project.
The proposal is to take the idea of a “data repository” (like data.gov, or the City of Boise’s growing data portal hosted by ESRI’s Open Data platform, which I’m also working on), that offers bulk data downloads of civic info, and add two more types of data to the catalog: research that actaully uses the data and media reporting on the data.
I call this “data in its context,” or “the work done on the data,” and I think it will be convenient to have it all in one place. Also, I think average citizens will be able to make better use of it, better interpret the numbers and contribute back to the research and reporting with their own local insights.
My first stab at explaining this was pretty high level and I still like it:
Draft 1
We’re organizing the web in Boise around community data, locally relevant research, government reports and the news in a structured way that scales to local internet spaces around the world.
But it did not speak to the power of communities harnessing their own data, which is the point.
Draft 2
We’re organizing the web in Boise, Idaho, around community data, relevant research, government reports, local journalism and public ideas in a structured way that scales to communities around the world.
Someone pointed out to me that its not the web that needs organizing, it’s the locally relevant data, thus:
Draft 3
We’re organizing community data alongside relevant research, government reports, local journalism and public ideas in Boise, Idaho with a web app that will scale to benefit communities around the world.
Then, how will it benefit these communities?
Draft 4
We’re marshalling community data alongside relevant university research, government reports, local journalism and public ideas in Boise, Idaho with an open source web app that communities across the world can use to tell their own data stories.
Finally after much work and input from many folks, including and intense “Red Team” (pdf) session at Boise State, I arrived at this draft:
Draft 5
Data Cairn is a platform for data storytelling, starting in Southwest Idaho, that allows communities to harness their data along with the work being done on it: relevant university research, government reports, local journalism, visualizations, public ideas and more, in order to discover and demand better solutions.
The feedback phase for the Knight News Challenge is open for one more day, so feel free to leave more feedback and applause, if warranted, on our proposal. There are tons of other cool projects on there as well. Well, 1,028 other cool projects …
Here’s a few I like:
Scraping Chimp Photos for the Commons
Awesome animal copyright fact: All chimp photos and paintings are public domain.
The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants. Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy(ies) state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit. – via COMPENDIUM OF THE U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE PRACTICES , Third Edition
Linking government and academic open data
I’m doing some reading on the open data movement for a new project that we will announce in a few weeks and came across an interesting history of the human genome project. I’m looking at links between the open data movement, which is mostly concerned with public, government information and its release in free, usable, digital formats, and open data in academia — university research data — which is often treated as private or somehow protected information.
In 2011, Jorge Contreras wrote about the Bermuda Principles in the Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology (SSRN link). The Bermuda Principles, agreed to in 1996… in Bermuda, stated that human genome research data should be released to the public within 24 hours of being collected.
According to Contreras, key researchers and genetic policy thinkers agreed to Bermuda for three reasons:
- To aid project coordination,
- to advance science, and
- to minimize encumbrances to research that patents on the human genome would cause.
Number three is very interesting and certainly has application in other areas of the sciences. But the bigger concept that Contreras analyzes — the idea of openness and data sharing in scientific research also applies in many other areas.
As discussed above, the more quickly scientific data is disseminated, the more quickly science will progress. Conversely, when the release of data is delayed due to the length of the publication cycle and patenting concerns, it can be argued that the progress of scientific advancement is retarded, or at least that it may not achieve its greatest potential. If data were not withheld until a researcher’s conclusions were published, but released prior to publication, the months-long delays associated with the publishing process could be avoided. Following this line of argument, in an ideal world, maximum scientific efficiency could be achieved by reducing the delay between data generation and data release to zero. That is, the most rapid pace of innovation, discovery of new therapies, development of new technologies, and understanding of natural phenomena could be achieved by releasing scientific data to the community the moment it is generated. — Jorge L. Contreras in Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology. 2011;12(1):61-125. (Emphasis added.)
More on this later, but it dawns on me that Github is basically designed to reduce the delay between data generation and data release to almost zero: update, add, commit, push and the public has a current and historical view of your data manipulations.
Find more data journalism and open data sources on one of my tumblrs: http://journalismprooftexts.tumblr.com/
Maps, Bohemia
“To traverse the world men must have maps of the world. Their persistent difficulty is to secure maps on which their own need, or someone else’s need, has not sketched in the coast of Bohemia.” — Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922
Redactive Culture
“Is it possible to tell a society by how it edits? Is redaction a symptom of the social?”
— John Hartley, 2000 via Schudson
Amor and Exile 3-day Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal
The authors of Amor and Exile are commemorating the first year since publication by hosting an Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal today, Saturday, May 31st, through Monday, June 2nd, 2014.
We never would have guessed that a YEAR after delivering 635 books to Congress, immigration reform STILL wouldn’t have passed! But the fight still continues.
To help get the word out there to the American public who can help us win this fight, we’re practically giving it away copies of our Kindle version for $0.99 today, $1.99 tomorrow, and $2.99 on Monday on the Kindle store. Regular sales price is $7.99. Kindle apps are available for almost every mobile device and laptops.
Please tell all your friends why you think they should download a copy. Or if you haven’t yet, now’s a better time than ever to learn more about the laws affecting American families with undocumented spouses and their heartbreaking stories.
Thanks!
Free Kindle book: Amor and Exile, 48 hours, Jan 23-24, 2014
To promote meaningful debate and public awareness about immigration, deportation and exile, we will be giving away copies of the Amor and Exile free Kindle book on Thursday and Friday of this week!
Our Kindle version can be read on almost any computer, tablet or smartphone, not just on Kindles.
Here’s the free Kindle book details:
- When: Thursday, January 23rd through Friday, January 24th (48 hours!)
- Where: The Amor and Exile Kindle Page: http://amzn.to/11dNDPd
- What: Download the free ebook for yourself or gift to a friend by clicking the “Give as a Gift” button on the Amazon page!
NOTE: We’d like to move thousands of copies of the book next week and need your help! The more books we move, the more the folks over at the Amazon book palace will notice our little work of nonfiction. This is the next phase in self-publishing. We are counting on our readers to rate, review and download our book so that the rest of the world has a chance of seeing it out there!
Please plan to download a free Kindle book of Amor and Exile from the Kindle store on Thursday and Friday, even if you already have a copy of the book! You can use it as a backup copy, gift to a friend or use it to beef up your digital library. If you support immigration reform or human rights, please share this special opportunity with everyone in your circles! And thanks for all of your great reviews of the book as well!
Here’s a short sample message for your Twitter: Get @amorandexile for #free, Th-Fri, Jan. 23-24 from the #Kindle Store: http://amzn.to/11dNDPd #immigration #goodreads
If you have any questions about the giveaway or how to gift a book to a friend, please ping us. Thanks again for your support!
Crossposted from http://amorandexile.com.