chihacknight / breakout-groups Goto Github PK

About the group: We're here to help with any technical issues you might have. Whether it's debugging some code, setting up Heroku, designing a database table, or anything else that's causing you problems, we'll either help you solve it or find someone who can.

Group Leaders: Hillel Wayne, Karl Fogel

Who we're looking for: Anyone, regardless of skill level, who likes helping other people.

Where we meet: Usually we start out in the main room and spread out from there. If you want to ask a question, come find one of us: we're always available.

Slack channel: Always on at chihacknight.slack.com/messages/code-clinic/

This is a short 15 minute orientation to civic technology. We go over the concepts of open data, open source, and the importance of community organizing in our work. We'll go over what resources and available at hack night and some examples of our work.

We meet in 111 N Canal (the room with the big door).

Civic apps, tools, sites on ZUI

About the group

Finishing up a Rails app-- need help vetting for security

link

March 28, 2017
We are on pause this week.

At our March 21 hack session, we got just about ready to make our site public-facing. We will be doing some housekeeping on the repo/site, including: hooking Heroku up to our new domain, cslessons.org, doing some text rebranding on the site, renaming the repo, etc.

About the group The Teach Tech Taskforce seeks to improve the quality of tech/CS/IT education in Chicago by connecting our educators with resources. Edumap is a CS curriculum discovery tool that allows teachers to search quickly by grade level, resources required, and educational standards. This work supports the Computer Science for All initiative in Chicago.

Group leaders Andy Rasmussen ([email protected]), Eve Tulbert, Vinesh Kannan

Who we're looking for Educators and developers who care about CS education!

Tools Rails, Javascript, PostgreSQL

Relevant Links

• github
• demo on Heroku

Where we meet (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Flipping Tables (right next to the main meeting space)

Maptime is a world-wide mapping learning community. Maptime Chicago has been reincarnated as a breakout group at ChiHackNight. We meet once a month to talk about different mapping topics, give live demos, and participate in hands-on tutorials. Maptime is for anyone interested in maps, from beginner to expert. All are welcome!

New to Chi Hack Night? Want to see how you can get involved?

This is the place for you!

This is a short orientation to civic technology. We'll go over why we build, share, and learn about civic tech, what resources are available at hack night, and some examples of our work. Afterwards, we'll do a short activity looking at the various breakout groups here that anyone can get involved with. We'll explore the following questions:

1. What problems are they trying to solve, and what data sources (if any) are they using?
2. How are they keeping their work relevant to the community?
3. What tools they are using day-to-day?

Where do you meet?
In the main post-breakout Zoom

Facilitators: Derek Eder

About the group

Voter files, provided by each state's secretary of state office, are the lifeblood of any political campaign. The raw data is very messy. Each state has their own format and often charge exorbitant prices for just downloading the data.

The political parties maintain their own copies of this data, enriched with years of voting history. Access to this data is tightly controlled and grassroots campaigns find it difficult to obtain and retain access. Private companies provide copies of this data, but it can be expensive for small campaigns.

The Progressive Coders Network is working with some progressive national campaigns to build a non-partisan resource to power grassroots campaigns.

We are working with a national team of developers, politicians, and activists to create a data warehouse of voters from all fifty states. We are developing funding resources to allow us to obtain the data on a monthly basis.

Group leaders

Ben Galewsky is architect and project leader for this initiative.

Josh Smith is project leader for a canvassing application that is driving initial development.

Who we're looking for

We need people who love data and love democracy to help download, cleanse and document this data.

Tools

We will be using

• Postgres for the database
• Hosted on DigitalOcean
• Pentaho Data Integration for the straight forward Extract/Transform/Load processes
• Python for the more complex tasks
• Elixer and Pheonix for the API

Relevant Links

• NationalVoterFile.org
• Our Github repo
• There is a link there to our Data Model
• Join our Slack

Where we meet

TBD

The complement of Code Clinic. This will be an informal meeting for people to get help with statistics, machine learning, data, and all the baggage that comes along with these things.

Zane Blanton is running this as a pilot to see if people like this format or not.

About the group

Interactive tutorial re: Python topics.

Group leaders

James Salvatore @ [email protected]

Who we're looking for

Individuals who know a bit of Python and want to learn a bit more.

Tools

Python and related Python libraries.

Relevant Links

Any relevant links, e.g. a github repo, a demo site

Where we meet

Any room that's open with a monitor.

About the group

Some context: The University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) is one of the largest private police forces in the world, and has a jurisdiction that stretches well beyond the boundaries of the UChicago campus core. Over the past decade, numerous Black students and residents of surrounding communities have accused the UCPD of racially-biased policing, but since the UCPD is not accountable to FOIA, they had no way of proving this outside of anecdotal evidence. However, due to pressure from student and community activist groups like the Campaign for Equitable Policing (CEP), the UCPD finally agreed to start releasing data in June 2015 on the Traffic Stops and Field Reports made by their officers.

This data is accessible on their data portal; however, they only show 5 rows at a time. What I have done is gone through each page, and copy-pasted each row into a spreadsheet, which I subsequently geocoded using ArcGIS. I first started compiling this data in December 2015, and have updated it every few months since; you can view the geocoded shapefile on map #14 of my Story Map.

This data has many implications - for the UCPD, for the University of Chicago, and even for the city as a whole. That's where you all come in! I would love to see what kinds of insights fellow civic hackers can glean from this data, and more broadly, raise awareness to the biased policing practices of the UCPD - a private police force not accountable to FOIA or its constituents.

Group leaders

Juliet Eldred//Twitter//email: [email protected]
If anyone has specific knowledge of the UCPD or related issues, let me know if you'd be interested in being a group leader!

Who we're looking for

Data analysts, coders, GIS folks, really anyone who finds these topics interesting

Tools

Excel, ArcGIS/QGIS, and more!

Relevant Links

The data set on my GitHub page
UCPD Data Portal
My Story Map on UChicago's land use and expansion

Where we meet

Specific location TBA; we'll probably meet in the back of the atrium

We are writing up stories about the Illinois Pension system and are creating visualizations based on data from the plans' annual reports.

Come learn about public pensions and help us get our story out.

Organized by Denis Roarty and Ben Galewsky

If you want to try and predict what is happening in the city, rainfall in an important input variable. From crime to basement flooding, transit patterns to fecal matter in the lake -- rainfall data is freely available and just looking for some good storytellers. This breakout team is looking to build an open source data science project in conjunction with the NORC at the University of Chicago about the changing rainfall pattern in the city and what it means. As it is just getting started, we welcome anyone who is looking to get involved.

This project is being led by Scott Beslow and Pat Sier

GitHub: https://github.com/NORCatUofC/rain

About the group: @Tweechable is a Twitter service that can help people deal with naive or ignorant people on twitter, whether they're being racist, sexist, or any other -ist. It helps take care of those #TweechableMoments so people can carry on.

How it works: when an uninformed person bothers you with a common question, you simply tweet @Tweechable about the topic you'd like @Tweechable to educate that person on. @Tweechable delivers a curated burst of tweets to inform the individual.

Group leaders: Eileen McFarland, Emily Drevets, and Kevin Pujanauski

Who we're looking for:

• Folks (with or without technical abilities) to create "lessons" on Tweechable
• Folks (with or without technical abilities) to get the word out about Tweechable
• Rails enthusiasts
• Someone who can deploy our working code to our Heroku account and website :)

Tools and relevant links: Google Doc one-page overview, Slack channel, Twitter handle, Github repo

Where we meet: in the back of the main presentation room.

About the group

Twilio is a cloud communications platform. We're mostly known for our APIs for text messaging and phone calling. For instance, mRelief uses SMS surveys to help folks figure out if they qualify for city assistance. Uber uses anonymous calling so you can call your driver without giving out your real phone number.

If you're interested in adding text messaging or voice calls to your app, come find me in the cafeteria. I'm happy to answer any questions and have a promocode for $20 in free credit (about 2500 text messages).

Group leaders

Greg Baugues

Who we're looking for

Anyone who has an app that would be better if it could:

• send text messages
• receive text messages
• make phone calls
• answer phone calls

Tools

Describe the tools that you are using.

Relevant Links

Check out the docs at twilio.com/docs

Where we meet

We'll be in the cafeteria. I'm wearing a red shirt and a black vest.

About the group

Open city data isn't accessible for those who, for a variety of reasons, cannot understand charts, graphs, and numbers or who may be blind or deaf.

The focus of Accessing Health with 3D-Printing is to demonstrate how open city data pertaining to health can be more accessible to those of many abilities through 3D printed design.

*Between November 2016 to January 2017 this work will be developed with the support of the Harold Washington Chicago Public Libary Maker Lab's- Maker in Resident program.

Goals

1. Identify challenges that those working with health-related open city data are having that visualization could impact .

2. Develop user stories for open city data that is visualized in a tactile form.

3. Create 3D printed visualizations of open city health data to identify: when, why, and in what form users best empathize with open city data information around health.

Previously I have worked taking blood sugar readings from people with diabetes (including my own) and transforming them it into customized 3D printed visualizations of health that represent the same data as graphs and charts in a visceral form. These translations are meant to make overwhelming data sets coming from continuous data accessible for those with chronic illnesses who do not have the health literacy or physical capability to interpret complicated graphs and charts.

Article on Diabetes Data Sculptures
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/850366

general info on tangible media.
http://tangible.media.mit.edu/

Group leaders

Justus Harris - Artists, Researcher, Educator
[email protected]
justusharris.com

Who we're looking for

People who are actively working to make open health data more accessible or who are considering it.

People who are experimenting with data visualizations and design for those across a spectrum of sensory capabilities.

People who can code using JAVA, Python, D3.js, Processing, are versed in mesh generation with 3D modeling software.

Anyone interested in the topic from coders and designers to policy makers and expert patients.

Tools

Open City Data Portal, Blender, 3D printing, Good old Excel, hopefully many more as time goes on.

Relevant Links

(will update with Chicago Public Library project page in the coming days)

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/850366

More detailed explanation of Diabetes Data Sculptures through visit to Livongo Health
https://vimeo.com/143954404

Where we meet

TBA - Today(10/18/16) - ideally room with a projector for a brief presentation and ability for other people to show work.

Starting Tuesday, Nov 9th the Harold Washington Public Library Maker Lab will be devoted to this topic Wednesdays 6:30-8:00pm / and most Saturdays from 10:00am-1:00pm

About the group

Political revolution

Group leaders

Jose Requena
7736559886
https://www.facebook.com/jose.requena.92560
https://twitter.com/jars86

Who we're looking for

Coders, civil engineers, urban planners, policy wonks, revolutionaries, and your friends

Tools

Any you have

Relevant Links

Brandnewcongress.org

Where we meet

Cafeteria?

About the group

I want to early vote.

I want to study my ballot before I vote.

Come join me if you want to study for a bit together.

Tools

• http://ballotready.org/
• http://www.chicagotribune.com/
• etc.

Where we meet

In the back.

We’re mapping the density of people sitting on buses throughout the city in order to show where there’s enough riders per mile to warrant upgrading from buses stuck in traffic to something better—like a bus lane, bus rapid transit, or light rail.

The premise is that transit service upgrades are warranted where (a) ridership is highest, (b) congestion is worst, and (c) the percentage of street users on transit is highest. So other factors we're mapping include traffic congestion (to determine how much transit riders are being delayed by car traffic) and car counts (to determine the "mode share" of transit riders vs. drivers) for every street segment that has a bus route.

The purpose is to provide a data-based background for public policy decisions regarding the configuration of streets. Where congestion is bad, it's important to configure the streets to optimize the flow of people, which may mean prioritizing space-efficient transit over cars in a few key places. We're trying to identify the low-hanging fruit of public investment in transit upgrades: where can an improvement save the most people the most time, and do the most to expand the capacity of our congested transportation infrastructure?

Group leaders:
John Krause (organizer): [email protected], slack: @JohnKrause
Tristan Crockett (programming): [email protected], slack: @thcrock

Who we're looking for | Tools we're using:
Open Source Routing Machine for snapping GPS data to OpenStreetMap.
GTFS shapefiles (transit operating plan and route data).
GIS for mapping data.
Leaflet or other online mapping.
Graphics and visual communications.
Web developer
Urban planning, transit planning, traffic planning

As suggested by @derekeder, I'd like to propose a one-off breakout group for October 11. I'm visiting Chicago for a few days from the UK (@alan-turing-institute). I'm interested in making data-driven reporting and storytelling more open and transparent and would love to discuss some ideas that I've been exploring with @the-gamma.

About the group

The goal of the group is to share ideas on how to make data-driven stories and reports more open, transparent and reproducible. A typical way of producing stories or reports involves a number of manual steps – the author might download data using a web browser, filter it using a spreadsheet application, produce a chart and embed the result in an article as an image. Such reports have a number of issues:

1. They are error-prone (it is easy to make mistakes when processing data by hand)
2. They are not transparent (readers cannot verify what data is used and how)
3. They limit further exploration (readers cannot modify the article to explore other aspects of the data)

Those issues arise from one key problem: the link between the article and the original data source is lost during the process.

On October 11, I would like to briefly share some of my ideas on how this can be fixed with better programming tools - and demo Visualization of Olympic Medals project and then get everyone's thoughts on the issue and perhaps use the prototype to visualize some interesting Chi Hack data sets!

Group leaders

Tomas Petricek ([email protected], @tomaspetricek on Twitter)

Who we're looking for

Anyone who is interested in transparent data analysis is welcome!

• Do you have some interesting data that we could explore & visualize using the prototype?
• If you're interested in functional programming, we can talk about the F# bits.

Tools

The demo uses F# and JavaScript, but any tool that can build a REST API can be used for providing data.

Relevant Links

• Visualizing Olympic Medalists - demo site built using the project
• Article about the visualization providing background and more details
• Computation + Journalism 2015 paper (PDF) with more background and motivation for this

Where we meet

TBD

About the group

Sometimes, people ask ignorant questions on twitter. Though they may not intend to do harm, and many of us may have asked such questions ourselves on or off twitter, such comments still cause damage.
Furthermore, members of marginalized groups who are in the public eye, like activists or journalists, are the most likely to receive such insensitive, hurtful comments. Tweechable Moments seeks to support such folks by offering them automated responses to uninformed comments, which can be called into the conversation with hashtags like #NotAMeritocracy.
Follow us at @Tweechable!

Group leaders

• Emily
• Eileen
• Kevin

Whom we're looking for

If you have experience with online microaggressions or ignorance and would be comfortable discussing it with us or using tweechable, we'd love to talk to you! (We know it can be difficult to discuss such topics with strangers.)
We'd also like to work with people who have writing experience or background creating accessible, educational content.
Ruby on Rails gurus are welcome! 😺

Tools

• Ruby on Rails
• Twitter's API
• Twitter bots
• Heroku

Ever seen the great Open Data Portal for the City of Chicago?

No such single location exists for all the open data sets available from the State of Illinois, Department of Human Services. Tonight, come by and help find them.

Homepage:
http://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?

Part of the challenge is that I cannot point you to any single place or method to begin this search -- because it does not currently exist, as far as I have so far discerned. Search, also, can return surprising historical results.

A small, dedicated team is currently reviewing the website, and looking to transform it -- so your suggestions could directly contribute to improving the website. Please join us.

Help me abstract this concept! cheeck it outt!

Needs: Smart, experienced people, esp Flask, JS. Need help putting together a plan for some sort of template process.

About the group

Chicago has a ton of great civic tech lessons; let's figure out how this can help other civic leaders and those that are interested in getting involved!

Group leaders

Kevin W. - Microsoft Civic Tech Fellow, [email protected]

Who we're looking for

Anyone who is interested in helping document and share Chicago's awesome civic tech scene!

Tools

TBD

Relevant Links

What currently exists

What ChiHackNight thinks should be in a field guide

Where we meet

TBD

About the group

Basically like mob programming focused on Scratch and Python.
This group will be focused on MIT's programming language called Scratch and also using python to read and interact with Scratch's save files. The end goal is to make something that can read in Scratch's save file and convert it to a game using PyGame

Group leaders

William Gaylord [email protected] chibill

Who we're looking for

Anyone interested in Scratch ,Python and game development.

Where we meet

Most likely the cafeteria.

https://github.com/ScratchInPython

Michel Bauwens will be joining us for a special breakout session to discuss p2p in Chicago. Michel is one of the leading worldwide thinkers in matters of p2p (website, FB) including the commons- based economy.

We’ll discuss how ChiHackNight can and is participating in building the next economy. I’ll also be sharing the Shareable Chicago map that we completed of 430 entities.

About the group

To have a successful project, you need to know how to sell your idea.

How do you sell an idea?
How does that change depending on your audience?
What are some of your challenges?
How does everyone else in the group approach selling an idea?
How do sales apply to civic tech?

Let's talk about it.

Group leaders

Michelle Ruiz, Sales Engineer at ExxonMobil, [email protected]

Who we're looking for

Anyone and everyone. This is a learning and discussion group and we want to understand what common challenges and questions are out there about sales in civic tech. Come ready to share experiences and ask questions that have been keeping you up at night.

Tools

Conversation. Google Docs.

Relevant Links

https://goo.gl/forms/bHxe6H2rwAgGuc8h1

Where we meet

Anywhere with a whiteboard

About the Group
A lot of civic hacks use SMS for notifications, to collect data from folks who don't have a smart phone, and to make their app mobile without designing a native app. If this is interesting to you, swing by and we'll figure out how to make it work for you app and add some credits to your Twilio account to play with.

Group Leader
Greg Baugues serves as a developer evangelist at Twilio and lives in Chicago.

About the group: https://github.com/invinst/shootings-data/blob/master/README.md

Who we're looking for: Folks interested in data and police accountability.

Tools: Research, Excel, R, Python, Stata

About the group

We've been experimenting with using Github Issues as a way to track the ongoing working and educational groups that meet here at hack night.

This is a great example of the 'hacking' part of hack night; using an existing tool for a new/originally unintended purpose.

So far, the group has done a great job adapting to this change. Lets take this hack to a new level!

We suspect that using Github issues is not a 100% perfect solution for our problem as-is.

For example, in order to create a new breakout group, you have to create a Github account. If you're a non-techie/not on Github already, this is L A M E and is one more obstacle for new people to create new groups.

But there are other aspects as well that could be tweaked.

Group leaders

Eric Sherman
[email protected]

Who we're looking for

We are looking to collect user feedback from people, especially if you've never used Github! We want to scope out what a custom wrapper around Github Issues would look like that also integrates with the platform and style of chihacknight.org
Also looking for:

• UI Dev
• Github API experts
• Javascript, Python, whatever (people who can write code)

Tools

• Github API
• Jekyl/Github Pages

Relevant Links

https://chihacknight.org/breakouts.html

Where we meet

Hopefully we'll grab a side room or find a corner to chill in.

Do you have an idea for a civic app? Come to Dolphin Tank and get feedback from a group of friendly folks!

Tonight we will talk about the future of Dolphin Tank. We are looking for new leaders and new ideas. Come join us if you would like to contribute to our discussion.

Ken Dallmeyer:

I have decided to suspend activity on Redistricting with Transparency for the time being. I will be working with the Map It group to create usable base maps of demographics.

Whether to have Independent Map Amendment referendum question on the November election ballot is now before the Illinois Supreme Court and the focus of interest groups is on getting court approval. How to implement a mapping process has been sidelined.

When the time seems more ripe, I will reopen the task.

If there is anyone interested in taking on the lead for the Redistricting with Transparency working group I will be happy to share my thoughts and research, some of which is below.

Ken

The Short Term Agenda at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bxZ4iy57a3_YQqMbnERVIQb0tfa57R0JuSC5f-9jG50

New channel created within Slack Chi Hack Night - Redistricting_il

See the proposed work program and work to date on this Google Drive.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7VmSjRJOuOaZGNGS2RVSktGVXM&usp=sharing

Redistricting with Transparency.pdf

Need interested people from many backgrounds. Meet in Cafeteria.
Ken
Kenneth E. Dallmeyer
[email protected]
(847) 376-9758

About the group

Hi I am Theresa, a producer for the forth-coming online docu-series Unjustified, which will connect past abolition movements to the present police abolition movements here in Chicago. We are funded by Chicago Film Makers to come out with five episodes on this subject and Kartemquin Films has been mentoring us to help develop it. During our production we realized, an interactive video map of police shootings is useful to activists, journalists, and children. So we put up a version of it here: https://unjustifiedcpd.weebly.com/map.html We would like to create a prettier version of this.

Group leaders

Theresa Campagna (CALM-PAH-KNEE-UH) and Jake Klippenstein

Who we're looking for

Coders, researchers, journalists, activists.

Tools

To be determined based on this map below. We suspect the coding is an image map but need to confirm.

Relevant Links

What we want our map to look something like: http://www.geografiadeldolor.com with maybe a different image design of the map but overall design the same.

What our map looks like now: https://unjustifiedcpd.weebly.com/map.html

Our Facebook page to follow production progress: https://www.facebook.com/unjustifiedchi

Where we meet

Cafeteria

August 23rd: Mob Programming in R: Session 5

Pass through the glass doors, to the right of the front podium, into the room where the food and drinks are served. Pass through this room, past the ping pong table, and opposite a wall with many coloured chalk you will find the lounge seats wherein we learn R and analyze public assistance in the state of Illinois.

Each session yield new insights, and new techniques. All skill levels -- from total beginner, to data scientist, are welcome.

August 15th: Mob Programming in R: Session 4

Come on down to the video game room, to learn more about employment prospects across the state for citizens receiving public assistance. Every week has unique challenges.

August 8th: Mob Programming in R: Session 3

Join us again this week for learning R, open source statistical software, at the same time as trying to figure out ways to analyze and improve employment prospects in the state of Illinois. This week we will be attempting to learn how to compare different time series of data.

Come on down to the video game room, which is a little bit father into the room where the food and drinks were served, and take a spin at running the programming for 5 minutes with the group.

August 1st: Mob Programming in R: Session 2

Learn the statistical package R, while learning about current policy issues regarding the SNAP (food stamp) program in Illinois, along with metrics about how employment is obtained across the state.

July 26th: One-Month-Redux: Data Treasure Hunt, Mob R Programming, Data Policy Thinking

Come learn more about data and policy at in the IL social safety net. After lingering in the front room to determine a rough number of participants, we may retire back by the food and the video games where we were last week.

July 18th: Data Science Help needed for Food Stamps (SNAP) Analysis

If you had 8 years of monthly data on these data fields, encompassing ~2m families:
http://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?Item=21112

What patterns, indicators, or trends might you look for that would assist people in guiding policy to help people achieve their economic and life goals? Come help think through how to make the social safety net in IL work better.

Come learn about how metrics are utilize in guiding policy for the state provision of social services -- and help think through how you, or others could improve this process in the future.

# July 12th: Data Set Treasure Hunt

Ever seen the great Open Data Portal for the City of Chicago?

No such single location exists for all the open data sets available from the State of Illinois, Department of Human Services. Tonight, come by and help find them.

Illinois Department of Human Services: http://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?

We can compile the data sets, we find them, in the following Google Doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CDyhJcg4NRzN6ydYm2mvmN7N7QZHHyE4Gajat4jgJEY/edit?usp=sharing

Part of the challenge is that I cannot point you to any single place or method to begin this search -- because it does not currently exist, as far as I have so far discerned. Search, also, can return surprising historical results.

A small, dedicated team is currently reviewing the website, and looking to transform it -- so your suggestions could directly contribute to improving the website. Please join us.

# June 28th: Child Care Subsidies

Come help improve the social safety net in the City of Chicago, and across Illinois. We are provide services to Illinois residents in poverty (Food Stamps, TANF) , facing other economic challenges, or have a variety of disabilities or health challenges (Mental Health / Substance Abuse). We are the largest agency in the state, with 14,057 employees.

Tonight, I will be outlining the challenges the state faces in providing child care subsidies in Illinois. We currently provide child care grants for more than 100,000 Illinois children each month -- and are looking to expand awareness of eligibility and better selection amongst qualified child care providers by the public.

Group leaders: [email protected]

We are looking for help thinking through how to improve the availability or efficiency of the services we provide. We are also looking for partnerships with non-profit groups, technologists, and others interested in learning more or offering a helping hand.

We will meet in the main room, or in one of the breakout rooms once we put together a team.

About the group:
We are trying to make Chicago a better safe for cyclists! Projects include mapping pavement quality via phone accelerometers and setting up custom OSRM routing profiles for the bicycle trip planner map.

Who we're looking for:
Web developers, data scientists, and people passionate about the cycling community and bicycling in Chicago!

Tools:
Ruby on Rails for the web app, the Scipy Stack for data analysis, Leaflet for visualization (map), OSRM for routing, Swift for iOS, Java for the Android app

Where we meet:
the cafeteria

About the group The main goal of this project is to create a tool to help people and their families choose the best long term care option available. Another goal to is to make the residents of Chicago and surrounding areas aware of the differences in nursing home quality and to advocate for improvements. chicagonursinghomesearch.com

Group leaders Joel Inwood, [email protected]

Who we're looking for Anyone who wants to give us design or usability feedback is welcome. We also need folks who can help out or offer advice on making a database.

Where we meet Either in one of the free rooms or in the main audience area

About the group

This is a learning group that self-determines the tools and topics that we use. When we meet, we use one screen, one keyboard, one mouse and one collective vision for something to try. For example, we might use R to calculate and visualize the number of affordable housing properties per community area, or might use QGIS to create a heat map of particular types of crime across Chicago neighborhoods.

Group leaders

Nick Mader and Kevin Wei have been working on curating more folks to offer mob programming sessions. Nick facilitates when he can, but anyone is able--and encouraged!--to propose a group to meet to try out new tools and technology.

Who we're looking for

Anyone looking to try out ideas and technology with a team. Beginners are especially welcome!

Tools

• Nick has done sessions in R, QGIS, Excel, Python, and Statistics
• (Other folks?)

Relevant Links

• A blog post on Mob Programming at Chi Hack Night
• The Google Drive folder with data from many of our prior mob sessions
• A wide range of learning resources for R

Where we meet

No set location. We try to be opportunistic about where we can meet, depending on how large the group is.

About the group: This group alternates between beginner and advanced topics in Python. The beginner sections will be small projects where we pass a single computer around and talk about the best way to solve small problems using python. The advanced sections discuss topics and patterns that more advanced individuals will be able to use.

Group Leaders: Jame Salvatore

Who we're looking for: Beginner weeks: anyone; Advanced weeks: Python users who are comfortable coding in Python.

Where we meet: Usually in one of the small focus rooms; I will usually direct individuals to the group.

About the group: We are a mix of technologists, designers, and justice community stakeholders. Currently, we're focused on exploring how technology can help people on parole. We're working on a website redesign with a community partner, a hackathon, and other related projects.

On 7/25/17: Please view our work in progress and provide suggestions or code fixes on GitHub.

Tools: Google drive to share spreadsheets and research

Where we meet: Mess hall or a conference room, depending on whether we have a call with our community partner.

When last we left our heroes, they were preparing to use latitude and longitude coordinates to see which Divvy stations were closest to CTA train stations. Armed with nothing more than a computer, the attached python notebook,
divvy data.zip
and a never-supply of pluck and moxie, this rag-tag band of misfits is looking to make their way to the Valhalla of Answerdom. And they need YOU! And probably A COMPUTER! Their quest: to see which train stations people love to Divvy to the most. Will they find out? Join us, and find out!

The AP raves: "It's Python at its Pythoniest!"
The Chicago Tribune cheers: "There are so many chairs in here!"
WBEZ cries: "Is this the rainfall group? No? Sorry."

Group leaders

Eric Paskey

Who we're looking for

Looking for people who like to ask great questions and aren't afraid of not knowing what the next step is. Also, a Python pro or two to shepherd us along. Also, we may need a computer.

Tools

Python, City of Chicago's open data site

Relevant Links

https://data.cityofchicago.org/

Where we meet

One of the small rooms with one TV just to the right of the main meeting space.

Ever seen the great Open Data Portal for the City of Chicago?

No such single location exists for all the open data sets available from the State of Illinois, Department of Human Services. Tonight, come by and help find them.

Homepage:
http://www.dhs.state.il.us/page.aspx?

Part of the challenge is that I cannot point you to any single place or method to begin this search -- because it does not currently exist, as far as I have so far discerned. Search, also, can return surprising historical results.

A small, dedicated team is currently reviewing the website, and looking to transform it -- so your suggestions could directly contribute to improving the website. Please join us.

About the group Want to help clean up Illinois campaign finance data and listen to podcasts about politics? Using the Dedupe.io web interface, we will be reviewing and matching political donation records that are similar so we can find out how much each donor is giving. When we're done, the data will be released publicly for all to use.

Group leaders Derek Eder, [email protected]

Who we're looking for Anyone who is interested in Illinois politics. No coding required! Wanna help out remotely, just email Derek!

Tools We'll be using a tool built by DataMade called Dedupe.io. All you'll need is a laptop!

Where we meet Either in the back couches in the cafeteria or one of the free rooms

About the group

See 218th Chi Hack Night: Demand-Driven Open Data (DDOD)

Problem:

• How can we contribute to maximizing the public good and economic value of open data?
• How can we scale the DDOD beyond HHS?
• How can we mitigate risk to open data between presidential administrations?

Group leaders

David Portnoy, former EIR at HHS

Who we're looking for

Those with experience working with open data.
Interested in refining the product roadmap for DDODx.
Can describe the problems they’ve encountered.
Understanding of data management, including MDM, federation, versioning.

Tools

Relevant Links

ddod.healthdata.gov

Where we meet

Visualizing affordable rental housing in Chicago.

http://zballs.github.io/chi-rental-housing/

About the group The Teach Tech Taskforce seeks to improve the quality of tech/CS/IT education in Chicago by connecting our educators with resources. mentors4all is a CS curriculum discovery tool that allows teachers to search quickly by grade level, resources required, and educational standards.

** August 30 activities **

• Looking for rails people!
• Documentation and planning for MVP

Group leaders Andy Rasmussen ([email protected]), Eve Tulbert, Vinesh Kannan

Who we're looking for Educators and developers who care about CS education!

Tools Rails, Javascript

Relevant Links

• github
• demo on Heroku

Where we meet (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Flipping Tables (right next to the main meeting space)

About the group

We are working with Optimista to build a city-wide community web portal for Chicago.

The current task is to build a Ruby on Rails app that lets Chicago area organizations post and manage information about community events.

Group leaders

Bryan

Who we're looking for

Ruby on Rails developers

We're also looking for a project manager who can talk to various stakeholders as we prepare to launch this app.

Tools

• Ruby on Rails
• Some Bootstrap and Javascript for the front end.

Relevant Links

https://github.com/McEileen/NeighborhoodsProject

Where we meet

TBD

About the Group

OpenGrid is an open-source project led by the City of Chicago that is designed to display a massive amounts of data on a single map. Within Chicago, you can use this to display 311 complaints with crime, pot hole reports with broken street lights, and more. It, in essence, an attempt to reduce many one-off applications into a more powerful query tool to explore data around you and in your community.

More importantly, there is a real possibility to improve this platform to include more use-cases. Help us to extend this platform to visualize more data and make it useful to you.

OpenGrid is available to the public and displays open data. Likewise, the code is used internally to help drive operations in the City of Chicago's emergency operations center. Contribution to OpenGrid will help both the City of Chicago and the public.

Here are some ideas:

• How can we visualize transit data in OpenGrid (e.g., buses, bus passengers, taxis, traffic density)?
• Add Google Street View so people can click and see what a street looks like (e.g., do streets with a lot of potholes are on streets with a lot of other issues).
• Adding Natural Language Processing for easier queries
• Show data about buildings and roads
• Integrate Census data
• How can we better visualize data (e.g., time-series charts, etc.) in addition to the map?
• Dynamic legends!

Group Leaders

@tomschenkjr -- Chief Data Officer for City of Chicago

Who we're looking for

The software stack includes: Node.js, HTML/CSS, and Java (for heavier lifting). So, it is helpful if you know some of this, but don't need to be an expert.

We are looking for people to bring ideas on how to improve OpenGrid and some skill to try to implement those ideas. You don't need to be a pro, this is an excellent opportunity to cut your teeth on learning new things.

You can also join the city's weekly developer calls on Friday at 1:00 pm. See the project's wiki page for the details.

Test environment

The application is dependent on three items: opengrid.io, which is the HTML/CSS viewed in the browser; a service layer which had an API endpoint that opengrid queries; and Plenario which contains a bunch of data from the Open Data Portal.

If you only want to work on the front-end, a development instance of the service layer is available at http://opengrid-service-dev-1134290206.us-west-2.elb.amazonaws.com/opengrid-service/

Links

• https://chicago.opengrid.io - displays data that's available from Chicago's Open Data Portal.
• https://github.com/Chicago - GitHub repo
• Project wiki
• Service Layer repo - power by Plenario - opengrid.io calls to this code to retrieve data. A live development instance is available for testing any of your changes.
• https://plenar.io - we use this to read data from the Open Data Portal (but the data source is easily configurable)
• Developer API - read how the UI API is designed to read from a data source (e.g., Plenario, MongoDB, etc.)

About the group

A space for anyone to come discuss their ideas and receive feedback in a friendly environment!

Want to talk about civic app/startup ideas, user experience feedback, or something new? Come hang out in a relaxed atmosphere to chat about civic tech!

Group leaders

Kevin W, (v-kewei at microsoft.com) but always looking for new facilitators to jump in!

Usually meets on the last Tuesday of every month, but will take requests for other weeks!

Who we're looking for

We welcome anyone who is curious or interested in discussing their thoughts in civic tech. Very beginner friendly!

Tools

Imagination, and probably whiteboards too.

Where we meet

Depends on the size, usually one of the focus rooms or out in the open area.

Past Discussions

9/20/16 - How to host a hack night for high school students (featuring Teach Tech Task Force!)
8/30/16 - A tool that matches location-based tax dollars to certain outcomes (graduation rate, jobs, etc.)
in specific regions

About the group
The Toolkit is a living resource library for local election officials, and we want to add the slick election results display built by the folks at Code for Philly. It’s called Who Won Philly or WWP. We’re hopeful that it can be wired up to a standardized Google sheet so any election official can have auto-refreshing, mobile-friendly election results this November.

Toolkit here: http://electiontools.org/

Group leaders
Whitney May, Center for Technology and Civic Life, [email protected]
Kurt Sampsel, Center for Technology and Civic Life, [email protected]

Who we're looking for
Tech help, Dev help

Relevant Links
Original Philly election results display http://www.phillyelectionresults.com/Citywide_Election_Results.html
WWP display: http://www.philadelphiavotes.com/whowon/
WWP front end repo on Github https://github.com/timwis/whowon
WWP back end scraper repo on Github http://git.kclough.me/kclough/nodeelectionscraper

Where we meet
Cafeteria