Report from the Civic Hacking Meetup

Yesterday, Open Austin hosted a Civic Hacking Meetup at SXSW Create, a free "maker" event associated with SXSW. The event, in the outdoors Create pavilion was a little touch and go due to the weather (pro tip: I tell the out of towners we like the rain and wind because it keeps down the scorpions), but it worked out great (minus one sound board that got toppled in a gust of wind). About 25 people participated.

We had a panel discussion, with interactive questions and feedback from the audience.

Panelists were:

Chip Rosenthal, Open Austin
Matt Esquibel, City of Austin
Abhi Nemani, Code for America
Jase Wilson, neighbor.ly
Matthew Marcus, Kansas City Startup Village

At the start of the session, moderator Chip Rosenthal polled attendees to find they were split about 1/3 from Austin, 2/3 from out of town. All were active with civic hacking or app development. All were involved with a local organization to support civic hacking.

The questions the audience wanted the panel to address were:

Talk about things people were doing or working on, with project specifics.
What else is happening at SXSW with regard to civic hacking?
What are some of the best practices and lessons learned?
What are the differences in interests between NGOs and government when it comes to civic hacking -- and what is the intersection?
Where does the private (commercial) sector fit in?
What are some of the platforms and standards that are important to civic hackers, such as Open311?

That night, the San Antonio Express-News ran a story that summarized the session. Read it here: Hacking for the civic good at SXSW.