Report from the ATX Civic Tech Expo

Last Thursday, the ATX Civic Tech Expo came to City Hall.

For more than a year, Open Austin has been actively reaching out to the tech community, sponsoring events such as hack nights and meetups. The expo came from our desire to begin telling the story of civic hacking and civic tech to the general public. We chose the week so it would align with the upcoming National Day of Civic Hacking, a high-visibility initiative launched from the White House in February.

We were in the City Hall atrium all day, showing off civic apps and talking about open data. We talked with members of the public about what civic hackers do and the apps that have been developed by the city, its partners, and the community. We talked with city employees about the importance of open data, and how volunteer hackers can help develop tools they might not have the time or staff to do on their own.

The demo website we produced for the expo highlighted several topic areas, including open data, civic apps, and the upcoming ATX Hackathon for Change.

We also presented a slideshow with information on civic tech and civic hacking.

During the expo, we conducted a demo hackathon, where volunteers worked on a new app called ATX Scores, a query interface for the restaurant inspection scores published on the City of Austin data portal.

Here are some news stories filed from the event:

• Community Impact: "Civic hackers" reshape data to address local problems
• Austin American-Statesman: ATX Civic Tech Expo previews June 1-2 Hackathon weekend

We want to thank all the event participants:

• City of Austin, Communications and Technology Management
• City of Austin, Corporate Public Information Office
• City of Austin, Watershed Protection Department
• St. Edward's University, Office of Information Technology
• Socrata
• Austin Free-Net