CodeAcross Austin 2016 Recap
This past Saturday, March 5, 2015, Open Austin had it’s 6th annual CodeAcross Austin event. This national day of action aligns with International Open Data Day.
CodeAcross is the first major event of the year that Open Austin organizes as a volunteer brigade affiliated with Code for America. It is a part of a series of events in collaboration with the City of Austin and St. Edward’s leading up to ATX Hack For Change (June 3-5). The purpose of Code Across Austin this year was to identify and frame challenges in Austin that can be solved using technology, data, design and the diverse skills and knowledge of volunteers.
The morning kicked off at 10:00 am with introductory remarks from Mateo Clarke & Victoria O’Dell of Open Austin. Then, visiting from San Francisco, Monique Baena-Tan, Brigade Program Coordinator from Code for America, spoke about the international reach of the brigade program. The morning presentations ended with Kerry O’Connor, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Austin sharing inspiring words about the importance of civic hacking events like CodeAcross.
Favorite quote from #codeacrossatx "Disruption will come to government either as an opportunity or a threat." @kerry_atx ⚡️@openaustin
— Mateo Clarke (@MateoClarke) March 5, 2016
Quote from Kerry O’Connor’s presentation
The rest of day was broken into group activities arranged around 8 themes and their relation to the city of Austin.
- Health and Human services
- Public Safety & Justice
- Economic Development
- Communication and Engagement
- Transportation
- Broadband and Digital Opportunities
- Sustainability
- Planning and Land Use
Participants with varying backgrounds brainstormed on challenges the city faces and worked on actionable steps that could be taken to tackle them. By the end of the morning, groups focused on each theme had drafted at least three “How might we..” challenge statements.
The second half of the day focused on turning the challenge statements into potential solutions with an actionable plan. Charles Purma, project manager for the City of Austin, presented the “Civic Tech Canvas” that groups used to plan out a solution to their chosen challenge statements.
With contributions from around 60 participants of different backgrounds, ages, and professions, 11 different project ideas were presented.
Code Across is over but the ideas sharing and collaboration that occurred will allow the Austin community and Open Austin to continue to do open source civic tech and design work for the people.
View our deck from event and check out tweets from the event at #codeacrossatx Check out our event photo album.
Missed out on this year’s CodeAcross? Come out to our next event. Civic Hack Saturday is on March 19th.
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