Last year, the inaugural National Day of Civic Hacking improved communities across the country, and St. Louis felt the impact. Our hack-a-thon drew 30 participants, who formed four teams that built working prototypes of civic applications in just 24 hours. This year’s event taps into the enthusiasm generated by last year’s success.
Friday, May 30, through Sunday, June 1, the organizers, sponsors, supporters, and participants of Build for STL will do more than build applications. We will take part in hands-on service events, training sessions to learn community-building skills, an OpenStreetMap edit-a-thon, a 48-hour civic hack-a-thon, and more.
- Some of what we are doing.
- The Hackathon (Hackathon Registration)
For those unfamiliar with the term, a hackathon is an event where a bunch of programmers, designers, and builders spend a weekend creating something in accordance with a theme. In the context of this event, we’re going to gather at the downtown T-REX, provide data sets and APIs, and have everyone form groups and try to make something to improve Saint Louis. The “best” project (criteria are not yet set) will receive free counseling hours from local law firms, marketing groups, and accountants in the hopes that this will help them see their project to completion. Local startup Juristat was founded through a similar program called Startup Weekend.
- Co-Events
In order to reach out to more than just programmers, we want to have several partner events going on around the city. These events include a community garden project with Urban Harvest STL and an OpenStreetMap Editathon being planned by OpenDataSTL.
- Training sessions.
We also wanted to add training sessions to educate and empower the people of St. Louis to get involved in the community. These will cover a wide array of topics, presented by many different organizations and individuals, and will be spread throughout the St. Louis area.
- Code for America Brigade Launch
We will be formally launching OpenDataSTL as th Code for America Brigade in Saint Louis.
Want a map of locations? Check out our interactive map on MapJam! http://www.mapjam.com/build4stl
The National Day of Civic Hacking is a White House initiative to promote the use of science and technology to solve civic problems. The weekend of May 30-June 1, cities all across the country will have hackathons, block parties, and other events to that end.
Build for STL 