Civic Data Design Challenge

A project with Hack Oregon and PNCA

In our Civic Data Visualization Workshop, Hack Oregon and PNCA students have been working on a project to redesign the way Oregonians understand and interact with campaign funding in our state.

Join us for a day of creative co-working as we invite the community to use our API to tackle other creative challenges with data surrounding this election year.

We'll also show a sneak peak of our beta product before the official launch in May.

Don't worry if you're not technical-- every person has a valuable perspective and we'll have mentors from the politcal, tech, and design community to help bring ideas to life.

Register your own team, bring your own project pitch, or join others at the event.

Want to know more about our project and design workshop?

Follow our blog at hackoregon.org

Have a great time at the Hackathon and want to keep hanging out?

Missed the Hackathon and want to know more about our visualization projects?

Come to Rom Toms Wednesday and we'll have a few beers, unpack our progress from Saturday, and brainstorm next steps.

Looks like it will be a beautiful warm evening on the patio.

See you soon,

Catherine

Hack Oregon's "Behind the Curtain" campaign finance visualization is continuing to build momentum, and we're inviting anyone who is curious to come collaborate with us.

This week's build session will focus on implementing visualizations for a local candidate dashboard.

We've also fleshed out a wire frame to give more agency to front-end the front-end team.

FYI: the dataset is deep and nuanced super compelling-- some people find it a little addictive. If it's your first time, think about joining us Wednesday @RonToms for our #Beerpatioathon to get a head start on intro conversation.

Look forward to seeing you,

RSVP @hackoregon

Over the past few months we've shared many beers and pizzas while learning about campaign finance as it relates to data science and user design.

Our Design Team has been hard at work transforming all of our R&D from the Behind the Curtain Project into our final production model.

Get ready for a Blitzkreig of Hackathons as we get ever closer to unveiling a new way to understand influence and elections. (You know, with like, actual facts?)

Moving forward, we're assembling our best teams for the final build stage.

Come to our Hack Oregon Community Summit, Thursday May 22 @Instrument 6-8pm where you can meet the team leaders, learn the build plan, and join a team!

We'll also be demo-ing our front end design and giving a short talk on some of the insights that drove our strategy--- to include revelations about how normal people feel about interacting with two mysterious subjects like politics and data.

If you are thinking about joining a team, here's what we are looking for:

Data Science Team (seeking 4 members)

Spatial Data Team (seeking 5 members)

Data Viz Team (seeking 3 members)

Super Activist Team (seeking 5 members non-technical OK)

RSVP for beer and pizza count: hackoregonsummit.eventbrite.come

More election data mining and data visualizing. We're almost finished with our Behind the Curtain beta... and it's getting exciting!

spatial data, data viz, non-tech politicos, data science, designers--- we love you!

Check out hackoregon.org to find out more about the BTC project.

Special Thanks to Squishy Media for sponsoring our coding comfort and hacking vices.

The Community Cycling Center with Code for Portland is building a tool to make transportation advocacy accessible to people from all backgrounds - dewonkifying the wonkery of city budgets, citizen reporting, and community meetings. The hackathon will involve updating and implementing the key features of the Avenues to Advocacy civic engagement tool - anyone that's interested in transportation planning, biking, walking, map technology, government data, or increasing access to transportation advocacy is welcome to join. (No tech experience necessary, there's roles for everyone.) Snacks, coffee, and lunch provided with ticket. Tickets are free, just RSVP using the eventbrite link.

Donut Summit: Hack Oregon Project Season Kick-Off

....Pretty much your standard Sunday donuts and coffee with artists, developers, data scientists, government, and business owners casually design thinking a better Oregon.

Oh yeah, plus all the data. NBD

Hack Oregon opens its doors twice a year to assemble interdisciplinary focus teams of volunteers to build open-data resources on important themes in Oregon. At the Summit we'll introduce new themes for projects and assemble teams. We won't be coding this afternoon, but it's a exciting space for cross-pollination between disciplines while we take the afternoon to collaborate, plan, and constructively brainstorm. Some of you will get started hacking soon, and others we'll see later as the project cycle progresses. Everyone is welcome, and we can't wait to meet you!

Themes

• Housing
• Budget
• Transportation
• Homelessness
• Emergency Response

PS: Showing up to the Summit is not a commitment to volunteer, but fair warning, after you experience this you might just step through the looking glass and disappear into the data rabbit hole :)