Spring Buildathon!

Guidelines for Guest Contributors

What is it?

Believe it or not, Hack Oregon actually doesn’t really do a lot of Hackathons. We form specialized teams to build software and open data stories for important themes in Oregon, and work and iterate incrementally over months to create a product.

The "Buildathon" is the one day where we open up our project teams for guest and current contributors that want to be part of the magic and build something amazing, but might not have the time to participate in our months-long project season.

What’s the goal?

The Buildathon is a production sprint. We’ve laid the groundwork to do research, visualizations, and data storytelling quickly, and we need your help to bring our projects to the next level. We’ll get to work shoring up and finalizing our projects with some cross-team and outsider help. We’re going to use our lifelines and help each other close those blocked github issues and fine-tune designs.

Be prepared to make friends and be an instant part of our Hack Oregon family!

How can I get involved?

By joining our sprint, you’ll be placed with a team that needs extra hands on deck in your particular skill set. We’re working toward our public demo day at OMSI on May 1st, where you can proudly present alongside your team.

Perks:

• Team T-Shirt

• All Day Food

• Ticket to sold out Demo Day

• Profound Glory

Submit your information here and we’ll reach out to match you with a team and link to reserve your ticket.

Below you’ll find a list of skills and roles we’re looking for at the Buildathon, along with this year’s five project themes.

Technical skills we’re looking for the Buildathon:

• Front End Developers (we use React.js)

• Data Visualization Developers (we use React.js/D3.js)

• API Developers (we use Django)

• Database Programmers (we use PostgreSQL)

• UX/UI Designers

• DevOps Engineers (we use AWS, Docker, Travis.CI)

• Content Writers / Copywriters

• Data Scientists (we use Python)

• Multimedia Developers (Photography, Motion Graphics, Animation, Videography)

• Visual Designers (Graphic Design, Illustration)

Project Teams

Budget

MVP: We’re highlighting the City of Portland’s budget data in a neutral manner so that users can quickly and efficiently understand its components, view basic spending trends and dive deeper into bureau-level budgets.

Stretch Goals: We’ll organize more sophisticated granular views, and applied analysis of deltas and outcomes of programs.

Transportation

MVP: We’re creating a new system organize and model the efficiency of road construction and capital infrastructure planning.

Stretch goals: Expand into usage and impact of Portland’s biking and transit ecosystem through the lense of multi-modal transportation patterns.

Emergency Response

MVP: We are collaborating with Portland Fire and Rescue to take data relating to their emergency calls and build interesting dashboards, visualizations, and simulations.

Stretch goals: Understand more about how emergency response patterns vary by unique aspects of neighborhood demographics.

Housing

MVP: We’re exploring how the city and its neighborhoods have changed over time, from the perspective of 12 representative households.

Stretch Goals: We’ll work with raw data from the voter registration to explore change of address as a vector, which may indicate displacement trends.

Homelessness

MVP: We’re expanding the perception around the definitions of homelessness in Portland and the moment in time where people experience homelessness.

Stretch goals: Capture a fuller picture of children in Multnomah County who hang in the balance food security and housing security.