KC’s Code for America Brigade Presents Apps in the Works, Monday, August 31, at Sprint Accelerator
Paul Barham, CfKC captain, leads a discussion at Hack Night.
For those not familiar with KC’s Code for America Brigade, which is hosted and organized by KC Digital Drive, it’s a passionate and proudly ragtag gaggle of volunteer coders and social activists hellbent on building software apps that serve people.
Numbering usually in the 15-20 range on any given Monday night, these folks meet at the Sprint Accelerator to advance projects for public good. They hail from places as diverse as the UMKC Law School and Cerner, the KC Police Department and the Community Capital Fund (CCF).
Eric Roche, KCMO Open Data Manager considers the whiteboard at a CfKC hack night
Their projects involve anything from helping business owners plant trees to helping the police respond more effectively to emergency calls. Most all of the projects are intended to build software apps using open-source code (so they can easily be repurposed in other cities) and open data, such as the public datasets available at data.kcmo.org.
Many of the current CfKC teams were formed in June at the National Day of Civic Hacking, a two-day hackathon organized by the Brigade/KCDD to create ideas for projects that would be launched in November of this year.
On Monday, August 31, from 6-8pm, six of the teams give progress reports at the Accelerator for the Hack KC Midpoint Roundup. (It’s free to attend, but please register on Meetup.com.)
At this report, you’ll hear from teams including:
- SafeAssist (KC Police): Emergency response app for police and other first responders to access info about the scene of an emergency before they arrive.
- CommunityKC (CCF): Visualization and management tool for community-based projects
- People Hub (Brigade): Gamified app to acknowledge and to reward brigade member contributions, to keep everyone in the loop, to encourage team collaboration.
- N-hood Dashboard (CCF): working to help neighborhoods help themselves by giving them easy access to useful data to allow them to identify and track problem areas in their neighborhood.
- Parcel Assessment Tool (UMKC Law): a tool that can be used to create more transparency in land ownership, zoning and entitlements for specified sites.
- Storefront Street Tree (KCMO): allowing business owners to more easily plant trees in treewells outside their businesses.
- Data Sharing Agreement/Smart Contract (UMKC Law): a tool for city managers to navigating the legal issues that arise with data-oriented “smart city” projects.
We’ll also be welcoming a few newcomers to pitch ideas for brand-new projects.
It’ll be a great evening for advancing the cause of tech for social good in KC.