Really love the site and bookmarked. For an anime movie fan it's tough to find a nice place that does all the things you guys do in a user-friendly way, so this is epic.
Highest audience rated animation from Japan between 2000 and 2014? Bam, there you go. That's how you help people. :)
So thank you for making this. If you need any extra help / feedback in return, lemme know.
I love that way of thinking, since you're totally right; everything can't be solved by another tech tool that looks nice on TechCrunch.
I have been lucky enough to be a part of what you're proposing a few times, and it is an amazing (and exhausting!) experience. Talking to them, fully understanding their pain points and even try to go out into "the field" with some social workers is a very important method for solving problems that matter in the right way. I agree. :-)
What I have experienced though, and your mileage may differ, is that even though you want to invite them (and community members) they simply do not have the time unless it's some under-the-radar workshop or some big hackathon. Both good initiatives, but it nags me that there's nothing "in-between".
Our local government is stressed and pushed to its limits, meaning that many initiatives like hackathons and the like needs to yield some sort of return of investment.
Nevertheless, I completely agree with you and thanks for sharing your thoughts!
This reminds me of something we discussed at a hackathon some time ago, where the government representative raised the issue of how to connect all of these apps together (like Legos) to make maintaining and integrating them into a workflow that makes sense to government employees.
I could try contacting Open City to hear what their thoughts on this. The current solution that's on the table here is to require the apps to be able to connect to a central "engine" that would act as a "local government dashboard". The apps would stream the data, either raw or filtered and be presented and manipulated in an interface that's understandable and actionable for non-technical employees.
If it's the right way, we don't know yet though. :-)
Hmm, well if a Brigade is a team of developers then I'd definitely go for that and ask some of my friends. But starting an entire Program seems better suited for some other people I know. :-)
The Google groups tip is nice, that's a very nice idea. Thanks again!
I have a few in different areas, mostly writing for technology-based magazines but have previously worked at local and larger newspapers.
As for news orgs. to be a bit slow, I hear you completely! I conducted a closed workshop with a corporation that develops enterprise-level software for newspapers and you could literally wow them with simple CSS3 transitions and animations, let alone flexbox layouts. :-)
Motivation is a big factor for me too, I tend to dream about applying my skills to the common good, but end up creating either entertainment-based webapps and / or tools other web developers (https://github.com/AndersSchmidtHansen?tab=repositories).
I'll keep you in the know! I think that investing our skills into evolving our society (local and global) is the next, natural step for us geeks. ;-)
Well, there you go! :-D Thanks! Starting a program might be a little too much for me, but I know a few who I think would love to add Denmark on the map.
First off, that's one awesome "shameless" plug. :-) I've been looking for a site / project that does this for so long, you can't even imagine. So thank you for sharing that, I will be checking it out more thoroughly later.
Second, that sounds like a great invitation, I might just jump aboard when I begin my "sabbatical". I actually have seen the site at Politiken (small world, huh?) and it's awesome to see that there are initiatives working on more economic transparency.
Thanks for the Open Knowledge link, that's definitely something I will look more into. On a sidenote, for the past couple of years I've taken an interest in medical science and how merging it with the digital industry could benefit society (think, real-time blood analytics for scientific research, modern overviews of disease and the teams currently working cures, etc.), so it's nice to see that a well-established organization do exist.
I will definitely ping you, also on any updates that might be relevant to you and your team (don't forget to say hi from me!).
Keep up the good work and thank you so much for sharing with me (and the rest of HN)!
This looks really promising too! Thanks :-) I could add Aarhus to the map. Oh, if the site just said "CodeForTheWorld" or "CodeForYourCountry". Nothing against coding solely for America (that's totally cool too), it just feels a little odd to contribute solution for say Berlin, but have it published on a site marketed towards the US alone.
Thanks for sharing that link! :-) That is a very nice tool (motivational too, even though Denmark isn't represented (yet!)). I might just as well start up a brigade of my own!
It would be nice though if the platform behind CodeForAmerica was more international, since this feels like you can only help out the US (which is cool too) and not your local government in your own country.
Maybe that's the next step for the people behind CodeForAmerica?
Thanks for the link. :-) It's nice to see that these initiatives also exist in Europe. In addition to the above, this really makes me think "Why the hell is there not something like this in Denmark?".
Hmm, codefordenmark does not seem to be used by anyone, so maybe the concept hasn't reached us (yet!). :-)
There are a bunch of local hackathon events, like "Hack Aarhus" etc., but in my opinion it would be cool to help out whenever you had the time and not only at events (and not involving prizes and competition, which many of these events do prefer).
Thanks a bunch for your tip. :-) I did something similar a while back with 2 Head of IT from a local government at a very small hackathon and it was a very positive experience.
As a "one-man operation" this could work well, I'd love to have a coffee with representatives (they rarely have the time though, in my experience). Maybe I could invite a few of my developer friends and some people from my local government for dinner as a starter. :-)
Exactly what I'm thinking about, thank you very much for that link! Hmm, this makes me think why http://codefordenmark.org/ or maybe http://hackdanmark.org doesn't exist yet. I've attended several of these hackathons.
I like those a lot, though there's a recurring issue that they only happen periodically. What I'd love to see is a continuous stream of public problems that we who have the skills can just jump on and off whenever we have the time.
We do have some initiatives that connect "everyone with everyone's problems", but those are more aimed at crowdsourcing ideas for solving social issues and I rarely see local governments take much interest in posting a list of issues they'd like help for.
Thanks a bunch for sharing your insights, it's really helpful to me. Your newspaper experience is very motivating too :-)
In Aarhus, we do have an open data collection called ODAA (http://www.odaa.dk/) that might be an avenue to pursue. A few developer friends and I have played around with it once, but we quickly discovered that despite it being relatively easy to just "make something", it's much harder to "make something useful to others" and we'd love to have had a government representative in the same room to guide our skills in the right direction.
I completely agree with you on what's the point of all this data if we don't turn it into something people can understand and use in a meaningful way. What I'm missing is that person / people saying "Hey, can someone turn THIS heatmap data into X thing, that would really help!".
A newspaper sounds like a great place to learn deeply about different local issues / problems that could be solved. I have a few journalist friends I could try and contact, see if they have encountered something.
Also, thanks a bunch for those inspirational links. They are bookmarked for sure! If / when I do create something, might I throw it your way for feedback?
Thanks for the link to Madison! I just checked it quickly (will go through it more later); it looks like a really interesting concept. I had a similar idea a while ago to move Danish legislation work to GitHub, since (imho) it increases transparency. I'll keep Madison on my radar! :-)
I'm sorry to hear that you had a negative experience... The situation you describe is especially a concern to me. It is a risk to take since they might show excitement here-and-now, but fail to follow up later on (for whatever reasons).
How did you first start out though? Did you get the idea first and then pitch it to the city council or did they reach out first? I'd love to know more. :-)
And thanks for sharing your story, I'll definitely keep it in mind.
I've paused my work on http://stafet.com/ (a marketer/salesperson meet developer/sideproject/startup) site bc. not having enough time, but the people I've talked to about the concept were also really interested in a site that handles this kind of connection.
Note: the site is on a dev-server on PagodaBox, which means it needs to boot up (takes 15-20 seconds) explaining the load time.