Civic Hacking Roadmap

[twentysixmoons]

Part of our goals are to communicate and clarify what our process is for moving projects through the pipeline. This will make it easier for people to navigate from idea to hack team to production.

• [x] In Process: Gather resources & Insite. What would best serve others, how can it best be distilled, where can it be presented?
• [ ] Draft roadmap
• [ ] Feedback
• [ ] Implement feedback/ Draft again
• [ ] Publish

Great starting content: Brigdate Organizers playbook from Code for America. I like that it's an interactive PDF.

Collecting concise notes here

[twentysixmoons]

The Project Canvas is a stellar start. It ask all the appropriate questions for beginning a project and thinking about the life of it. I think we can make it in a way that breaks the parts down a little better and makes it available to fill out digitally.

[twentysixmoons]

I signed up for a design course with friends but was unable to complete it because of the time-commitment and timing. My friends had similar issues. I did save the coures material though might be good to look through and reference. Human-Centered Design

Here is also a geat blog post about the 3 models for civic hacking. What I take away from this is that well documented projects have a better chance of getting picked up and worked on. We need to think about how we should have people set projects up to help the idea live a little longer. A project being completed or worked on will ultimatly be decided by the peoples interest and skills though.

A good blog post about what Civic Hacking is.

" In keeping in line with the process I used for the formal definition, I’d only suggest shifting away from specific tools and more toward the process. So, for a simpler definition, I’d offer:

Civic hacking is people working together quickly and creatively to make their cities better for everyone.

Extending this beyond the local scale:

Civic hacking is people working together quickly and creatively to help improve government."

[twentysixmoons]

The workshop Mateo shared is great slides 8-15 have a good starting point on what to do to start finding problem owners.

He also shared this which I think is pretty grounding.

[twentysixmoons]

Onboarding new members to projects Video Note: for some reason the video stopped for me.

How to welcome new coders to a civic hackathon This one is my favorites so far though. 18F put together a nice document. I really like this

Added a section on how non-coders could have helped each project. It’s worth thinking about and then articulating — in writing — how people with other areas of expertise or knowledge can help during a hackday. If you don’t have time to write these issues out, you can open an issue that asks for someone to interview you about them. Voila! Problem solved.

*Page 8-9 \ Host a workshop to help partners identify user needs

[luqmaan]

Another thing we can do is ask people who open a project idea to come do a 5-minute pitch at the civic hack nights.

[mateoclarke]

Here is how OpenOakland describes their process: PDF

[luqmaan]

That PDF is a great starting point. Can we copypasta that text onto our site? Do we have a page for project onboarding / idea submission / civic hacking roadmap?

[mateoclarke]

Two options I see:

1) I could see some of this onboarding info going into a new section on the /projects page: http://open-austin.github.io/open-austin-org/projects/

Regardless, I think we should move the "Project Status" section below the Project Gallery but add a table of contents/anchor tag links to "Project Status" and "X Steps to Leading a Project".

2) Alternatively, we could create a page more focused on how to get involved on projects instead of showing them off like a project portfolio (which is currently the focus of /projects

ie: https://github.com/open-austin/open-austin-org/issues/8

[twentysixmoons]

1)Yeah, I could see some of this on the /projects page or maybe living in a blog post. I think we could benefit a lot from looking at this and making one unique for Open Austin. Also, this is specifically about leading a project and I'd like to see a partner to it about how to contribute. I think that is where BASEDEF fits in.

I also agree that adding some anchor tags and links would be good. Sticky nav may help jumping around.

2)We should def look more into creating an in-depth projects page and I think that correlates with fleshing out the roadmap. There are a few things people may want to do with projects(Am I missing something?).

• Learn more about what kind of projects there are/ how they work/the process
• View the different projects
• Contribute to a project
• Purpose a project
• Ask a question.

And that echos some comments @mateoclarke made in open-austin- projects page issue

It should include a link to see all the projects we've done. View It should point people to projects/issues they can contribute to. Contribute It should explain why we github/open source. Learn It should point to resources like data.austintexas.gov. ?This would be pointing to resources.I didn't initially think about this but think it's important if we want people to see us as a hub~

I think there are a few ways we can move forward with a more comprehensive Projects section and roadmap. I'd love to brainstorm.

I input the PDF from Open Oakland into a goog doc here.

Hope all that makes sense. :monkey:

[mateoclarke]

This is a good thread. I think we should revisit this after our Dec 18 Leadership Retreat and looking into 2017

[werdnanoslen]

I think the current work on this subject are captured in those issues :point_up: , so I'm closing this one.