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#HackForChange hits Florida

What do you get when some of South Florida's best and brightest are brought together and asked to "hack" for change? Well, if you were lucky enough to take part at one of the 106 locations across the United States hosting local National Day of Civic Hacking events, you just might have witnessed history.

[photo via @LienT)

Designed to spur collaboration in communities using technology, open data, and the support of volunteers and government agencies alike, these (sometimes multi-day) hackathons ask anyone in the community to team up, contribute their skills, and learn something new about the places they live. The following is a brief recap of my local NDoCH experience at The LAB Miami.

On Saturday morning, Code for Miami's Rebekah Monson, along with the City Manager of Miami Daniel J. Alfonso and Florida's Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, announced to the hackers, designers, and techies that filled the LAB Miami's main room the importance of our day ahead. "Imagine if we could turn loose upon the people of Florida an understanding of how this all works," referencing the $80 billion dollar budget and the complexity of navigating government agencies and services. "What if they had access to that information, and understood it, and could create value for them, in their work." He also reflected on Florida's history of transparency reporting, "We've made a lot of data available, and we've gone from a D, to a A-, to an A, but what if people could actually use the data," which led to cheers in the audience. Closing his remarks, he insisted our actions are taking Florida "in a whole new path."

CFO@JeffAtwater kicks off #hackforchange w @CodeForMiami @CodeforFTL @CodeForOrlando @CodeForTampaBay @codeforamerica pic.twitter.com/yzYOltDNYt

— Ashley Carr (@FloridAshley)

June 6, 2015

The day resulted in websites, mobile apps, visualizations, and hardware hacks to address five different challenge areas: Disaster Preparedness and Relief, Climate Change, Transportation, Open Data (Working Group), and for a very first in Florida's history, Vendor Payment Data from the last six years was made available for download (Special thanks to Jeff Atwater, C.F.O and his team).

Below are the pictures of the groups presenting their projects, many made in less than five hours, with many first time hackathon participants included. This was a vital step in recognizing the state-wide development of civic hacking brigades and to support those working towards better data access, usability, and transparency in their community. I was honored to take part and look forward to the projects, happy hacking Floridians! If you want to relive the opening remarks, they can be found here [starts at 1:05:49].

[View the story "#HackForChange hits Florida - NDoCH, Code for Miami" on Storify]

Written by Rob Davis of Code for Fort Lauderdale.