At a civic hackathon, people who know and love technology (software developers, designers, entrepreneurs, etc.) come together with people who know and love urban issues (city staff, local organizations, community members and leaders) to use technology and their collective skills to build solutions that matters to our city, and other cities too.
Local communities of "civic hackers" around the world are building powerful open-source applications that help city governments be more open, efficient, and connected to their citizens.
Civic hackers as we think about it for the National Day of Civic Hacking are engineers, technologists, civil servants, scientists, designers, artists, educators, students, entrepreneurs – anybody - who is willing to collaborate with others to create, build, and invent open source solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country.
National Day of Civic Hacking is a national event that will take place first weekend in June in cities across the nation. The event will bring together citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs from all over the nation to collaboratively create, build, and invent new solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country. National Day of Civic Hacking will provide citizens an opportunity to do what is most quintessentially American: roll up our sleeves, get involved and work together to improve our society.
You should participate in National Day of Civic Hacking because the toughest challenges are not one community’s alone to solve. This is a unique opportunity to get involved, connect with others like yourself, and develop technology that will make the world a better place.
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Demonstrate a commitment to the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration.
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Exercise a government’s interest in using open data and technology, in partnership with others, to address your local community’s felt needs.
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Liberate open data that can inform better problem solving in every community.
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Continue to collectively map a national innovation ecosystem and create new access points to that system.
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Engage citizens in cities with little technology infrastructure to contribute to changing their community through open source, open data, entrepreneurship and code development.
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Promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education by encouraging students to utilize open technology for solutions to real challenges.
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Encourage large scale partnership and mutual understanding.