What is a civic hacknight?
This is a weekly project night is for dreamers, technologists, designers, developers, data scientists, map makers, and activists who are working on "civic technology" projects. Consider this to be a study hall or office hours to improve yourself and the city.
This night is for those who want to:
* work on projects
* explore NYC BigAppsproblems
* start a new project, or find one to join
* get feedback from experts
* learn about tools for local empowerment, open data, and open government
Bring your laptop, power supply, ideas, projects, maps, data, and questions. Collectively, we will try to answer them.
=== Hacknight resources ===
For first timers trying to get the most out of the night, you should bring your laptop, watchCivic Hacking 101,Civic Hacking 102, and review our projects page.
* Working Groups -Developers' Corner,CityGram.NYC,City Record Online, &MTA Service Alerts
* Data tools:Data.Beta.NYC,data resources,maps, &tools
* Community projects in process -projects.beta.nyc
=== Projects & presentations ===
We keep the formal part of the evening down to a minimum: announcements, meet your neighbor, etc. After, we will have a number of people present, specific projects, and have some skills share / education.
Community Projects:
* What are YOU working on? Plug it into this event's comments section!
=== Special Guests ===
For this hacknight and along with your projects, we will feature New York City Council Speaker's Office, our NYC BigApps colleagues.
For the last three years, the New York City Council has been working on a new kind of municipal budgeting: Participatory Budgeting. Affectionately called PB, residents in a growing number of Council districts decided how to spend millions of dollars in taxpayer money on neighborhood projects, such as playground improvements and technology for public schools.
This year, the Council is bringing PB to NYC BigApps 2015 as a Civic Engagement Challenge Partner. On August 5th, representatives from the Office of Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito will be attending BetaNYCs hacknight to discuss their challenges and outline their user stories.
Join us at Civic Hall to work on your NYC BigApps projects or to hear more about the Participatory Budgeting process (from idea generation to neighborhood voting) and to find out what kinds of civic engagement solutions you can build to help amplify the voices of New Yorkers!
=== Event Partners===
The Code for America Brigade program is an international network of people committed to using their voices and hands, in collaboration with local governments, to make their cities better.
Microsoft Civic aims to collaboratively address the most pressing community challenges through the hyper-local creation, deployment, and evangelism of civic technology.
Accela provides civic engagement solutions for government. Accelas solutions uniquely address the diverse needs of their constituents by making publicly available information more accessible. The Accela Civic Platform includes solutions for land management, asset management, licensing and case management, legislative management, right of way management, citizen relationship management, recreation and resource management, environmental health and safety.
=== Note about the venue ===
You should RSVP with the name that appears on a photo ID. In order to give building security an RSVP list, RSVPs will close at 4:00 PM the day of the event. If you miss this deadline, most of the time security is nice and will let you in.
Light snacks will be served, but not enough to constitute a meal. Please feel free to bring food.
BetaNYC is committed to hosting safe and open events for all. By attending this event you are committing yourself to BetaNYC's Code of Conduct and Anti-Harassment Policy.
