Hacking for Good

The weekend of June 6-7, 2015, marked the third annual local celebration of the National Day of Civic Hacking. It’s a day when tech advocates and civic activists across the country convene under the “Hack for Change” banner to dream up, and if all goes well, begin to code, apps to help cities work better.

This year, 106 communities participated in the event. Kansas City’s NDoCH event – HackKC for short – was a two-day hackathon co-organized by the Code for KC Brigade and KC Digital Drive and held at the UMKC School of Law. The Law School also sponsored and provided organizational capacity to the event.

Over the course of the weekend, more than 40 hackers worked to advance 7 projects aimed at benefiting Kansas Citians looking to get more out of their city, digitally speaking. A few of the projects had a history before the event. Others were created specially for the hackathon. Nearly all of them found life after the event in the rank and file of the Code for KC Brigade, which is continuing to meet on Monday nights to advance the projects toward a November 2015 completion.

Ideas Pitched at Hack KC

VIDEO: Watch the full HACK KC team pitches

*Asterisk denotes projects that survived the weekend and continue to be developed.

1. *N-hood: A neighborhood dashboard allowing neighbors to view data visualizations about their neighborhoods (Pitched by Community Capital Fund)
2. Saving Historic KC: An app to help people identify historic buildings in danger of demolition (Historic Kansas City)
3. *STEM Mapping: An interactive map of all STEM programs in the city (KC Stem Alliance)
4. *SafeAssist: An app to allow parents and family members of those with special needs to inform first-responders of their situation in the event of an emergency call (Kansas City Police Department)
5. *WikiKC: Continuing work on a wiki site for everything Kansas City (citizen-driven)
6. *CommunityKC: A map-based collaborative tool to help neighborhood associations better organize and collaborate on community improvement projects (citizen-driven)
7. Public Transit App: An app to help people find out when their bus is coming (citizen-driven)
8. *Storefront Street Tree: An online tool to assist business owners in planting street trees outside their buildings (KC Bizcare)
9. Partnering Blood Donation: A digital solution to tie together blood donation needs of the community and electronic health records (citizen-driven)
10. *DataShare Agreement: An online process for registering collectors of data through smart city and Internet of things devices and to make that data legal and useful (UMKC Law)
11. *Parcel Assessment Tool: A multipurpose GIS-based tool to assist in building development through the city permitting process (UMKC Bloch School)
12. Bike Commuter App: An for bike commuters to track their commutes and log the benefits in terms of money saved, fitness, environmental impact, etc (citizen-driven)

Though no teams came out of the hackathon with a fully finished app, all teams made strong showings. Teams denoted with an asterisk are continuing to work on their projects over the next several months either under their own steam or at regular Code for KC hack nights, with the ultimate goal of launching them to the public this coming November.

VIDEO: Watch the full HACK KANSAS CITY progress reports (program begins at 7:45)