In a Nutshell: we’re inviting civic-minded coders, designers, and others interested in using their skills to make Tucson a more livable community to come together to create apps that can make a difference. Some of the ideas we’re exploring:
1. City Radar: build an app that can take multiple data sources and automatically report and display events of different types within a specific distance of a user’s home. Imagine getting an automatic email when a liquor license is applied for down the street, or when demolition permit is issued. Or being able to see google maps of clusters of certain types of permit activity throughout the city.
2. Historic Tucson: build an app to make it easy for people to share and tag historic photos of tucson, and promote interconnections between people while doing it.
3. BuffelTracker: build an app to make it easy to report and map buffelgrass infestations in the Tucson area. Help build the already active community of volunteers in Tucson. This could include photo uploads as well as iPhone versions.
4. Tool Lending site: why should everyone have to buy their own post-hole digger when you only use it once a year? Build an app that makes it easy to find tools to borrow, to lend your own tools, and establish trust with other members.
You can see a lot more ideas for inspiration here. (This one is great)
When & Where?
Our first meeting is this Saturday, December 12th from 11am until 4pm, and is being generously hosted by Bookmans and will be held at their corporate offices
here (1135 N Jones, Tucson, AZ, 85716). They will also be providing
pizza and beer (as in free). You can reach me at 520-248-9810.
What are We Going to Accomplish in Five Hours?
Hard to say. Some groups are already well along on various projects and are using this weekend as a coding session. We’re not there yet. But if we can walk away from the meeting with an idea for a pilot project, a basic application architecture, and a sense of the resources we have to execute it, we’ll be successful. If we can set up some of the infrastructure (wiki, github, svn repo, what have you) all the better.
What is OpenTucson?
OpenTucson is a non-profit startup formed by Andrew Greenhill (chief of staff for
Mayor Walkup) and Ian Johnson (partner in
MoiaGroup) to promote web and mobile technologies to foster civic participation through apps that facilitate communication between citizens and government, between citizens themselves, and that generally improve the quality of life in our community.
What Should I Bring?
Bring a laptop; you may want to
install RoR since there’s a good chance we’ll be using that if we do get started.
We hope to see you Saturday! Please do
RSVP here so we can make sure have enough food and chairs.
Ian
If you can’t make it, you can still join our mailing list.
Recent Comments