I have been to CityCamps, but I am new to this list. For those who I have
not met before, my name is Rebecca. I used to work at the Sunlight
Foundation and now I work at Data.gov. I have been to CityCamps in NYC and
NC, one Capitol Camp, one Planning Camp, and two Transparency Camps.
I am excited that there is a push for a national CityCamp Day this year. I
was curious if there would be reach out to the other national hack day
organizers and how to best facilitate coordination. It looks like DC will
be participating in all the civic hack days!
My thoughts, for what they are worth:
1. I think the International CityCamp Day will be a great opportunity to
reinforce "Build w/ not for," User-centric design, and other efforts to
loop in more community feedback. And it's also a good opportunity to share
best practices and have cities identify pain points and create a plan for
the year.
2. I imagine CityCamp Day will be reoccurring based on the success of Open
Data Day/Code Across and National Day of Civic Hacking. Maybe this is over
simplifying it, but to me each of these national sprint days has an
emergent focus:
- CityCamp Day in Jan = A sprint to gather community feedback, best
practices / set the stage for the year
- Open Data Day/Code Across in Feb = A sprint to open data / talk
standards
- National Day of Civic Hacking in June = A sprint to build /
redeploy
I know all of these events can include all of these elements and are
ultimately defined by their organizers, but it'd be great to see a
community's progress through the lens of these national events (issue ->
data -> tool) or also cities match up/partner along the way (one benefit of
national events).
Let me know if I can help coordinate or help with the DC event(s).