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Hacknight #128 – with Chris Kelly

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Date: February 6, 2018

Venue: Rangle.io

Presenter: Chris Kelly from Carrot Rewards

Chris Kelly is the Vice President of Technology at the popular Canadian health and wellness app, Carrot Rewards. In just 2017, Carrots user-base grew from 100,000 users to over 600,000.

Presenting: Chris shared insights about Carrot’s amazing startup journey as well as the tools they used along the way to become voted ‘Best Canadian Developed App of 2017’ by MobileSyrup.

 

Video:

Presentation:

 

Announcements

  • Ask: Feedback on our new guidelines for organizer convosThe folks who organize these hacknights are in the process of moving most organizing-related conversations into a public channel (from a private one). We’ve got some draft guidelines that we’d love your feedback on. We’ll be voting to accept them at this month’s organizers meeting. (Which is usually livestreamed and open to observers, with details on the website calendar.)Details in #operations Slack channel: Direct link to post
  • PodCamp Toronto 2018PodCamp Toronto is an “Unconference that happens at Ryesrson University between 23rd- 25th of February, 2018. It’s major concentration is about Digital Media. You can register and vote for any of the proposed sessions on the Podcamp website.For more info http://www.podcamptoronto.com
  • DemocracyKit TrainingFull day training on Feb… ???Full details: #democracykit channel on Slack
  • CodeAcross 2018Date: March 3
    Eventbrite link on Slack
    Looking for volunteers.

 

Project Pitches:

 

Project Lead(s) Description / Needs
Civic Tech 101 Patcon & Morva Description: Introduce you to Civic Tech Toronto and learn about one another. Please go here if it’s your first time!

Location: Pulling chairs around the main screen.

CodeAcross 2018 Planning Alex Hackathon planning for Code Across 2018 on March 3 at Toronto Public Library (Reference Library)

What we’re doing today: I’m helping with the fundraising team,

What we need: InDesign designer, someone to help with content

Budgetpedia Henrik Description of project: See budgetpedia.ca. Bringing transparency, and understanding, to Toronto’s budget.

Advocating for improvements!

Tonight:

  • Advice about Google Firebase for website backend

Anytime:

  • Contacting journalists and pitching to them
    • designing data warehouse for any (parts) of financial data from any government
    • Financial analyst looking at some FOI financial data obtained from the City
    • Arthur is here: working on first annual TABS (Toronto Annual Budget Scorecard)
    • Victor is here: improved accounting model for Toronto budget
    • data portal for budgetpedia
    • Henrik is here: developing CMS; doing research; Tweeting
    • research improving Toronto budget design; getting Toronto detailed data

What you need: Writers, researchers, ux designers, front and back end developers, people interested in giving feedback on budgetpedia

Keep in touch: budgetpedia.ca

Bike Parking John Description: A webapp which will allow cyclists to drop a pin on a map of Toronto indicating insufficiencies in bike parking infrastructure. We believe that the most valuable data to improve Toronto’s bike parking will be crowdsourced.

What we’re doing today: Discussing our survey, sprinting towards our MVP!

What we need: Developers, Designers, Researchers, Data Analysts, Communicators

TTC Subway Dashboard Project  Raphael Description of project: Build the political will to improve transportation.

Transit agencies are bad at communicating successes and failures: leaving users with most salient experience in their memory: their worst one By communicating transit performance in a way that users understand, they might better appreciate how good transit is while understanding why it’s bad when it’s bad.

What we’re doing today: Scraping a bunch of subway data from the TTC, still working on processing data

What we need: Data geeks, A logo

https://github.com/CivicTechTO/ttc_subway_times

#transportation

Law and Design Team Avery Description of project: Improving access, usability of legal information. There is an access to justice crisis!

What we’re doing today: Hacking

What we need: User researchers, graphic designers, website builders, anyone with interest in legal issues

DemocracyKit Tech Team Chris Description of project: We are an open online platform to share advice, educational resources and campaign technology with campaign teams running for municipal office.

What we’re doing today: Making some much needed (small) edits to the website:

  • Develop search widgets for resource library, events, etc.

What we need: Web developers, designers & civic technologists interested in opening the municipal election process. Also looking for people that want to join and work towards leadership role on the tech team.

Keep in touch:

Women and Colour Mohammed Description of project: We are an open online platform to share advice and campaign technology with campaign teams running for municipal office.

What we’re doing today: Making some much needed (small) edits to the website:

  • Implement social sign-on
  • Develop search widgets for resource library, events, etc.

What we need: Web developers, designers & civic technologists interested in opening the municipal election process. Also looking for people that want to join and work towards leadership role on the tech team.

 

TheCarded.ca Sharky Description of project: We are Human Centered Design (HCD) platform that simplifies for organizations and community professionals to track their efforts and work in conjunction with policing policies.

What we’re doing: User testing for resources and changes to some policies

What we need: lawyers / litigation experts – research assistant  

Chalmers Cards Zach Description: Chalmers Cards are laser-cut wooden handouts that explain how to access public resources for folks in tight financial situations. Stuff like toll free numbers for shelter referral, financial aid registration, and free legal aid.

The cards are laser cut onto wood so the information doesn’t get crumpled. Plus people think they’re cool so the cards don’t get lost!

These cards have been a real hit! I’m having trouble meeting the demand for these in the shelters on my own, so I’m looking for folks to help out with laser cutting them!

What we’re doing today: Looking for feedback on the latest Info Card Prototype!!

What we need:
-Graphic Designer to help design the card layout!
-Laser Cutters
-Feedback

Public Education App Idea(s) Allister Description of project: Looking to develop an educational app idea for kids.

What I’m doing today:

-Seeking feedback on an idea that I have developed with some UI/UX designers -looking to create an idea with anyone in general about educating students

-I can offer an educational perspective if needed (I work at a school teaching grade 6 students!)

What I need: Looking for coders, particularly anyone who can give me feedback from a back end perspective

Info to learn more:

@alternateacher

allister.geonanga@gmail.com, Grade 6 Educator with a public school board

I have a slide deck of an MVP to show if you’re interested!

Shelter Map Andrew Description of project: We’ve had a particularly bad winter, and ensuring everyone has safe overnight shelter is a challenge. We want to build a system to help frontline workers place people looking for temporary or emergency shelter.

What we’re doing today: Looking for people who are knowledgeable about the shelter system so we can define stakeholders we want to help.

What we need:

  • People who have first-, second-, or any-hand experience with the Toronto Shelter System
  • People interested in user research

 

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