Hacknight #80

Thematic Digital Funds & Civic Tech

with Tris Lumley

Recording

What can we learn from civic tech about investing in tech in thematic areas of social sector? Tris Lumley speaks on civic tech. Tris will be a plenary speaker at Transform the Sector this Thursday, February 23rd at the Mars Centre, organized by Powered by Data.

Speakers

Tris Lumley

Tris is Director of Innovation & Development at NPC – a London-based think tank and consultancy working to help transform the social sector through the use of data, technology and evidence. Tris is working on developing pooled grant funds that focus on a particular thematic area (currently women’s empowerment and youth development), are built on collaboration between nonprofits and service providers, and bring in the technology sector to apply its skills and solutions to social issues and opportunities. At the heart of this model is user-centred research and design – mapping people’s pathways through their lived experience, and then mapping technology against those pathways. The aim of the model is to get funding to focus on real problems and solutions, driven by user insight, not organizational perspectives.

Eightieth hacknight; 65 participants.

Breakout groups:

  • Civic Tech 101 (Lia) ← go here if it’s your first time!
  • Guerrilla Archiving (Dawn) ← improving scrapers. App for in-person events.
  • Budgetpedia (Henrik, www.budgetpedia.ca) ← improving user experience, UI, user research, personas (ux)
  • City Of Brains (Mark, www.cityofbrains.com) ← Mental health services map of Toronto
  • DemocracyKit (Marly) ← building resources for municipal campaigns.
  • Online Public Consultations (Derrick) ← Talking about data standards, etc.
  • Unnamed Project (Leon) ← Support for immigrants/refugees, planning stage
  • Toronto Community Networks (Vidhi) ← Feedback, information, etc.
  • Councilmatic (Gabe) ← Communicating city hall activity, next steps, UI/UX needed
  • First Citizens Data Portal (Patrick) ← Aggregation of data sets, conversations about city’s new portal, etc.
  • TPL booking system (Lina) ← Digital innovation hub booking tool.