Action Night!

[VIRTUAL/ONLINE MEETING ONLY]
June's Action Night will introduce a new data-only project!

We are starting a collaboration with Wendy Rice's "Vermont Connector" to address a hole in the open data available from the state regarding non-profits and B-Corps (Public Benefit Corporations). There are are a ridiculous number of non-profits in Vermont. One would think that the state would have a list of them all with up-to-date contact information and services, but it does not. It has a list with sparse, out-of-date, and not very useful information. Likewise, the list of B-Corps is available, but only as a list of names. Not having this information exist and be available for public use is hurting Vermont. Without it, it becomes much harder to map out how those with resources and interest can help those who need help. We need volunteers to help us to start bringing this data together. This is not a programming task, and for now has no planned software development component. It is a data gathering and research effort that will take time. But Wendy has plans for how we can start to put together the data that will help. If you've wanted to pitch in but have no software development skills, this is a place we can use your help!

Our existing awesome teams and projects have tasks on their plate as well (no kidding!)

For those interested, we will be continuing:

• the Open Referral Human Services Data API (HSDA) development in NodeJS with Restify (hint its all JS)
• the CourtBot planning and execution (a mix of Python and AWS at this point)
• and working on our own (WordPress) Website

There is even more to do including event planning for getting the heck back together in person! So if you want to help plan a techie party, we can use help with that!

What more do you really want for a Tuesday night!?

-=-=-=-= Boiler Plate Alert! =-=-=-=-=-=-

Code for BTV brings together teams of volunteer citizens and technologists to create new tools for civic-oriented and social justice organizations, solving meaningful problems for our community through digital technology.

Action nights, formerly called "Hack Nights" are recurring scheduled times for teams to get together and push along project work, whatever that might mean. For teams that are in design and planning phases that may mean UX and design or brainstorm exercises. For teams that are working on an iteration of implementation, then it could mean meeting with a client or programming or event planning ... projects take many forms and have many needs. We're finding that having a set-aside time for people to put on the calendar to get work done is helpful.

If everyone that shows up is familiar with the work and teams, then we may just jump right to work. If we have new people show, we will briefly introduce what the projects are so they can know what at least are all working on.

Given the new structure of meeting during the pandemic, and reduced capacity to run these meetings, onboarding of new members will happen in a separate MeetUp event - usually only when we know we have new members that need onboarding. But we welcome everyone to attend all meetings without the onboarding - feel free to ask any questions!

We suggest you put this on your calendar so that even if you know your project has nothing for you to do for a given action night, it will be on their when the next one rolls around to remind you to check in! :)