Open Seattle Monthly Meetup

Open Seattle is a cross-sector community exploring the intersection of civic engagement, government, and technology to make a positive impact in the greater Seattle area. Everyone is welcome!!

Our mission is to improve our communities through cross-disciplinary collaboration and civic innovation. "Civic innovation" broadly defined is collaborating to solve civic problems and building solutions for the public good. We are the Seattle chapter of the Code for America network.

Open Seattle meets regularly on the fourth Wednesday of every month to learn about community or technology initiatives in Seattle, network, and present new and existing projects.

MEETING AGENDA:

6:00: Dinner with other awesome people who care about civic innovation

6:25: Announcements
*If you'd like to make an announcement, ping the #general channel in our Open Seattle Slack group (link below), or email an Open Seattle organizer on Meetup to give us a heads up.

6:30-7:00: Guest Speakers: Tarra Simmons of Civil Survival and Jacob Kuykendall of the King County Bar Association
Tarra is a Skadden Fellow at the Public Defenders Association and the Executive Director of Civil Survival. She was a key advocate for the New Hope Act, which recently became law in Washington and makes it easier for people to vacate past convictions.
Jacob provides legal aid to individuals near or below the poverty line to vacate criminal convictions and remove eviction records from their history.

7:00-8:00: National Day of Civic Hacking
National Day of Civic Hacking is on Sept 21 and this year's theme for Code for America chapters is "Civic Action for Criminal Justice." We'll be looking at the new Washington state laws that streamline and modify the process for people with criminal records to vacate convictions after a period of time. Our focus is to see if we can build a tech tool to make this process easier.

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2019/07/28/state-law-takes-effect-sunday-giving-those-records-new-hope/1844447001/

WHAT TO BRING:
You'll probably want a laptop (or be prepared to team up with someone that has a laptop).

HOW TO CONNECT:
We plan things, ask/answer questions, and discuss projects using Slack.
Join the Open Seattle Slack channel here:

https://join.slack.com/t/openseattle/shared_invite/enQtNTMyNTU1MTUwODE5LWM3ZTk3ZjM0MjRiNDgwNzczZTYxNTllY2YwNDIyYWViYTQxY2IzMDBjN2JiZTM2MGFkZTIwNzZmNjU5OTUwY2Y

MEETING LOCATION:
Tyler Technologies, 255 South King St, 11th floor. The elevators are located in the corporate elevator bank (on the other side of the Embassy Suites lobby). An organizer will be on the 11th floor to open the door for you to the Tyler Technologies office space. You can also ping the Open Seattle Slack group if you have any issues (#general channel).