Baltimore City Data - Hack Night

The Problem

Baltimore City has a lot of data, and we want to do better communicating it.

How We Can Help

Following up on the success of our last meeting, we will continue discussing two efforts to improve data transparency within the city, and one new state-wide effort.

If you enjoy meeting people, and asking insightful questions, there will be space for that too.

Office of Emergency Dashboard

The Office of Emergency is working on a public dashboard that displays various layers of mapped data. Its code base is open source. We need feedback and coding support. If you like to write code, we’ll have an ArcGIS Experience Builder dashboard written in React to work on.

Open Baltimore Collaboration

Open Baltimore is the city’s primary repository for data shared with the public. The city is looking to continue to work with civic technologists to improve the tool, and representatives from Open Baltimore will be on hand to discuss the project's current priorities and ways to get involved.

Benefits Eligibility Screener

Civic Tech for DC has started porting this this really cool state/county benefit eligibility screener for residents with Colorado zip codes to Maryland, and wants to collaborate with Civic Tech Baltimore since this tool has the potential for an impact across the state.

We will discuss the tool, next steps in the migration, and where help is needed.

Who should attend? What skills do we need at this event in particular?

• You, if you have any interest in learning about open source coding and data work happening in Baltimore City and Maryland

Why should I attend?

• People - We’re fun people who will try to make lots of jokes
• Learning - Software engineering, dataset exposure, practice, mentorship

Would you be open to helping coordinate folks at this particular event?

We could use 2-3 people to help coordinate folks at the event. If you’re interested in helping with this, chat with us in Slack in #organizers-and-volunteers

Event Format

• In Person.
• Breaking out into small groups to work together.

Getting There
1. Navigate to the Hampden Branch Library -
* By car: street parking may be available, or try Parkopedia to find a garage
* By public transportation: This library is near a few bus routes, try the Transit app to see your options.
2. Once inside, we'll be in the "Meeting Room" in the basement. You can ask the front desk for directions.

Disclaimer from the library: "Use of library meeting space does not constitute endorsement of this organization, this program or its content by the Enoch Pratt Free Library."

ABOUT CODE FOR BALTIMORE
Who should come?

• New members welcome. We’d love to have both people who have been before AND new people. Interested in seeing what we're about and feeling the vibe of this group? Yay great!
• Many roles needed. We want people from many different roles/backgrounds: developers, designers, user researchers, product managers, communications professionals, and other roles. A sister group of ours Ruby for Good has a great list of roles needed.
• Wide experience range wanted. We want people who are more experienced AND less experienced. We often have a range of skill levels at our events. We don’t formally coordinate mentorship (lately) but mentorship does often happen at these!

Does it cost money? Or will we get paid?
Nope! Our events are free, and nobody gets paid for this work. This is a volunteer organization.

We Coordinate On Slack - Join Us!
Not on our Slack yet? Here's how:
1. Join our Code for Baltimore Slack server using the invite link on our homepage: [CodeForBaltimore.org](http://codeforbaltimore.org/)
2. You might also like to join our sister server - Baltimore Tech Slack is a more general (not just civic tech) server: [BaltimoreTechSlack.com](http://baltimoretechslack.com/)

Needed: Volunteers + Organizers
Want to get involved? We could use your help! The more organizing capacity we have collectively, the more we can do -- together.
First, join our Slack server Then, come chat with us in the #volunteers-and-organizers channel.

It's okay if you don't want to commit to anything at this point -- you're welcome to lurk! A lot of people want to get a sense of the vibe of the organizing group before signing up to do, and that's totally okay :)

Hope to see you there!!
Maggie, Spencer, Casey