will.i.am, best known as a singer from
the Black Eyed Peas. Young staff from
his i.am.angel foundation provided
the logistical labor to put together the
event and the PR nous to bring enough
celebrity buzz to attract local media.
The challenge phase moved deftly
from enthusiastic encouragement
(“You guys are AWESOME for
giving up your weekend!”) to blatant
pragmatism (“We’re hiring”) from the
tech-company reps dominating the
sponsorship register. Meanwhile, the
political interests at play were obvious
when, prior to the commencement of
coding, the city’s mayor-elect,
Eric Garcetti, arrived to formally
open the proceedings.
Garcetti used his speech to set an
agenda for office: coding classes in
local high schools and a CTO for L. A.
in his first term. The speech was high
on rhetoric, part of the broader frenzy
intended to mobilize the volunteer
labor. His comments revealed some
fascinating assumptions about
government: It’s broken. It cannot fix
the most basic things for its citizens.
Lauding the hackers, he acknowledged
that anything they did that day would
matter, would be better than what
was in place now. “You don’t accept
the world as it is,” he said, riffing off
the youthful vibe. The bottom line for
government and civic participation
was captured by the logic “You didn’t
make it worse.” This was Garcetti’s
idea of a joke, but it was pivotal. It was
a genuflection to the challenges facing
of this for design researchers is that
civic hackathons allow us to explore
how multiple notions of civics are being
constructed and enacted, and therefore
how they might be constructed and
enacted differently.
MAKING THE
CIVIC IMAGINARY
In Atlanta, the National Day of Civic
Hacking took place in an office building
along one edge of the Georgia Institute
of Technology. At the cusp of the
university campus and the midtown
neighborhood, the Centergy Building
embodies a desired porousness between
the university, industry, and the city:
Local startups and university spinouts
operate alongside business advocacy
groups, steps away from the renowned
Georgia Tech GVU research center and
the Institute for People and Technology.
The primary organizers of the Atlanta
National Day of Civic Hacking were the
Technology Association of Georgia and
Random Hacks of Kindness, a national
organization that hosts hackathons on
a regular basis. These organizations
and their efforts were supported by a
range of corporations, including Intel,
Socrata, and SecondMuse, each with
different commitments across the nexus
of civic and data economies.
Challenges are often the internal
organizing structure of hackathons,
which was certainly the case at the
Atlanta National Day of Civic Hacking.
The challenges included the use of
Census Bureau data and APIs to create
apps of use to local businesses, the
development of an aggregate interactive
map of the local food system, the design
of the information architecture for
a website proposed to catalog future
civic media projects and initiatives in
Atlanta, as well as a series of challenges
proposed by the Peace Corps to support
field workers in their international
work. The challenges thus connected
the desire to showcase local capacities
for innovation and entrepreneurship
with the desire to contribute national,
if not global, endeavors “for the good.”
Some participants lived only a mile
away, while others drove for two hours
to get there, reflecting the status of
Atlanta as a region as well as the draw
of the event. Teams quickly formed
around the challenges and began
working. In the first few hours, sticky
notes appeared on walls, and boxes and
arrows were drawn on whiteboards.
By the afternoon of the first day, many
were staring intently into laptop
screens, typing, and conferring with
those around them. We and other
participants took part in the rituals of
hackathons: Together we ate pizza in
the evening, and the following morning
we ate bagels as the work continued.
The afternoon of the second day
brought the presentations—prototypes
in various stages of completion, most
working to some extent, but all far from
being functionally implemented.
On the same day in Los Angeles,
greeted by egg muffins and coffee,
hundreds of people converged on
the Boyle Heights Youth Technology
Center to take part in Hack for L. A.,
which was one of the Los Angeles–
based National Day of Civic Hacking
events. Palm trees and sunshine
framed the site, nestled in an other wise
gritty urban neighborhood just off the
101 freeway. Organizers began the
hackathon with a prerecorded You Tube
welcome from event sponsor and patron
Civic hackathons
allow us to explore
how multiple notions
of civics are
being constructed
and enacted.
JULY–AUGUST 2014 INTERACTIONS 59 INTERACTIONS.ACM.ORG
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