Hack for Democracy

Code for Philly hosted  Apps for Philly Democracy Hackathon: 2016 this past weekend. This weekend event started on a Friday night. Of course, for me, this event started well before Friday. This blog was started to highlight my intent to get serious about coding as my new year’s resolution. Now, three and a half months in, this was to be a great test to my gauge new skills.

Friday night was the kick off. A time for everyone who had a stake in the outcome to come together and brainstorm. In the caucus room of City Hall were politicians, coders,  and creative citizens. Together we offered ideas for how technology can help citizens of a democracy. Many concerns centered around access to information and connection to community resources. These concerns came with solutions using technology. Ideas were written on large paper. Then, people could add  post its for comments, and star stickers for ideas that excited them. Together, we drafted ideas that would become the pool of ideas to work on the next day.

Friday night was easy for me. I added to some ideas, liked others, and discussed a few with the originators. I sought out advice for preparing myself for my first hackathon. I talked to  some people I’ve been seeing at various meet ups. I saw this whole event as a gauge. Friday was a barometer, which gave me a sense I was where I needed to be developmentally.

Saturday was when the gardening began with the seeds from Friday night’s ideas planted. Groups of strangers with like minded interests convened around projects that grabbed their attention. Conversations began, introductions made, and laptops plugged in. At a rapid pace, parameters were set up, repositories created, and data accessed. The plants were starting to grow.

This first real day was mostly a blur to me. I was anxious to get started and anxious to prove to myself that I developed enough to contribute. I sat in awe at the conversations these strangers had. Periodically I understood what they were saying. The longer the breaks in between, the more I felt out of place. I was not prepared. I answered “Do you know…” with “… no.” Too often. R DBs,Postgres, Django, Angular: a list of totally unfamiliar to somewhat familiar terms. I feared that my worst fear of the weekend was coming true.

There were discussions that had little to do with coding that I really enjoyed, though. Who do we see utilizing this information? Who do we want to use this information? How do we present this information to them? How do we create access to the information for every stakeholder? The confines of time met with the scope of these questions, and we started to drive down to what minimum viable product would look like. These questions drove my focus of how to present this data. The answers that started to formulated in my head met with a familiar sense of ability. I finally felt like my skills were ready to contribute.

The first task I really had was how to take data and present it real time with charts on a website or app platform? Old nightmares of Probability and Statistics came back to haunt me. Suddenly, I was back in my freshman year data analysis class. Thankfully, opinions about graph styles and chart decisions were offered up to allow me to act like I knew what I was looking for.

Then came the point that my neurosis met with my ADHD. Fear of failure made me lose focus, so I got up to take a walk. Googling on my phone as I walked around, I found a list of charting services. I found one that made sense to me. Google Charts! My first real contribution. I even got to link it in the github and slack channel. First taste of success!

The time from when I researched for layout ideas for the  prototype was the most blurry time of the weekend. It also was the only time I felt like I truly contributed within the coding aspect of this project.  But, in the span of the weekend work, I did feel fairly inadequate comparing where I hoped I was to where I am. Having that measuring stick is a very important part of development, so I cherished this part most on a personal level. It is exactly what I wanted for myself from this experience.

Saturday came to an end with a sense of relief from being able to push my files to our GitHub. This was thanks to so small contribution to a team member, who patiently worked with me through the command line. After the final push, I retreated home to allow my brain to relax.

Sunday morning was the mad dash, if you want to call five hours of fine tuning a dash. It began as awkward introductions, now culminating into a presentation out our”minimum viable project.” We just needed to added our finishing touches. But, I found a problem with the charting technology we were planning on using. It might have difficulty displaying more than one chart per page. I created one page with a series of anchor tags for the sake of our MVP, so this wouldn’t just be a small problem. We would have to rethink our visualization model.

Thanks to my team members, this draw back was handled in a way that made me feel better about my failed suggestion . They rolled with the change like champs. I was frantically texting knowledable friends while my team just changed tactics.

Instead of live charts, we went with static images. They were charts built from the data that wouldn’t be changing, anyway. As the deadline drew ever closer, I worked with a teammate on adding them to the site. Myever present fear of the clock helped draw my attention to the need to simplify our tact. Just make img src tags, set the size, and fix it when we reconvene after today. Owing to the sense of unity developed over the weekend, I had no problem asserting myself into this fix, and making it happen. What was best, it worked.  And just in time. A git push with just a few minutes to go, and we were finished with our minimum viable product.

As a the presentations began, I started to feel like I was catching my breath. This was strange, as I hadn’t given a second thought to my breathing cadence until then. I sat back, beginning to slowly relax.  I really enjoyed  watching the amazing projects that the other teams presented.

My bias may show in the fact that I liked our group’s project most. Out of the five projects presented, two had begun being  worked on before the weekend. As proud as I felt with product my group had done, the overall contributions from all contributors was amazing. Strangers came together to create for the greater good.

After the presentations, as groups said their goodbyes, our group planned our next move. The group planed how to organize a way forward beyond this weekend, and set up a date in the future to get back to work.

I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to work with for my first hackathon. Yes, I did not feel that my skills were where I wanted them to be. But, I was able to experience working on a project for the first time with a group.  And with a group that was patient, collaborative, and knew their core strengths. They were eager, knowledgeable, happy to assist, and passionate about the project. I’m extremely excited to work with this group moving forward. And, hopeful that I can focus my learning in ways that can help contribute more to the project.

 

Here is a list of all projects from the 2016 Hack for Democracy.

Here is a list for our project repo: Leverage.