Hack for Western Mass

In March, I attended a meeting of the Knowledge Commons at UMass and happened to be there when Becky Sweger of the National Priorities Project came to pitch the idea of organizing a Hackathon as part of the Hack for Change national day of civic hacking. The goal was to bring together technology and community partners to find and build technical and data-driven solutions to local problems. Several of us expressed interest and joined the team to make it happen. This weekend, June 1 and 2, 2013, we held our Hack for Western Mass hackathon using the Random Hacks of Kindness model.

It's been fantastic to be part of such a dedicated team. Becky's done a huge amount of the work organizing, keeping the effort on track and making direct pitches to sponsors and community partners. Molly Mcleod designed a graphic identity for the project and built the website and many ancillary materials. Sequoia McDowell organized the purchase and delivery of all the food. Randall Smith organized publicity and operated our twitter identity. Andrew Pasquale, Don Blair, Carrie Bernstein, and several others have contributed significant time and effort to make the event happen: wooing sponsors, finding community partners, and getting the word out. Everyone has been extremely generous with their time.

Thanks to Niall Sullivan, we also ran a fantastic "kid space" during the hackathon. We installed Minecraft, Scratch, and Netlogo on the lab computers that kids could drop in and use while their parents were particpating in the hackathon. Niall also led the kids (and adults) in physical activities with juggling, hacky sack, and hula hoops.

My contribution was to organize the venue. With the support of the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, I was able to arrange for us to take over the amazing Integrated Science Center at UMass Amherst.The Chemistry Department graciously let us use the Computer Resource Center. We have groups working all over the building in conference rooms and in various nooks, corners, and crannies of the Atrium. During the event, I've tried to make myself useful — and I've also done some photography.

Our Sponsors have been very generous with their support. The UMass Amherst College of Natural Science donated the venue.Paragus, Left Click Advanced, R Studio, and Crocker Communications each agreed to sponsor a whole meal for the hackathon. Communicate Health sponsored a "healthy snack" table, with nuts, fruit, granola bars, and other healthy treats. The Amherst College Center for Community Engagement, National Priorities Project, Free Press, Sunlight Foundation, UMass Amherst IT Program, Five College Statistics Program, Clearbold, Azavea, and Mad Pow all contributed funding. There's been no danger of anyone going hungry during the hackathon.

Our community partners identified really outstanding challenges for the hackathon. Crunching data about the Federal Budget! Getting the word out about a project that helps teen mothers! Organizing to stop the vulnerable families of incarcerated people from being exploited through bad public telecommunications policy! Building a seed bank for Western Mass! Building a database of local wells and water quality! Demonstrating the value of local banking!

My favorite project is soliciting public participation to rebuild the public tree canopy in Northampton, Massachusetts. Last year 70 trees were removed, but only 20 trees were planted. The project wants to get members of the public to identify places to put public trees and then agree to be a steward for a tree planted there to help it survive during its first vulnerable year. They're building a website that can capture geolocation data from mobile devices and let people identify spots where there ought to be a tree. What a fantastic project!

Nationally, there are nearly a hundred events. In Boston, they kicked off their hackathon with a meeting at the Boston City Expo with short presentations by the different hackathon constituencies (civic innovators, technologists, etc) followed by breakout groups to help groups learn about each other. That sounds like a great idea. We kicked off our event with a Friday night social event at a local microbrewery which had a much better turn out than I had expected. I was expecting maybe a dozen people and instead we had 30 or 40. Great beer, great company, and a nice icebreaker for the following days of hard work.

Everyone has worked hard at the hackathon: Great pitches, careful attention, and lots of thoughtful questions. Enthusiastic team building, intense discussion, and lots of focused work. I can't wait to see how these all turn out. Even if projects can't get finished in a single weekend, people can keep working. We have a follow-up event planned for June 26 for people who want get together to show a more polished product. And the activity doesn't have to stop there.

The national organizers will invite some teams to send representatives to the White House to present. It would wonderful if our event and some of our projects were recognized like that -- there's no question to me that the work we're doing is first class and fully worthy of such recognition. But I have to admit that it's not really what's important to me.

A respected colleague of mine, John Jungck, always said that the goal of a good event should be to "begin conversations worth continuing". I see plenty of evidence that the connections forged over this weekend will lead to fruitful collaborations for many years to come. In 5 or 10 or 15 years, I can see all sort of benefits accruing from the work we began this weekend. And I would like nothing more than for someone then to say, "Yep. It all started with Hack for Western Mass."