Apps for America's entry period has closed, and we're now busy at work judging the applications. I dropped a note to the list, but want to share here too: because of the sheer quantity of the applications submitted, I'm extending the judging period by one week. There's just no way the judges can spend enough time judging each application (45 of them!) in one week. So we're giving ourselves a bit more time, the judging period will end two weeks from yesterday (Friday).
This has been an exciting period for our community. Over the past three months:
- We received 45 incredible applications based on the APIs and data sources we provide
- We helped organize TransparencyCamp and made what's being called "The Best Unconference Software ever written" (soon to be released as open source)
- Launched a 50 state project
- Organized two hackathons, one at (PyCon)[http://us.pycon.org] and the other at Web2.0 Expo
- Grew, as a community, from 0 to 460.
So the question is, what's next?
That's what we're starting to figure out here at the Sunlight Foundation-- we're asking ourselves how we can better serve this fledgling community of volunteer developers and designers and also looking ahead to what we think are new, big opportunities for furthering the goals of Open Government. Soon, I think we'll see lots of data being released directly from the Government in better, more developer-friendly formats. And it will largely up to this community to figure out what to do with all that.
Inside the Sunlight Foundation, we're asking ourselves the following questions:
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How do we use the sunlightlabs.com site to allow developers to organize and more effectively tackle projects and coordinate with one another?
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How do we create ways for non-technical people to help the technical people do things like help clean up data, classify information or other things that need a quick human eye?
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How do we keep track of the things inside Government that need to be fixed for us and communicate that effectively.
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How do we figure out how not only to parse all of this data, but begin to make sense of it for others?
We'd love your input too.
Continue readingThank you, PyCon
Today was an amazing day for Sunlight Labs. Check this out:
That's our code sprint in PyCon today. Developers have, according to the wiki, checked out over 20 states to work on, and it looks like amazing, serious progress is being made there.
So to the Pycon and greater Python community-- thank you for all that you do. You are amazing.
See more of Josh's photos here
Continue readingNext Week’s Hackathon
The PyCon hackathon is about to get underway in Chicago-- James and Josh will be manning that operation, and then next week, we'll be doing the Web2.0 Hackathon. At both hackathons, we'll be primarily focused on the 50 State Project and if time/resources permit, we may take on another project as well. We're really excited to have the support of the Web2.0 expo and PyCon crews for this next week of great open source development.
If you're in the bay area and want to come to our hackathon, please drop me a line at clay at sunlight labs dot com. I can give you a code that will get you a special pass into the hackathon room so you can join us.
Continue readingLast Weekend for Apps for America
This weekend is your last weekend for Apps for America work! So if you've procrastinated for the past three months, do some weekend planning and get it done. So far, we've got 7 entries and I've seen about three more on the web that haven't been submitted yet.
The apps so far are great! But I know you've got something great up your sleeve too, so make sure to set some time aside this weekend to crank out your project and make something great!
Continue readingHost your Own Hackathon
We've gotten a lot of inquiries and ideas about how people can have/host a hackathon in their area. We'd love to have your help in hosting them, getting your friends together and writing some code to change America. So we've set up a wiki page that provides a loose shell with some tips and advice for how to host a successful hackathon. Expect the resource to grow as we learn from our own hackathons and others around the country do the same.
We're happy to help provide guidance, too, about specific needs and projects that Sunlight needs help on. So if you're interested in having a hackathon in your area, what are you waiting for? Start planning one now!.
A great way for non-developers or designers to help out is to be organizers and conveners instead, organizing events, providing direction and getting people lined up to help face the great technical challenges of liberating government data. If you'd like to host a hackathon, you don't need to necessarily be technical, you just need to be organized. So take a look, read the documentation, and let us know when and where you're planning on hosting one so we can provide you with support and direction if needed.
Continue readingDo we need a GetSatisfaction for Congress?
On Sunlight's "twitter lobbying" efforts and building a more effective means for communicating to congress. Do we need a GetSatisfaction.com for Congress?
Continue readingNot going to SxSW? Tip: Here’s how to make twitter not annoying
A lot of folks from the Sunlight Foundation will be heading to SxSW Interactive and we hope members of the Sunlight Labs community will follow us on twitter and find us wherever we're at to meet up. It'd be great to put some faces to the names of the people in our community.
For those that aren't going to SxSW though, and do use twitter, SxSW represents an annual flood of conference information that pollutes your twitter stream with stuff you don't care about. Last year, my friend and neighbor Mike for instance, ended up unfollowing all his friends on Twitter that were at SxSW because it got so overwhelming.
This tip will only help out Mac users, but I've experimented with it and found it useful.
Continue reading50 State Project: Momentum
It has been about 10 days since we announced our goal to write parsers for all 50 state legislation websites. While 10 days ago we had nothing, I'm excited to report that today our github account shows substantial progress on 8 states and the District of Columbia. DC actually got two parsers-- one in Ruby and one in Python.
We've started these projects with just one function-- get_legislation that grabs all the bills of a particular state. That's the first step. We'll be grabbing votes, legislators and other things as we make progress. 8 states in 10 days is substantial progress! Great job!
To get involved and claim your state, check out our wiki page and our github project.
Thanks for all that you do!
Continue readingHiring Developers to Help Open Up Government
The Sunlight Foundation's technology team is growing. Help us manage the Sunlight Labs community by becoming a developer here at Sunlight. Right now we're hiring for a few positions:
- A developer with strong data and analytics skills for our Data Commons team
- Two creative, well versed developers for our Tools and Engagement team
- One more developer for our SubsidyScope team
If you've been thinking about a career-change, or if you're interested in getting into the realm of using your skills to change government, working on our tech team is a great opportunity.
I lead our team. What I'm committed to is, and what I believe my full time job is, is creating a compelling, fun work environment that keeps our team members and community engaged. What we're trying to do on our team is three-fold:
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Build a community of volunteer sophisticated open source developers who want to change their government. We do this through things like our hackathons and our Apps for America contest.
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Build a tech team at the Sunlight Foundation that builds great tools for citizens and journalists to better see what their government is doing, who is influencing it, and how their money is being spent.
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Support the overall mission of the Sunlight Foundation
If you're a great developer who wants to start using their skills to make a real difference in America, this is an opportunity for you. Send in your resume and let's talk.
Continue readingData.gov: The Vivek Kundra Opportunity
Over the past few months, I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with Vivek Kundra in his job as the CTO of Washington, DC. Today he was today he was appointed to the new position of CIO of the federal government. He's a visionary -- a leader in the field of eGovernment who understands that technology can be used to change the way government operates, can be used to save money, as a way to inform citizens -- all for the sake of our democracy for its citizens. From my interactions with him it is clear he believes in three things:
Continue reading
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