Pompano Beach Civic Hackathon Recap 2018
On Saturday, March 14, the City of Pompano Beach, in collaboration with Code for Fort Lauderdale, held its first Civic Hackathon; an event designed to encourage civic engagement through technology, data, and collaboration. Over the course of the day, nine teams went from idea to presentation and “hacked,” or tinkered, on projects using data related to Permits, Inspections, & Properties. Ultimately, Team “MCMC” or “MC²”, Team “Where’s my Inspector?”, and Team “3 Amigos” would place Top 3, respectively, each taking home Visa Gift Cards for their efforts.
Participants from around the area, including students from Blanche Ely High School and residents of Pompano Beach, gathered for an opening breakfast kickoff hosted by Chief Information Officer Gene Zamoski. Noting the importance of the event, Florida State Senator Perry E. Thurston Jr. attended as keynote speaker. He shared, while not “technical” himself, he has seen the dramatic change mobile applications and the Internet have created. CIO Zamoski added that “they’ve seen a lot,” as they were both graduates of Pompano Beach High School in the late 70s, graduating just two years apart.
Business Communications Analyst Clif Maloney stated “we wanted to give citizens the data, and see what they could do with it.” This was accomplished with the help of Barbara Harrison, Assistant Chief Information Officer and E-Plan Administrator, Christopher Feltgen.
Our first place winning team “MCMC,’’or “MC Squared,” made up of Marcus, Charlene, Monika, & Chris, took a unique approach to the Inspector Tracking Challenge by building on top of the popular Waze app. They also planned on integrating with Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook to create a more streamlined adoption process. The team also shared in-app views for an Administrator Dashboard that wowed the crowd and judges.
Team “Where’s My Inspector” explained their suggestions for a mobile app solution for inspector tracking as well. For most, getting a first hand deep dive into the lexicon of government processes and workflows was a very unique experience.
It was mentioned by CIO Gene Zamoski at the conclusion of the event that “our goal is to open up more of this data for you to use, and by the feedback we’ve heard today, we’re excited to continue to build and expand our open data initiatives.” More than half of the participants had never attended an event like this before, so it was both challenging and eye-opening. Marquez, Conry, and Leonid (pictured above with CIO Gene Zamoski (left)) used Microsoft’s Business Intelligence (BI) tool, to classify and graph the Permit data to be more useful for decisions. Leonid explained “since it was just a spreadsheet before, this allows us to see overall time trends and make decisions much more clearly.”
A Blanche Ely High School Senior named Stanley mentioned using the Excel skills learned in class at the event along with some guidance from his teammate, Smit. “I’ve never used government data before, it was really cool,” he shared during his presentation.
“It was a really great experience, there should be one once a month!”
While we can’t award everyone’s project, we’d like to thank all of our participants! I’d also like to thank our keynote speaker Senator Perry E. Thurston Jr., the City of Pompano Beach, the Pompano Beach CRA staff, the amazing hospitality provided to us at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center, as well as our corporate sponsors OpenGov.com, Burkhardt Construction, Whiting — Turner Construction, Shiff Construction, Keith & Associates, and Butters Construction! Of course to our Judges; Broward County Commissioner Chip LaMarca, Andrew Jean-Pierre, Gene R. Zamoski and Chris Feltgen, thank you! We could not have had such a great event without all of you, and a very special thank you to those Code for Fort Lauderdale members who mentored first time attendees and for being such humble, community-minded people. We can’t wait for the next one!
Take a look below for more great projects from Arturo, Tangy, Justin, Kyle, Vincent, Keshawn, Mike, Paul, and Ka Ling.
Thanks for reading to the bottom! Remember, you are always welcome at your local brigade’s next meeting! Stop by and see how you can contribute.❤
Written by Rob Davis, Co-Captain, Code for Fort Lauderdale
“When one neighbor helps another, we strengthen our communities.”
