Civic hackers in north-east Asia came together in Okinawa, Japan
“Let’ s meet in the sort-of geographical midpoint for a hackathon-like event…”
This is a report for Facing the Ocean Meet & Hack from June 8th -9th. It was a 2 days civic-hacking event in Okinawa.
Participants came together from g0v, Parti, Code for Japan and other civic-hacking organizations for this international event, which civic-hackers from north-east Asian countries met face-to-face for the first time.
The event didn't happen without support from the local host. The whole program was hosted in the Okinawa city government led-incubator, Startup Lab Lagoon. The opening was started with traditional dance, Eisa and food were sponsored by local food suppliers.
Following the way of Jothon of g0v, participants work on 10 projects. The themes were various.
- MDMI — Mis/dis/mal-information — Attacks & Responses
- Open Gov Data Helper
- The poverty of children in Okinawa
- Asian Human Rights Court Simulation
- Know-where: Print-friendly cloud map for disaster
- Extradition Law Amendment in Hong Kong
- TATTA: Beach cleaning project in Okinawa
- Herstory of East Asia: Gender movement/open government mapping in East Asia
- What is civic hacking / civic hacker
…and others
Each team had different approaches. One team started with a general discussion and developed a website. Other one worked on collecting events related to gender movement and translate them into 4 languages and mapped the data on a globe.
2 reasons why I felt this event was amazing…
As one of the organizers and also participants, I would like to write about the reason why I felt this hackathon-like event was amazing for a non-tech person.
I believe there are 2 reasons as follows:
- It is all about collaboration but not a competition.
- Learning different situation and exchanging the knowledge through the project.
It is all about collaboration but not a competition.
What I have realized through this event was that it was more like a collaboration to build something together. There were projects owners with a great passion and supportive people who want to make use of their talented skills.
I felt Meet & Hack was like a weekend project which you can help someone’s projects, which could make somebody else happy. It doesn’t have to be completed in the event but you can always come back to work together.
My assumption for a hackathon was that people have to build something in a very short time as a competition. Hackers are the sexiest people in the event.
Anybody can contribute!
Participants have various backgrounds, such as Journalist, videographer, urban design, lawyer, activist, designer, developer, and others, whom I cannot meet in my daily life.
The owner of Each project gave an introduction of their project and participants chose what they want to join.
Since the projects were collaborative, you can join any project which you feel you can do something to make it happen.
It could be a translation or data visualization, or even a designing slide deck for the project to spread the idea to the world. The participants were joining multiple projects and made use of their talented skills.
Learning different situation through exchanging the knowledge
I joined 2 projects, a discussion group about what civic-hacking is, and a translation project for extradition Law Amendment in Hong Kong.
Through the discussion, we were able to ask other participants what civic hack is for them, so we can compare the definition of civic hacking for each person.
The good thing about this conversation was that we were able to learn the civic hacking scene in each community. It is not only about gov-tech or civic-tech. Someone said it is a brand to spread the idea to the world. Seems there is no answer.
I felt it doesn’t matter how the community is different but the important thing is civic-hacking is an understandable idea to gather people in one place and built a community.
Furthermore, the motivation to join this movement was not the same. Especially, through a translation project for extradition Law Amendment in Hong Kong, I felt it strongly. The motivation is a strong emotion that you want to improve something wrong.
I think I would never know very much about the political structure or the tension between China — Taiwan or Hong Kong. The threat of China actually affects the daily life so the civic hacking community needed to be organized to stand up for human rights with the power of technology.
Conclusion
Sharing civic hacker’s mind, we are not alone.
「ともに考え、ともにつくろう。」- Think together, and build together.
Thinking about the definition of civic-hacking, I have realized the slogan for Code for Japan fits my understanding of the movement.
Participants were sharing a similar mind as a civic hacker. They understand how powerful it is when people work together, instead of doing something by yourself.
This commonly shared concept connects us together and that is why we can enjoy working together and learning from each other even if we have different backgrounds.
I don’t think every community needs to have the same purpose. The political situation isn’t the same and people’s need is different.
I believe the most important thing is that the concept of the civic hack movement helps to bond the local people together as a community and solve the local problems they are facing.
I have realized how it is important to meet face to face and working on projects together with the same minded people, so we can know we are not alone and how physically and culturally close we are.
Creating the warm welcome and supportive atmosphere, no hesitation for asking
Be friendly to newbies. Don’t respond with RTFM (Read the F Manual or STFG (Search the F Google) lightly. — Quated from the introduction slide
This is obvious but it is not always easy to create a warm atmosphere to accept questions.
This could be the reason why I like to be here. There are people in the civic-hacking scene, who help me learn something I don’t know. I don’ t think I can meet them in my daily life.
In the discussion of civic-hacking, someone asked me “Why you spend your time to support the civic-hacking project?”
I have never thought about it very well, but I realized I just like to be with my friends in this movement.
That made me realized I need to figure out how we can make a good atmosphere to welcome our new friends as I was invited to this great community.
local newspaper article about the event:
