What’s new with Code for Miami
IoT flood trackers, the launch of an affordable housing data project, Code for America fellowship, plus a call for new leadership and more!
With 2019 already well underway, here’s a look at some recent updates and opportunities within Code for Miami and civic tech.
Projects Underway
IoT Flood Trackers
Code for Miami volunteers have partnered together with the Miami Ruby Brigade, Moonlighter Makerspace, and the City of Miami to build devices that track changes in water level. Started back in November 2018, our flood tracking hardware project has gone through the initial research stages to building out six prototypes.
Now, we’re in the next phase of our project that is planned for installation around Miami in parks and other public spaces
Here’s where we could use some help from you or anyone you know:
- Test the accuracy of our data collection.
- Plan how we want to visualize and share our data collection.
- Finish building our tracking devices. Our next build session is on Saturday, July 13th at Moonlighter, 2041 NW 1st Place, Miami, FL 33127
We need help with each of the steps listed above. Stop by one of our second and fourth Monday of the month meetings, at the CIC Miami from 7–9pm.
BadgeWatch
We have partnered with the American Bar Association Justice Hackathon program to help them create a prototype one of the winning app ideas from their set of hackathons in 2018. You may find more info on the challenge and all of the winning projects here. Click this link!
BadgeWatch seeks to look at open policing from the view of social media and using that to help create tools that track police brutality and other forms of interaction with locals. We designed a prototype and our seeking developers to help us build out the application.
We have a group of 3 developers volunteering on the project, and could use more help! Check out the Github project page here: github.com/Code-for-Miami/BadgeWatch
Building out a Data Portal for Affordable Housing
As part of Code for America’s Community Fellowship program, Code for Miami’s Project Lead, Gregory Johnson along with Whitney Lubin and Ezra Okuro have picked up Open Austin’s affordable housing data portal to bring to Miami. Check out this post on their efforts.
The MVP of the application was just completed, with a roadmap spec’d out; which, is based on work in the City of San Francisco local government and the City of Austin.
Civic Technology Fellowship
Gregory Johnson has also started working with the Microsoft Cities team in Miami as a Civic Innovation Fellow— an opportunity found through our Open Data Day Hackathon event back in March 2019. Through this role, he hopes to further pursue projects and interests in civic innovation, open-source, and project management. It’s opportunities like these that can be found through taking part in a group like Code for Miami.
A call for new Leadership
We recently shared a post (check it out here!) on opportunities within Code for Miami to take on leadership roles. The benefits of getting civically involved include:
- Learn more about your city and what makes it so great, and where there’s room for some citizen engagement and collaboration.
- Help reduce the feedback loop between citizens and government.
- Up your community organizing, project management, and development skills. Really, any area you’re working on improving your skillset in, whether it’s story-writing, map making, or data analysis, there’s room to grow your experience while contributing to a great group and your community at the same time.
- Being part of the Code for America Brigade network gives you access to other leaders in cities across the country, and resources provided by Code for America and their partners.
- You will have the opportunity to attend multiple conferences — Code for America Summit (Oakland, California) and Brigade Congress (Different US City Every Year)
Help grow Code for Miami and its mission to build prototypes, advocate for open data, and support a community of people that are working on making Miami better everyday.
There’s a lot of great history behind this group. Since starting in 2013, we’ve hosted numerous hackathons and user testing sessions, tons of hack nights that have helped launch prototypes and inform citizens on a range of issues affecting Miami, saw the launch of both Miami Dade County’s and the City of Miami’s open data portals, and got to meet a lot of the great folks working in different sectors and industries.
We have had a great time both as volunteers and co-captains. It’s been amazing to see the prototypes and problem-solving discussions that have come out of each of our gatherings.
Like any good organization, growth and innovation can’t come without bringing in new perspectives and changing hands. We’re stepping down to make room for the next set of change-makers to help grow Code for Miami and its mission to build prototypes, advocate for open data, open up civic user testing to the community and to support people that are working on making Miami better everyday. Show up to one of our next meetups or email codeformiami@gmail.com if you are interested.
