Civic Hack Nights are about the magic of possibility

👋 Welcome

Hello civic tech friends! We welcome you to our July Newsletter with parting and inspiring words from our Code for San José co-founder, former captain, and Advisory Board Member, Michelle Thong:

“Civic Hack nights are about the magic of possibility.”

After 6+ years of bringing civic innovation to San José, Michelle will be starting a new chapter in the East Coast with her family and will continue her civic tech journey in Boston. This past Thursday on July 9th, Michelle spent her last Code for San José Hack Night as a San José resident by sharing her story on what led her to start Code for San José, guidance to finding purpose in government tech, and how to embrace change. A quick recap on Michelle’s presentation and our most recent hack night can be found below.

Michelle, we are honored and grateful to have you as our leader over the years. Code for San José wouldn’t be what it is today without your impact and exceptional guidance. You will be missed and we are excited for your new adventures in Boston!

Santa Clara County has updated its Shelter-in-Place ordinance, effective July 15th. This most recent statewide ordinance rolls back some reopening plans that allowed more non-essential businesses to operate starting on July 13th.

In response to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in California, the state government announced the updated ordinance on July 13th at 12PM PST, effective July 15th. We continue to encourage residents to remain at home and to continue to practice social distancing. We encourage residents to wear a mask. Check out this video from Santa Clara County Public Health Department: “3 Reasons I Wear a Face Covering” (and corresponding video transcript).

To see the updated ordinance, please go to the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health’s website. To find locations that provide free Covid-19 testing, please go here.

🎉 Code for San José Updates

In our efforts to continue social distancing, Code for San José will continue meeting and collaborating virtually for our hack nights until further notice.

On July 9th, we hosted a virtual civic hack night and map night featuring Michelle Thong’s Farewell Talk. Michelle’s civic tech journey simply started with her search for three things: projects, people, and purpose, initially mostly purpose. She discovered that she can find all of these three things in the gov tech space after experiencing her “first magic moment” during her first hack night at Open Oakland. Not long after, Michelle started Code for San José with Kalen Gallagher, and you know the rest. Here are some highlights, intriguing quotes, and inspiring words from Michelle’s Farewell Talk:

Michelle asked us, “Do you remember how you felt when you walked into your first hack night? Do you remember what you were looking for?”

“It’s really hard to beat the scope and scale of government because government brings impact.”

“The path to purpose is sometimes lonely and slow. It hasn’t all been floating from magic moment to magic moment. Lonely, slow, and full of doubt is part of that path.”

“Over time, what I was looking for changed. Originally it was projects to work on, then I started just coming for the people and that’s great. What Code for San José means to you can evolve over time.”

“Commit to making progress one step at a time in San José. My wish for you all is that you feel that magic and you are also a part of making that magic happen.”

“I’m thanking all of you for the role that you’re doing. It’s up to all of us to fulfill that promise of magic of possibility.”

Screenshot of Code for San Jose Civic Hack & Map night on July 9, 2020

Upcoming Events in our Community

The Code for All Summit is happening on July 20 & 22 (and it’s free)!

Join civic tech friends from around the world to discuss current and future issues, share ideas, and meet other people making a positive impact in their communities. The summit will feature presentations and workshops ranging from topics on collaboration in civic tech, civic tech’s response to COVID-19, and building skills as a community. Check out the event schedule for more information on sessions and workshops. Register here to get your free ticket to this exciting event.

We’re looking forward to these upcoming sessions:

• Code for Japan’s Response to COVID-19
• Inclusive Research & Testing From Anywhere
• East Asian Regional Collaboration
• One-Stop-Shop for City Data
• Women to the Front (& Backend) [Women + Non Binary Only]
• Discrimination in Funding for the Global South
• Building Tech Based on Public Values

Prioritizing users in a crisis & Civic Hack Night July 23 at 6:30pm PST

Join us for Civic Hack Night and learn how Aaron Hans, tech lead for CA.gov, and project leader with Open Oakland, prioritized users in a crisis — creating a fast and accessible COVID-19 response site with the State of California. Register here.

Save the date for National Day of Civic Hacking — September 12, 2020

Let’s help those most in need of social safety net services during COVID-19. Join Code for America brigades on Sept 12, 2020 for the 8th annual National Day of Civic Hacking.

Event Recap: People Power: Connecting Community to Government During COVID-19

Our co-captain Yan-Yin Choy joined Gregory Johnson of Code for South and Carlos Moreno of Code for Tulsa to share how Code for America brigades collaborated with local government to bring services online during the COVID-19 crisis. State Scoop covered our work to design a chatbot and a tool to help residents find free food and groceries, built in partnership with San Jose Office of Technology & Innovation. Check out the webinar recording.

📈 Project Updates

• San José Census 2020 is live on sjcensus.com. We’ll also be contributing to the City of San José’s Census 2020 campaign by creating graphic illustrations to promote the Census throughout the month of August. If anyone is interested in helping create these graphics, please reach out to Lorin (@lorin) on our #census2020 Slack channel.
• Meal Tally — Through the Summer Meal Service Sites, partners can deliver meals to families in need. Currently seven libraries are using our small web app to tally the data. We need writers to help us create training material to onboard new partners that want to adopt Meal Tally for their tallying system.
• Heart of the Valley is an open source map of public art and murals in the South Bay. We will be exploring adding data to Open Street Map. We are looking for someone to help us research any missing data on murals that went up from 2018–2020. View it on GitHub, live, or join the discussion on #heart-of-the-valley on Slack.
• Open Disclosure is a website to help people understand campaign finance for the November 2020 election in San Jose and South Bay. Our back end team is working to standardize the data’s schemata. The front end team is growing and the team will be utilizing GitHub issues to track project needs and bugs. The project can be accessed on Github and join us in the #open-disclosure channel on Slack.
• OpenStreetMap fixed mistagging on Wikidata. The team also reviewed the racial justice mapping projects in detail. Our volunteers like Minh Nguyen and Spencer Alves are helping to lead the broader OSM community in mapping for Racial Justice, not just in the South Bay but nationally. They are mapping racist statues in the United States. View the map and learn how to get involved. New members are welcome. No coding skills are required. Join us in our #osm channel on Slack.
• Code for San José website redesign is complete! Check it out at codeforsanjose.com.
• Bay Area Pandemic Dashboard (PanDa) — Live dashboard in collaboration with the Bay Area brigades (Code for SF, Code for SJ, & Open Oakland) to help people understand information on COVID-19 and to view data dashboards from each county. Erika Hudiono shared tips about improving security. Mark N worked on Open Data Advocacy and has played an important role moving the ball forward recently with Bay Area county data teams. Other Code for San Jose contributors have made great progress web scraping South Bay county data and curating county info for the website. We need help with: web scraping, SEO/Google Analytics, Topic Researchers, Digital Marketing and Product Management. More information on the #COVID-19-Response Slack Channel, or message Josh Freivogel, project lead from Code for San Francisco.
• Razing the Bar — Razing the Bar is a nonprofit that empowers former foster youth to be successful. Our volunteer An Nguyen has been working closely with Razing the Bar’s co-founders and Board of Directors to assist with creating a new landing page and multiple individual pages for their foundation’s website. Also, she has incorporated their personal statements to recognize George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter movement, which are published on the landing page.
• Security Stack — Erika Hudiono established monitoring for the three AWS-hosted projects. We will be exploring monitoring of Heroku and Netlify-based applications. To learn more join the #security-stack Slack Channel.
• Get Your Refund — This Code for America initiative Get Your Refund helps millions access $10.5 billion in unclaimed EITC refunds. Our volunteers have been helping for the last five months to close the gap and put cash in people’s pockets. Although the deadline has passed (July 15), there will be need for additional tax preparation support during the off season. Sign up to volunteer and get certified as a Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) volunteer. Questions? Check out #cfa-vita-folks in our Slack Channel, or message Diana Laster.
• Catalyze SV — Our volunteers have been working on adding visual elements to the nonprofit Catalyze SV’s project scorecards. Also, we’re exploring a potential UX collaboration on community engagement. To learn more, join #catalyze-sv-map Slack channel.
• Find Free Food Near Me — Use our tool to find free meals or groceries near you in Santa Clara County. Check out the repository on GitHub. We helped the City of San José improve accessibility, mobile responsiveness and user experience with the tool Find Free Food Near Me.
• Silicon Valley Strong Resident Assistant Chatbot — Our volunteers helped curate content and refine translations for the City of San Jose’s resident assistant chatbot, which is live on SiliconValleyStrong.org.

The 2020 Census will determine critical community resources for the next decade. When you respond, we all benefit. Please complete the census today online at my2020census.gov, by phone at (844) 330–2020, or by mail.

Thống Kê Dân Số #2020Census sẽ ảnh hưởng các tài nguyên cộng đồng quan trọng suốt 10 năm nữa. Lời trả lời của bạn sẽ có lợi ích cho tất cả chúng ta. Tìm hiểu cách trả lời tại my2020census.gov

El #2020Census determinará los recursos críticos de la comunidad para la próxima década. Cuando tú respondes, todos beneficiamos. Aprenda cómo #contarse en nuestro sitio web my2020census.gov

🐰 That’s all, folks!

Happy Summer! Most of our summer plans are looking different this year but we encourage everybody to take the time to enjoy the beautiful sunny Bay Area weather while social distancing, and wearing a mask!

If you’re hungry for more, here’s how you can find out what Code for San José is working on and get involved:

We will meet virtually for our upcoming civic hack night on July 23 and Aug 6.

To get in touch with us, email us at codeforsanjose@gmail.com, or find us on Slack. If you haven’t joined our Slack yet, sign up here.

If there’s someone from your organization who’s not getting these updates, but should be, send them this link to subscribe to our newsletter.

Until next month, take care, and let’s keep up the good work!

Team Code for San José

Yan-Yin Choy, Captain

Joseph Richardson, Captain

Annie Steenson, Captain

Minh Nguyen, Leadership Team Member

Dane Olsen, Leadership Team Member

Lena Tran, Leadership Team Member

Diane Labenz, Leadership Team Member

Cesar Arellano, Leadership Team Member

Kate Valdes, Leadership Team Member

Lorin Camargo, Advisory Board Member

Michelle Thong, Advisory Board Member

Namrata Challa, Advisory Board Member

Emily Ramos, Advisory Board Member

Erika Hudiono, Advisory Board Member

Darren Pham, Advisory Board Member

Sunny Mui, Advisory Board Member