Why Arriving Early for Code for America Is Good: Special Code.gov Events
Between May 30 and June 1, Code for America is hosting their 2018 Summit in Oakland, California. The event is promising to be three intense days of creativity and innovation with technologists, public servants, and entrepreneurs speaking on the value of open source to our government and to the American people. There will also be vendors in attendance offering options and new approaches to the government’s design policy becoming more user-centered and data-driven, and of course, there will be success stories concerning civic duty on a digital platform and how citizen engagement and community serves as a collaborative platform coast-to-coast.
But why get there early? Sometimes, the best way to enjoy a conference is to get there before the event begins. You acclimate to the surroundings, get to know the venue and plan your approach to get the most out of the summit’s agenda. Another good reason to come out early for the 2018 Code for America Summit is the special events where you can clock in some one-on-one time with Code.gov. Okay, maybe it isn’t “one-on-one” but Code.gov has planned some special events for you to come out, ask us questions, and get to know the innovative minds behind the nation’s primary platform for Open Source Software (OSS) committed to sharing innovation with the public.
Pre-Summit Welcome Meet and Greet
May 29, 6:30 p.m. — 9:30 p.m.
Oakland, CA
The Code for America brigade OpenOakland is hosting a special social event with other brigade leaders from across the country attending the CfA Summit. The OpenOakland project teams are going to be on hand to chat, and they will provide a modest menu of snacks. This meetup will also serve as a “hacknight” in order to offer special guests and out-of-town visitors a look inside the various projects from OpenOakland.
OpenOakland will also be hosting lightning talks, quick five-minute presentations from special guests; and our own lead back-end developer Froilán “Froi” Irizarry will be in attendance to give attendees of this OpenOakland event an introduction to Code.gov and how guests can engage and become involved with #AmericasCode and the many dynamic projects accessed from our website.
Formed on the desire to build a community dedicated to innovation that would take Oakland into the 21st century and beyond, OpenOakland connects city leaders and municipal associates with local hackers in order to build digital services of all kinds with the end goal to improve Oakland. OpenOakland has evolved into a civic innovation nonprofit and continue to reach out to creative minds of all digital backgrounds.
Open Source Innovation in Government with Code.gov
May 30, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
San Francisco, CA
Based out of San Francisco, CircleCI enables government and corporate entities to rapidly build quality projects, at scale, and provides solutions for your DevOps needs. As CircleCI has worked closely with Code.gov in the past to help build our workflows, CircleCI is thrilled to host this special evening with the Code.gov team, to celebrate the 2018 Code for America summit. This will be an evening of our coolest projects spotlighted and a personalized tour on how to give back to the country one pull request at a time. As we say often “This is your code, and we have made it easier than ever to access it. Use it to spark America’s next breakthrough in innovation.”
Featured in the evening’s event will be:
Alvin Salehi, Senior Technology Advisor — White House
Froilán Irizarry, Lead Back-End Engineer — Code.gov
Daniel Dufour, Lead Front-End Developer — Code.gov
Ian Lee, Computer Engineer— Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
The agenda for the evening’s event will cover the following items:
Federal Source Code Policy and Code.gov Platform
One API to Share It All
One Module at a Time
A Success Story from the Department of Energy
Welcome to #AmericasCode
Questions and Answers
So while you may still be finalizing travel plans, think about clicking on the links above and coming out early to meet the Code.gov team. Say “Hello” to us at these events, and start up a dialog with us on code sharing and collaboration in order to help the U.S. government deliver the best citizen services we can. And make sure you find time to catch Alvin at his CfA event:
Designing Open Source Projects that Mobilize Communities
May 31, 3:00–4:00 p.m.
2018 CFA Summit, Grand Ballroom A&B
For open source, civic-focused projects to thrive and benefit society in a positive way, they must engage with contributors of both a technical and non-technical nature. Civic and societal problems are not solved with technical infrastructure alone. Alvin Salehi alongside technologists John Jones, Jordan Kasper, and Simi Damani, share stories and case studies of civic open source projects uniting stakeholders from government to tech-based companies to social impact organizations. This talk will plan to touch on the impact of OSS in both the civic tech and broader tech community, and what actionable steps CfA Brigade members can take to better activate their own community of contributors.
Find out from our team how we engender a civic duty through #AmericasCode, and if there are photos, tag us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Don’t be shy. We can’t wait to meet you.
Code on.
