Why we Code for Miami
We’re a little different from other civic hacking brigades. Here’s why.
Miami is a unique and wonderful place. It’s the eighth largest metropolitan area in the country, and more than half of all Miamians are born outside of the United States. The 2012 American Community Survey shows that more than 60 percent of Miami residents age five and older speak Spanish at home, and a third of those speak English less than “very well.”
In her 1987 book, Miami, Joan Didion described Spanish as the language of power in the city—heard in the nicest restaurants, the most important political discussions and in business meetings. Yet, many of our region’s governing documents, public meetings and websites remain geared toward English speakers.
This is where we come in: Code for Miami is a Civic Hacking Brigade, founded in June by Rebekah Monson and myself. We’re a diverse group of developers, designers, journalists, activists, city and county employees and engaged citizens, and we meet every Monday night at The LAB Miami, a co-working space in the Wynwood Arts District.
As we work with local governments to adopt open technologies, we’re also committed to building interesting and meaningful tools for people living in our city. To us, that means working to develop and document our work in multiple languages.
This is where the power of the Code for America Brigade truly shines. Inspired by Code for Hampton Roads’ website—available through an open-source license—we re-purposed the HTML code for http://www.codeformiami.org, and created an additional code repository for Spanish, available at http://es.codeformiami.org. Of course, the HTML of the Spanish translated website is available for use as well, for Brigades with Spanish-speaking communities.
“I was amazed that just a minor effort on my part to get things going, drew people from all over to build up and complete the site,” said Antonio Llanos, one of the contributors to the Brigade website project. “Working as a professional developer and IT manager for 18 years, I have seen tons of open-source projects, but to witness this first hand was an amazing experience. This is an organization that I see can accomplish great things, and I am proud to be a part of it.”
Our goal is to make what we build available to residents in the languages they use. We’re working on a TextMyBus app that features signage in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole. And we’re putting the county code into the State Decoded framework, with hope that it too might be translated in the future.
And that’s what the brigade is all about, isn’t it? It’s about using technology to create amazing tools and resources that inspire and engage our community. Here in Miami, we want people to be inspired to think about their communities and their governments in a more inclusive way. That effort can start with us.
Thanks to the contributors to this website project: Cristina Solana, Antonio Llanos, Miguel Herrsdorf, Virgiliu Diaconu, Robin Bijlani. If you’re interested in making Miami more accessible, efficient and responsive to residents, meet up with us on Mondays at 7 p.m. to hack this great place.
(Note: Rebekah Monson contributed to this article.)
