From the Shit-I-Shoulda-Posted-Last-Month Department…
Approaching the eve of the Obama inauguration, the president-elect made a national call to service. Our consultancy was just then moving into our brand-new office on Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Being a technical bunch of web developers, we decided to put our programming skills to charitable use. We wanted to see what we could hack out in a day. Plus, what an auspicious and fun way to break in our new office.
We had recently heard of the Apps for America web site challenge, which is an effort to promote government transparency by exposing public data via new web site interfaces. It seemed forces were aligned, so we grabbed whoever was willing to code that day, and we went for it.
Sixteen hours later we launched http://localpolitics.in/ The site simply asks a citizen for their zip code, and returns a page showing their congress people, and a list of the top ten presidential campaign donors. Our initial feature-set was purposely small. We just wanted to get the ball rolling. But we've set the stage for easily consuming and presenting data from the Sunlight Labs, and similar web data services.
It's exciting to see what can be pushed out in a day on the web. Interesting times. Big thanks to all who participated! Especially Dennis Eusebio, from Thought + Theory, who gave us a killer design on short notice, and who stuck it out to the very end late at night.
Now, we have to decide if/when we go for a Round Two. Apps for America submissions are due on March 31st. Winners will be announced on April 7th.
Other Coverage
- Obie Fernandez: Getting our National Service groove on with Apps for America
- Adam Lowe's Blog: A Great Resource in LocalPolitics.in
- Open Source on GitHub: http://github.com/hashrocket/localpolitics.in
The Hackers
- Adam Lowe
- Big Tiger
- Jacqui Maher
- Obie Fernandez
- Sandro Turriate
- Dennis Eusebio
- Tim Pope
- Wilson Bilkovich
Original Post on usaservice.org
http://www.usaservice.org/page/event/detail/dayofservicejanuary19/4v95k
Hack on code at the beach! Put your technical skills to their best use for charity. We're a fun bunch of developers who live at the beach. Our company, Hashrocket, is hosting a hack day. Our plan is to develop an "Apps for America" web site (http://sunlightlabs.com/appsforamerica/). It's not about the money, it's about coding for a cause.
