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Creepy cafe drawings up at @grandcoffee, purveyors of perrfectly brewed coffee! ☕️☕️☕️ (at Grand Coffee SF)

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We've hit the halfway mark for the 2014 Fellowship! For a high-level look at what we've been hacking on and what we have planned on the horizon, check out our Mid-Year Report

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Building a LocalWiki Changebot

One thing that became obvious soon after becoming part of the Code for America family was the abundance of community-focused wikis – sites where anyone can contribute, intended to facilitate community around shared knowledge. Some cities have very successful and robust wikis (I'm looking at you, OaklandWiki), but others have some work to do to catch up.

During National Day of Civic Hacking last year in Lexington, OpenLexington (the local Code for America brigade) launched LexingtonWiki, which is built on LocalWiki. Unfortunately, it hasn't yet gotten much traction, which is a huge bummer! Team Big Lex thought it might be cool to have Twitter notifications when a page on the wiki is edited/updated to try and publicize the wiki and get more folks editing. Turns out it's a pretty easy thing to set up.

This is how we did it:

Every LocalWiki instance has a Recent Changes RSS feed, and there's a pretty cool but casually hidden/relatively unknown feed for those changes. It lives at http://[your wiki's URL]/Recent_Changes/_feed.

Discovering that feed was great! From there, we set up a recipe in IFTTT to automatically tweet when that feed was updated.

IFTTT stands for IF This Then That. It's a service that allows you to combine internet services – in this case, a connecting a feed update to Twitter. People use IFTTT for all kinds of stuff: getting a text message every day with the day's forecast, backing up their contacts to a Google Spreadsheet, or saving their Instagram photos to Dropbox.

Setting up a recipe in IFTTT is pretty straightforward. After you get an account and log in, click Create a Recipe.

Click the link where it says "this" and select Feed from the list of triggers.

Since every item added to the feed is a new change, you can select New feed item as your trigger.

Copy and paste the URL for the feed into the box provided and click Create Trigger.

Click where it says "that" and choose Twitter as your action channel. You will probably have to set up IFTTT such that it can interact with your Twitter account, if you haven't already.

Under Choose an Action, click Post a tweet.

Now you can compose your tweet. The EntryTitle and EntryUrl fields will be automatically populated from the feed. The rest of the tweet is all yours to compose! When you're done, click Create Action.

Look over everything to make sure you like it, and then click Create Recipe.

Boom!

You have a LocalWikiBot. Recipes on IFTTT are triggered automatically every 15 minutes, so if you have a lot of edits, expect a flood of tweets on that mark. You can also set up your bot to have an action outside of Twitter: check out the full list of possible channels here.

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City Spotlight: Chad Cottle

This week's city spotlight is none other than tech guru extraordinaire, Chad Cottle. Chad is a huge ally to the Code for America Lexingteam, and we love seeing him when we're in town!

Who is Chad Cottle?

Chad is the Director of Enterprise Solutions for Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government. This means he's in charge of IT programs and IT security for the city, and is one of the touchstones for making sure that the city's computer systems are running smoothly! 

What else can he do?

Chad is the city partner for OpenLexington, Lexington's Code for America brigade, and Collexion, a local hackerspace. He was instrumental in getting the city's open data portal off the ground as the Chair of Lexington's Open Data/Open Government initiative. He is majorly focused on promoting transparency in government and pushing local technologists to get involved in the civic space, and he desires to make the tech community in Lexington a more welcoming and diverse place!

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Post by Chad Cottle.

Chad seems super cool!

He is! One super cool thing he did was invite us (Livien and Lyzi) to speak to his daughter's Girl Scouts troop back in February about being ladies in the technology field. We got a chance to talk about internet safety and some of the things that are possible with computers, and then we all worked together to create our own custom web maps of Lexington!

Thanks, Chad, for being so rad.

To get in contact with Chad, you can find him on Twitter at @OpenDataLex.

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Save Couchy from the Flaaaaaaaames!

During many of our chats with folks all over Lexington, we heard tales of basketball-related celebrations devolving into gigantic couch fires in several university neighborhoods. And based on our observations, it ends up being a fairly serious problem. Fortunately, Lexington has great public safety departments, and the police and fire department manage the issue pretty effectively.

That said, we wanted to contribute to the phenomenon in our own small way.

Introducing Couchy, the couch with a personality. Couchy has one very urgent need: prevention from being burned! Naturally, Couchy has a campaign website that offers you a deal: if you tweet at Couchy, you will become active as Couchy's best bud. Once you tweet, Couchy will send you a link to your own custom page that showcases you, Couchy's best bud, as a totally sweet dancing robot (proudly displaying #BBN on your chest). Your tweet is the caption.

Check it out:

Needless to say, Couchy exploded on the scene. Couchy debuted on Saturday of the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four against the University of Wisconsin, and it wasn't long before people were officially stoked (pardon the pun). Couchy made lasting friends in the twitterverse just in time for the @SaveCouchy account to become banned by twitter for being too friendly. (Couchy sent a few unsolicited tweets while preparing to go live, which, apparently, is against the terms of service.) But fear not, safety buddies, Couchy returned to the twittersphere stronger than ever for the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship game as @CouchyLives! The return was triumphant. The masses were mesmerized by Couchy's determination and vows of friendship. In the end Couchy thinks this hard work may have saved at least few pieces of furniture from the flames, which counts as a victory.

Couchy is a true Couch's couch.

P.S. Through a strange twist of fate we got to discuss Couchy's triumph on stage at a recent event at San Francisco startup GitHub! Wat? I know! It was crazy.

P.P.S. Please have a look at the code that drives the Save Couchy campaign!

.@CouchyLives @github #bbn @eeeschwartz @smithschwartz pic.twitter.com/d9iHoFLfrX

— Ainsley Wagoner (@ainsleywagon)

April 9, 2014

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City Spotlight: Brittany West

A mini e-interview with Brittany West, one of LFUCG's technology champs, big time!

In your words, what are your city responsibilities?

"Listen to the technology needs of the Divisions and implement effective, cost efficient solutions. I consider my position a service oriented role that works with all UCG staff to implement technological change where needed."

What city project have you been involved with recently? 

"From Feb 2012 to November 2013, I was the Project Manager for the routing system project at the Division of Waste Management. The goal of the project was to create operational efficiencies and reduce overall cost by optimizing collection routes and providing visibility into daily operations.

I was able to work with the team to successfully rollout Phases I and II of the project. As part of Phase II, we implemented technology to automate the workflow process from our Call Management Center (LexCall 311) to our collection vehicles. The current process passes service request from LexCall to the Waste Management onboard vehicle routing system and automatically closes out the call when the collection truck has serviced the request.

We moved from a resource and paper intensive process to a fully automated process which enabled Waste Management to reallocate administrative staff and reduce time to service ratios for citizens."

What do you love about Lexington?

"The City/County is beautiful both visually and culturally. There is nothing that puts life in perspective more than seeing a picturesque sunset or sunrise over rolling green hills with majestic grazing horses."

 Fun facts for fun's sake!

"My husband and I enjoy motorcycle road trips. I love to ride my Honda CTX 700 through the rolling hills and curvy roads of Lexington, KY.  I only wish the riding season was longer."

What a badass. Thank you, Brittany, for sharing what you're up to in the Lex!

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User Interviews: April Edition

While in Lexington last week, I conducted hour-long interviews with residents in order to gather feedback on project areas we're investigating. 

Fresh insights came out of responses to questions about notifications, parks, and general city communications. See below for some of our interview questions, common responses, and participant quotes:

What types of updates would you most like to receive from the city?

Special events, cheap/free activities, details about large development and public infrastructure projects. 

“There’s lots of press for commercial events in the city. I’d love something like Amazon that gives you recommendations for free and cheap activities you might be interested in.”

Would you opt-in for waste-related notifications, particularly, schedule reminders and missed pickup text message alerts?

Unanimously responded: No.

"Trash service is great here and the schedule's my own problem."

"I wouldn't use the service as I live in a development and waste goes into a dumpster there."

What are things you like about your neighborhood parks?

Programming for kids, community centers, well-maintained landscaping, pools.

"Gratz [park] is beautiful. There are fountains and flowers. Duncan could be beautiful but there's too much violence."

What are things you dislike about your neighborhood parks?

Crime (specifically in Northside), would like more community centers, would like more programming for youth. 

"A man was just shot and killed in Duncan park, I'm not going to walk through there."

"Needs to be more indoor neighborhood centers so communities can do more programming."

What were you looking for when you last visited Lexingtonky.gov?

Public meetings calendar, special event details, Rupp Arena development updates, affordable housing. 

"In addition to finding out about events, I've been following affordable housing progress. I can get copies of all the documents and follow the history through the city website."

Thank you to the participants for sharing their thoughtful responses!

PS. Fresh faces at happy hour events are great candidates for user study interviews. That's me being excited because these beerfans are about to provide valuable research insights!

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Many of you have asked what our timeline and process is like this year, to answer the question, here's a high-level look at our fellowship calendar!

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City Spotlight: Lori Houlihan, everyone!

Who in the Lex is Lori?

If you haven't already met Lori Houlihan, allow us to introduce you to the founder of March Madness Marching Band, board member at LexArts, board member on the Lexington Art League, one of the founders of Local First Lexington, devoted member of the Kentucky Fried Camp family *gasps for air* AND special events superhero at the Mayor's Office. Not to mention, mother of two and wife to Hap, a writer and a Holler Poet. 

What in the Lex is Lori doing?

What doesn't she do! If you have enjoyed yourself a street party, downtown parade, or really any kind of glorious Lexington public event, thank Lori for coordinating between the event organizers and city divisions who collectively "make it all happen". Coming up soon: Lexington Parks and Rec is throwing a summer series out at MoonDance amphitheater!

Connect with this super Lexingtonian

Twitter: @lolliloo

Email: lhoulihan@lexingtonky.gov

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City Spotlight: Reforest the Bluegrass

During our February residency, we encountered many citizens who were enthusiastic about increasing the tree canopy in Lexington.

On April 12th, join the +10,500 citizens who have volunteered to spend a day restoring streamside forests! Since 1999, Reforest the Bluegrass has planted more than 107,000 tree seedlings to improve urban watershed management and increase future tree canopy in the Bluegrass. Each year, this event marks another huge leap toward restoring the floodplains.

Achievements thus far:

More than 175 acres of floodplains restored

Around 75% first-year survival rates

Fewer than $125,000 of local government funds spent

More than $90,000 private funds raised

If projects were contracted out, it could have cost: $775,000.

Register for the event here. There shall also be free lunch and t-shirts, hooray!

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City Spotlight: Notifications in and around the Lex

As we have pursued various project ideas, a major goal of ours has been to leverage existing tools rather than reinvent them. One of our areas of interest surrounds timely communications between the government and citizens of Lexington. Getting the word out is a huge part of any organization’s mission, and the City of Lexington is leading that charge! In researching existing communication channels and seeking inspiration, we were impressed by what notification systems already exist for Lexingtonians. These include:

Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) has the Lexington Emergency Alerts and Notifications (LEAN) for Amber alerts, Golden alerts, and various emergency notifications.

LFUCG also whipped up construction blasting alerts for the recent CentrePointe blasting.

Fayette County Public Schools has notifications (instructions pdf) for closings and delays.

Take a look at these systems if you haven't already – they're pretty cool.

Also! As we're exploring the notifications space, we want to hear from Lexingtonians about their preferences with respect to notifications from government: what types of things would you like the city government to tell you about? This is pretty open-ended, so let your imagination run wild. Please email your responses to lexington@codeforamerica.org. Thanks!

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Lexington's Open Data Portal: An Overview

Lexington neighborhoods, classified by council district.

One of the coolest things we encountered during our time in Lexington was the city's Open Data Portal. The site, launched in November 2012, provides free and unlimited access to a whole bunch of datasets owned and maintained by the city of Lexington.

But what does that mean? What is open data, and why would you use it? How would you use it?

As of the last few years, open data and transparency have been placed at the forefront of priority lists for governments all around the world. As defined by Open Definition, "[a] piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike." From the federal government all the way down to local jurisdictions like Lexington, government agencies are taking steps to open their data to allow citizens to learn more about the place they live and become more involved in civic life.

What kinds of data show up on open data portals?

Typically, a large portion of open data is geographic data. Geographic data is the stuff that maps are made of – the lines that make up roads, the shapes that make up parks and buildings, and the markers that tell us where things are. You can take these different files – the roads dataset, the parks dataset, the buildings dataset – and layer them on top of each other to make a map, because the data includes location information. It's really cool stuff. (If you're interested in learning more about maps and how they're made, check out mapschool.io.)

What would one do with this data?

The value in open data comes from analyzing it and building applications from it. For example, Lexington's Open Data Portal includes historical council district data, so we could make something that shows how council districts have changed over time. It also has a dataset of hospitals, so we could make an application that finds the closest hospital to a given location.

Is there anything else on the open data portal?

Yes! The open data portal also has an applications page, which lists more places you might be able to find data and links to some applications that have been created using the data. One of the awesome apps using open data is called MapIt!. Created by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) GIS Department, the app allows users to type in their addresses and see lots of cool information about where they live – property valuation information, nearby landmarks, and voting districts, to just name a few. Such a cool way to learn about

Who were the awesome people who made it?

Credit for this awesome tool goes to Chad Cottle, Director of Enterprise IT Solutions at LFUCG, Awesome Inc co-founder Nick Such, and the rest of the great folks at LFUCG. Also heavily involved in the process was OpenLexington, Lexington's Code for America Brigade.

For more information on open data and Lexington's role, check out the city's Data Transparency page and OpenLexington's Open Data page.

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City Spotlight: Chase Southard

Who in the Lex is this guy? 

Chase is a bearded, bourbon-loving, Lexingtonian. By day, he can be found hacking away at CirrusMio. By night, Tuesday nights to be specific, Chase leads the OpenLexington meet ups. 

What in the Lex is he doing?

To brag on his behalf, Chase founded OpenLexington: a volunteer organization comprising software engineers, designers, gov geeks, students, any concerned resident, really. The mission is to promote local government transparency and empower citizens through open data. The volunteers recently made WhatsMyDistrict, a web app that allows you to look up your council district reps, state reps, nearest hospitals, and other essential resident info! 

Connect with this super citizen

Twitter: @southard @openlexington 

OpenLexington Meetups

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Rapid Feedback for Legislators

When writing software, developers strive for a rapid feedback cycle. They want to know very quickly the effects of the changes they’re making. For example, let’s say you’re creating blogging software, and you write some code that changes the sort order for comments: now the blog software sorts comments by the time they were posted. You want feedback as soon as possible to guide your next steps: does the change break existing comment sorting or slow down the blog’s performance? From a product perspective, does anyone actually use this new feature? If everyone uses it, maybe comments should be sorted this way by default. If no one uses it, maybe it should be removed from the interface altogether.

In talking with Councilmember Clarke of the 10th District, he described his own rapid feedback mechanism: the Citizen Advisory Committee. Once a month, Cm. Clarke meets with 14 citizens in his district, including 2 highschoolers, to help him assess issues from a variety of angles. They aren’t shy about giving him feedback about government and community issues  on their minds. Cm Clarke describes how useful this feedback is in informing his next steps. Like writing good software, writing legislation that represents the best interests of constituents is difficult, especially in a vacuum. A rapid feedback mechanism like a Citizen Advisory Committee is a great way to gauge potential impact of representative action.

Know of other good examples of rapid feedback in the legislative process? Let us know! @eeeschwartz @lyzidiamond @livienyin

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See you soon, Lexington! Thanks for being such a great host. We can't wait to come back and hang out again.

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Huge thanks to all the attendees at CodeAcross Lexington. Y'all rule, Big Time.

We had a, dare I say, Totally Kick-Ass! afternoon with brilliant coders, map nerds, city staff, students, and civic-minded Lexingtonians from all over town.

CodeAcross opened with roshambo and soul-healthy donuts to get everyone fueled up for the day. Over the course of the afternoon, participants hacked on What's My District, OpenStreetMap and Lexington Wiki. And like a boss, Sarah Vessels whipped up a budget visualization of Lexington (updates on this to follow). 

As performed by Erik above: Make like velcro and come together at the next OpenLexington meet up! Newbies especially welcome.

Hugs,  Lexingteam

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We took a walk 'n' talk tour with Griffin VanMeter of Bullhorn and Kentucky for Kentucky to learn about his work with NoLi CDC: North Limestone Community Development Corporation. 

NoLi CDC promotes short to long term goals established from within the North Limestone community. LuigART Maker Spaces is one such neighborhood project that will renovate a 14,000 sq ft malt factory and 40 shotgun-style homes to create an artist complex. LuigART will include homeownership and equity programs, artist-in-residence programs, an incubator, and various other shared spaces for makers to gather.

To share your vision of what you want to see in North Limestone, speak your mind at NoLi CDC