I had a great weekend doing something good for my community. that also related to my work. I participated in (and minimally helped organize) the Burlington event for the First National Day of Civic Hacking arraigned by Code for America and the White House. Code For America has ;Brigades’  all over the country here civic minded programers volunteer their time to work on software to help their communities. I’m trying to get more folks in my company to participate in these Civic Hacking events because a) its good for the community and b you can pick up some great skills while helping out.

I actually learned about the Burlington brigade through a work friend in California..He got me n touch with the Code for BTV Brigade leader Bradley who is a great guy !  and one of the key organizers of the event this weekend  How funny is that ?!.. I’m really glad I did. I got to work with about 50 folks over the last two days.  In fact we had 50 hackers. 9 projects. for over  675 hours of volunteered work.

I lead the Open Data track.. One of our teams created an app that scraped vt wildlife fish stocking schedules to make that info available to the public in a cool mobile app.

Another group I worked with got a small start on a system that will allow people in town to look at the aggregated data from the new smart meters we have in town .. This is a tricky issue because of privacy.. so we will be meeting with BTV Electric over the coming months to ease in. Our idea there is to start on public buildings like schools. then progress to providing more anonymized data for other buildings.. stay tuned..

But the main ‘open; project  I worked on is called “Lake Craft’ . At the Water Summit last wee we discussed trying to get more kids interested in the lake champlain basin by creating a game.. I liked ht eidea in pronciple, but realize how hard it is to make a game that doesn’t suck.. and a game that does suck is only played once….

The idea around this came from my friend Nina from Echo.  She ‘is the director of kid programs at echo and realized that the kids are always tlaking about the game Minecraft. Her idea was to ,port the GIS data from the lake Champlain basin into Minecraft then allow kids to explore the lake geography, biology and history via their favorite game.  Amazingly we found Nick and Will to help us out.. Nick is both a GIS (map) expert and Minecraft player.. Will is a Systems guy.. Between the three of us we were able to import the  GIS dtaa into the game, get it hosted up on amazon and create a primitive way of importing google Skketup files of hthings liek buildings into the world.

 

 

Here you can see camels hump .. the mountain near my home in blocky Minecraft form.. Ta da !!!

 

And here I am standing in the rain about the site of the ECHO building

 

We still have a long way to go.. but based on this weekends progress we are pretty sure that kids that visit Echo will be able to play Lakecraft’ and explore the lake.. then go home and play it on their own computers..  And.. were goin to engage the local schools and other volunteers ins an open eosystem to help us augment theLakecraft world with cool things for the kids to visit while theyuer’ playng (eg Shipwrecks,  villages, etc) It’s going to be awesome, I think.

 

My thanks to the team for all their work .. I really look forward to working with Code For BTV on more opn data  projects in the coming year. If you’ve never done Civic Hacking.. Give it a try.. you’ll feel good and learn so much !.. I did !

 

I do have a few pics from yesterday I wanted to include today that I didn’t use because of my concern for my friends in Turkey .   One of the highpointes yesterday was gettign to see the stampmobile back up in vermont. That meant I got to meet my buddy Aaron for the first time face to face.. Aaron has been drivign the stampmobile cross contry for about 4 months.. He and I have mannnnnnnnnnnnny longgggggggggg talks when he needs to repair the machin in the field He’s become quite an engineer. It was so great to get to actually meet him face to face. He’s a totallly great guy !  (and the stampmobile was working great !)

 

Aaron also got to meet John and Colin who did far more work than I did on the rebuild of the stampmobile. They are the unsung heros of this project !

It was great being able to hang out with those guys for part of the day..  

one breifly noted thing.. there was soem great upbeat klezmer music wafting over from the Unitarian church. john and I walked up to check it out.  My buddy Sturat, our Taiko snesei was in their drumming. I  assumed that it was there a weeding going on… When My friend Mr Madden walked by I asked. He told me it was a Funeral.. for a great woman..
What a send off !

 

 

 

A few more random images.. then sleep.

 

The brandts were down on church street for jazz fest and sen me this picture of them standing on Floorish.. AWESOME

 

 

Diane , Gabe , the dogs and I took a hike up Hney Hollow after dinner.. and the place was swarmign with these cool orange newtS !

 

and finally some nice rainbow shots from Echo from ealrlier in the week..

 

OK. !am on a sunday.. Ugh.. didn’t mean to stay up late..

more from the road tomorrow.

 

nite al, nte sam

-me