Civic Hacka-what?

By Kayla Gilbert | Published: April 24, 2013

Hack4Co

Hack4Colorado will be just one of 100 civic hackathons happening all across the U.S. on the weekend of May 31, all under the umbrella of the National Day of Civic Hacking. A hackathon is an event where computer programmers and others in the field of software development, as well as graphic designers, interface designers and project managers collaborate intensively on software projects. These events are food and caffeine fueled events where innovation happens and new ideas are born.

What does it mean to participate and support a Civic Hackathon? Well, it means different things to different people.

Some people come with visions of venture funding, a great new start up, building a company and becoming the next Techstars company. That’s a great aspiration but that’s not really the primary goal of a “Civic” hackathon. It could happen. You could build an app that really blows up and you form a company and sell this app to every city, state and municipality and retire like Ted Turner. But a Civic hackathon has a different spin. It’s about the community we live in and giving something meaningful back to that community.

There are others who come because they are just sick and tired of not having an app that tells them to move their car because it’s street sweeping day or they are desperate for an app that really addresses the Veterans struggle to overcome PTSD. At our last organizing committee meeting, one of our members was talking about their frustration of not being able to get live bus data to help her catch the next bus without standing around waiting. Can you get your head around that one? Imagine, you open the app on your mobile device or tablet and it tells you that the #6 will be at your stop in 2 minutes- better run!

Why will you come, invest a weekend, hack, collaborate, and compete? For the challenge? The food? The fun? The comraderie? To give back? For the prizes? Hack4Colorado promises to be challenging, super cool and if you’re good, very rewarding!

The organizers come from OpenColorado, PlaceMatters, and Executive Lattice. The sponsors include some great local companies like iTriage, SendGrid, ReadyTalk, Noodles & Company, Illegal Petes, Galvanize, COIN, and Commerce Kitchen.

Check it out at www.hack4colorado.com. Registration is open for the event, May 31st – June 2nd, and we’d love to have you! Come on and join the Geeks for the Good of Colorado! Follow @Hack4Co on Twitter for more updates.
If you missed the Hackathon we put on last year, you can read a re-cap of it here.

Re-posted with permission from writer, Ann Spoor. Original post here.

 

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PlaceMatters’ Work Published in Journal of Conservation Biology

By Jocelyn Hittle | Published: April 18, 2013
Alternative Scenario for BCD Region

Alternative Scenario for BCD Region

Since an important focus of PlaceMatters’ work is informed decision-making (and the technical tools this sometimes requires), I thought I’d share some more detail on one of our past projects, partly because the work–integrating ecosystem and hazard data into traditional planning– was recently published in the Journal of Conservation Biology. Co-authored by Patrick Crist of NatureServe, Kiersten Madden of the University of TX Marine Science Institute, Doug Walker of Placeways, Tashya Allen and Dave Eslinger of NOAA, and myself, the article, “Supporting cross-sector, cross-domain planning through interoperating toolkits,” includes work PlaceMatters (and partners) did to demonstrated the benefits of addressing conservation goals and hazard mitigation simultaneously through a holistic approach to traditional planning. The article focuses on two pilot projects, our work in the Charleston area and the work done by UT in the Mission-Aransas NERR, both funded by the Packard Foundation to investigate the use of tools to improve ecosystem-based management within traditional planning contexts.

I won’t go into the details here (since you can read the paper), but essentially PlaceMatters’ project, called Creating Resilient Communities, first focused on measuring: 1) how well the region would do with respect to the conservation goals identified by a team of regional experts and 2) how many people (particularly vulnerable populations like the elderly or low income households) would live or work in hazard prone areas if growth patterns in the region continued as is. We then suggested an alternative scenario that moved new development out of hazard prone and biologically important areas (which were frequently the same areas) to show how conservation goals and hazard mitigation goals were aligned. In addition to making a case for different growth patterns, the project tested a toolkit of analysis tools–  CommunityViz,  NatureServe’s Vista, and NOAA’s Roadmap for Adapting to Coastal Risk. While we found that they worked reasonably well together, there is still room for additional improvement in interoperability.

One of the reasons we use scenario planning processes like this one is to help people–stakeholders, decision-makers, members of the public–understand the linkages between sectors and topics, as well as the linkages between policy choices and the things that they care about. Scenarios let us explore possible impacts and see where there might be unexpected results.  Toolkits like the ones used in each of these pilot projects help us to better understand and communicate these linkages and potential outcomes. While there are improvements that remain that could make analysis tools, and the data they require, work better together, the real challenges to integrated planning are not technical.

Planning that truly takes into account the system in which we live–including natural, economic, and social systems–is frequently hindered more by the ways in which decisions are made than by the tools we use to model it. At PlaceMatters, we are working hard to make sure that decision-making is better informed by “systems thinking,” but this will take commitment from decision-makers, both individuals and agencies. Stay tuned for future blog posts about communities or organizations that are great examples of using scenario planning effectively to promote and achieve cross-sector, multidisciplinary, holistic decision-making.

 

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Big Data, Open Data and Planning at #APA13

By Jason Lally | Published: April 16, 2013

At APA in Chicago?  If so, join me at 4 PM in Regency C for a panel discussion on Big Data, Open Data and Planning.  We will explore themes around data, technology and urban planning with some of the leading minds in both planning and technology.  This aims to be not just a “how-to” session but also a broader cross-sector conversation where the audience and panelists can learn from each other.  The panel brings together senior technologists and the senior planning counterparts from San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, including:

  • John Tolva, Chief Technology Officer, Chicago
  • Peter Skosey, Executive VP, Metropolitan Planning Council
  • Gina Tomlinson - Chief Technology Officer, City and County of San Francisco
  • Teresa Ojeda - Manager, Information and Analysis Group, SF Planning
  • Gary Jastrzab – Executive Director, Philadelphia City Planning Commission
  • Andrew Nicklin - Director of Research and Development, NYC Dept of Information Technology and Telecommunications

Look forward to seeing you there!

 

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Planning + Civic Tech Happy Hour in Chicago, 4/15

By Jason Lally | Published: April 15, 2013

Join us 4/15 at 6:30 in Chicago during APA for a Planning + Civic Tech Happy Hour.  Hope to see you there!

#plantech

Monk’s Pub: 205 W Lake Street (Wells and Lake)

6:30p on 4/15/13

plantech

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SimCity and Scenario Planning

By Brad Barnett | Published: March 8, 2013

The internet has been bubbling for the last month or so about the latest release of SimCity. FastCoExist asked a number of urban planners and other designers (including some Open Planning Tools Consortium participants like OpenPlans) to face off to design the best city. Slate had its own take on what the game means for urbanism and open data. And then there’s the usual twitter traffic.

I should preface this by saying I’m not a SimCity devotee. In fact, I might be one of the relatively few technology-focused planners of my generation who was never into SimCity as a kid (it certainly got some incredulous looks around the office). But games like SimCity pose some interesting questions for scenario planning:

Engagement and Analysis: Many of the tools developed for scenario planning look and feel as though they were built for analysis by professionals, and then “backed in” to use as engagement tools. Games like SimCity tend to be set up the opposite direction: first as tools for engagement (in this case, recreational engagement) with analysis as a means to that end. What can we learn about structuring the engagement components of scenario planning tools from games like SimCity?

Making Data Compelling: As the Slate piece points out, the volume of data available in planning presents a challenge to decision-makers (whether planners or game players). At PlaceMatters, we spend a lot of time figuring out how to select and present data in a useful way in our own scenario planning work. I’m really interested in how SimCity uses alerts, dashboards, or other mechanisms for showing the right data in the right way at the right time.

3D Visualization: From the screenshots I’ve seen of the new SimCity, it carries forward an aesthetic common in video games, which differs from the “SketchUp in Google Earth”-esque graphics common in planning. Given how quickly 3D visualizations in planning tools have been evolving, it’s worth thinking about the cityscapes and other representational decisions made within SimCity.

Short-Term vs Long-Term thinking: One of the pillars of scenario planning is working through the implications of choosing between short-term vs long-term outcomes. As the FastCoExist article pointed out, one of the main comments from the planners playing the game was that the value system embedded within it tended towards short term rewards. Are there lessons in the way SimCity structures those short-term vs long-term tradeoffs that could help scenario planners frame such issues?

Process: One thing games like SimCity rarely deal with is the process of making decisions in complex socio-political environments. Yet, it’s often those decision-making pieces that shape how scenarios on paper (or pixel) are actualized. Games and scenario planning tools that allow players to interact in richer, more collaborative ways is a direction in which many games are moving (see Minecraft or the nascent multiplayer features in SimCity).

I’m hoping to dig into the new SimCity soon and flesh out some of these thoughts, and I’d love to hear from those that have already started playing around with it.

(crossposted at scenarioplanningtools.org)

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Welcome Jill Locantore to the team!

By Jason Lally | Published: February 20, 2013

JillPhotoSquarePlaceMatters is pleased to announce the addition of Jill Locantore, AICP, to our team. As the Director of the Sustainable Solutions Group, Jill brings her years of expertise in regional planning, community engagement, scenario planning, and collaborative decision-making to managing our on-the-ground projects across the U.S.

Jill’s work will ensure our projects continue to support informed, equitable, transparent, and lasting community decision-making. She will initially be working closely on The Mansfield Tomorrow Plan and the New River Valley Livability Initative, as well as working across the country as part of the PlaceMatters Capacity Building Intermediary team. In addition, as Director of the Sustainable Solutions Group, Jill will manage our overall project portfolio to provide opportunities to deploy innovative decision-support and engagement tools and share our successes and challenges, to advance the state of the art.

In her previous positions with the Denver Regional Council of Governments (DRCOG) and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), Jill worked with local governments, partner organizations from various sectors, and state and federal agencies to design and implement planning processes that were at the forefront of the use of novel public engagement and decision-making tools.

Jill has a Master’s in Community Planning from the University of Maryland with a specialization in land use and transportation, a Master’s in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Toronto, and a BA in Psychology from Pomona College in California.

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DIY Touchtable User’s Conference

By Ken Snyder | Published: January 11, 2013

February 26-27, 2013
At the historic Rice Lofts in
Downtown Houston, Texas

DIY Touchtable imageJoin us for the first ever gathering of DIY touchtable users to learn from experts and peers in the use of low-cost, do-it-yourself touchtables that can dramatically improve community planning and decision making. The two-day workshop is organized by PlaceMatters and the Texas and Delaware Sea Grant programs of Texas A&M and the University of Delaware.

Registrants already include planners, ecosystem managers, educators, and public outreach professionals from across the country.

·       10 continuing education credits for APA planners

Visit the conference website for agenda, registration, accommodations, and travel. Register today, space is limited!

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Smart devices hold promise for DIY innovation*

By Ken Snyder | Published: January 2, 2013

photo*Smart devices hold promise for DIY innovation but in order to fully tap their potential, developers need to keep their promises on providing open source code, or at a minimum, access to an interoperable API.

While at the Open Planning Tools Symposium in Portland, I took a detour to the Apple Store with the lure of tax free purchases. A hour later I left with the startup kit for the Hue Personal Wireless Lighting System in hand. Not cheap, but I was persuaded in the end when the sales clerk mentioned the SDK to control the color/brightness of the bulbs was open source. Using your iPhone or computer, you can have up to 50 bulbs connected to a single system with settings for each bulb (including a clever setup that allows you to match and map colors to photos). I had immediately thought of a use with our DIY touchtables and the scenario planning workshops we conduct. If we added a bulb to each of the DIY touchtable tripods, people could scan the room and see the relative performance of each table linked to indicators in the analysis.  During report out, people could see the extent to which others were able to balance different planning objectives (i.e. farmland preserved while adding jobs and housing to the region).   The performance of each group would be reflected in the color of the bulb prominently visible on the 6ft tall tripods, transitioning from from bright red to bright green based on indicator values.  To do this I would need the SDK to create a program that sends color/brightness information from each computer to each bulb, reflecting performance or an already developed interface that periodically retrieves the color/brightness values from a shared database (i.e. a Google Docs Spreadsheet).

Alas, the promise of a free SDK turned out to be an exaggerated selling point of the store clerk. When you visit the Hue website and the provided link for developers, there is nothing available for download, just a note that the SDK is coming, someday. This leads to a growing frustration of mine – companies that use the promise of open source as a selling point for choosing their product when the source code and/or SDK are not yet available or remain inadequate long after their stated timeline of availability. This is particularly troublesome when a tool developer uses the promise of open source to help get public funding and the funding they receive helps them get service-provider contracts with clients wanting assistance in setting up and using their application and yet the source code, including documentation, remain inadequate for anyone to be able to use the application on their own. In the case of the Hue wireless lighting system, I wrote an email to Philips trying to get a sense of when the SDK will be available. Their response was a vague promise that it will be available soon.  Whenever someone uses open source as a selling point, we should be vigilant in getting the details on what will be made available and, when we can, hold them accountable to what they promise.

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