Crafting high-quality civic technology — projects and tools designed with social impact in mind — requires thought, creativity, and intentionality — the strength to ask:
“Will this project actually have social impact? Is it being designed for the social/cultural/political context in which it will be implemented? And if not, what steps do we need to take and what people do we need to substantially involve to get there?”
Our approach to community-building in the name of civic tech should be the same.
In a recent case study, we review how open format models (like hackathons and unconferences) can be remixed and reinvented to encourage an outpouring of “non-traditional” engagement with civic tech without _alienating tech veterans. Our focus: The Tech Embassy, a a pop-up, interactive science fair for local tech and art that took place on May 3, 2014 during Washington, DC’s first-ever Funk Parade. (_Yes, that’s right: A “Funk Parade” with a civic tech agenda.)
In parts 1 and 2 of our 6-part study, we review the framing exercise used to derive the criteria and audience for and guide organizing for The Tech Embassy. Full text available here.
Part 1: Set Goals You Can Hold Yourself Accountable To
[Or, Why We Didn't Have a Funk Parade Hackathon]
“Hackathons.” That’s one of the most popular answers to a question you haven’t asked yet: How do you organize your local tech community to do X/attend Y/engage with Z?
For several years now, hackathons — gatherings of programmers (and, sometimes, issue-area practitioners) for deep dives into particular data-sets, problems, or concepts — have been deployed like flytraps, tenuously designed to attract and entertain developers so that “tech” could be tied to this or that event, with extra cool points assigned for maximizing opportunities for free labor and “community building”. But hackathons (and their kin, code nights) aren't the only way to attract and engage your local tech community — particularly when it comes to_ civic_ tech.
But not all hackathons are terrible and ill-deployed: Initially, hacks were designed as temporary spaces for group problem-solving and prototyping (think: business accelerator meets science lab) and sometimes, just for straight-up creativity (think: 48 Hour Film projects). These kinds of hacks, when focused — like this incredible tiny hackathon that helped the city of Washington, DC radically open up its legal code—can be wildly effective platforms for production and (despite earlier grumbles) for community building — in-group community building.
At hackathons, people who speak the same language (i.e. Python, Ruby, GIS) or who care about the same issues (elections, transparency, their city) can quickly collaborate, form bonds, and share skills. In this way, hacks are not only useful iteration spaces, but also play the role of solidifiers for those _parts_of your tech community with technical commonalities—those that code or see code’s value.
But what about the rest of your tech community? What happens when we scale the definition of “tech” beyond command lines? When we scale “the community” beyond tech creators?
Earlier this year (before my time at the Open Technology Institute), I was approached by the organizers of DC’s first-ever Funk Parade — a street fair, foot parade, and music festival celebrating Washington, DC — to integrate the local tech community into the main event. Beyond the never-realized Robot Dance Competition (where one could could either compete with a robot or do The Robot — come on, comedy gold) and The Tech Embassy (which I’ll get to in a minute), the initial scope of the work included (drumroll!) a hackathon.
Now, there was most certainly a world where, with the right combination of available data, tools, creativity, and time, we could have pulled together a pretty well-organized hack related to local music with a bunch of technologists and maybe some musicians, but that world was not this one. Besides a number of small design challenges (such as limited time to organize and lack of focus), our organizing team was stuck chewing on an important question: Who would a Funk Parade hackathon be for?
Most of Funk Parade’s programming was about building bridges — between black and white, old and young, geographic divisions in the city, you name it. Could a Funk Parade hackathon function the same way and provide a bridge between DC’s tech scene and “the rest” of our local culture? Or, put another way: Was a hackathon the right vehicle to execute on the Funk Parade vision of unified community?
This was happening literally right outside The Tech Embassy for the entire afternoon. Could you resist checking it out? Photo by William McCann.
Many hackathons — particularly in the civic tech space — are open to (if not craving for) non-technologists, but that doesn't make them level playing fields. First-timers at hackathons face a learning curve (“what is a hackathon”, “what can I contribute”), and most require a certain intensity of time and focus from participants that wouldn't be a great match for the feel and flow of Funk’s other programming — a booming street fair with ongoing street performances, art installations, and other kinds of movement and mischief. If we were going to create a centralized hub of activity for local tech, we wanted to build a space that fit right into the mix.
Our framing criteria were:
- Low barrier to entry: Attendees should be able to walk in, figure out what’s happening, and be able to quickly find a way to be involved (whatever their threshold for involvement).
- Pro-amateur and pro-expert: Attractive to attendees of different technology skills (in terms of a diversity of skills — robotics! Rails! avid Facebooking!) and skill levels.
- Easy to stay, easy to leave: No one should feel trapped inside all afternoon with a Funk Parade going on! Or friends to visit, kids to watch, laundry to do, etc.
- Interactive — offline and online: Everyone should have the opportunity to play, build, or otherwise contribute to one or more tech-related projects present (emphasis on _everyone) without _opening a laptop. (Not everyone would have a laptop with them, nor are laptops perfectly suited for social engagement or essential for all types of tech.)
- Focused on “civic tech” in the broadest sense — projects, tools, and tricks anchored in the social and political life of our neighbors. If nothing else, projects centered on improving, enjoying, and exploring the place we live would be something where 99% of Funk Parade attendees could find a piece of common ground.
Part 2: Let Your Audience Dictate Your Design
[An Intro to The Tech Embassy]
You can run through the criteria above and still end up deciding a hackathon would be the best fit. We almost did. But when we started sketching out the “who” that we wanted to respond and feel invited by the event we were crafting based on our criteria, the event itself changed.
Our “who” was two-fold: (1) technologists, geeks, nerds, makers, and other signifiers of the technically inclined and, more broadly, (2) DC-ers (age 2 to 92) out enjoying their Saturday afternoons.
To accommodate both “groups”, we needed an environment that simultaneously gave technologists the communal feel of a hackathon and gave those who_ didn't_ identify as technologists the comfort of being in a space where their tech knowledge (or lack thereof) didn't matter [Criteria 1]. To pull this off without trivializing the contributions of any one particular group, we decided to de-emphasize specific tech skills (i.e. coding) and instead prioritize interactivity — and, dare I say, fun. Focusing on interactivity in this way meant thinking about unconventional learning opportunities (like turning pre-teens into teachers), being intentional about the physical layout and feel(!) of space, and diversifying the kinds of projects available to explore. [Topics we’ll explore in more detail below.]
The model we ended up with we called The Tech Embassy, a pop-up, hands-on science fair for DC tech and art made by residents for residents.
The Tech Embassy was embedded within Affinity Lab, a local co-working space along the main strip of the street fair. The name was a play on the struggle we ourselves were having, defining a somewhat arbitrary line between the “tech community” and “the rest” of DC. Rather than continuing to ignore this tension, we saw “The Tech Embassy” as a chance to confront it and begin to address the need to integrate and collaborate as one within DC’s broader culture.
On May 3, 2014, we launched our experiment with over a dozen partners* from the local art and tech scene. The response was explosive: Over the 4 hours of the event, nearly 400 people visited to explore projects from local civic hackers like Code for DC, Code for Progress, and tweens from Capitol Hill Montessori School (seriously, check out their project), to reimagine tech with the Open Technology Institute (more about that here) and doodle on a graffiti wall, to play Scrabble, make over 100 LED throwies (DIY light art), learn how to 3D print with DC Public Library, dance to funk music from local DJs, learn the history of go-go music (a native DC genre of funk), and share memories of live local music for a new cultural data project.
For more from this case study, check out these excerpts:
Part 3: Structure Horizontally, Not Vertically
Part 4: To Increase Engagement, Play With The Familiar
Part 5: Lead, But Be Leaderful
Part 6: Final Thoughts: Build With, Not For
[Full Piece] So You Think You Want to Run A Hackathon? Think Again.
