On Saturday, October 2nd, I had the pleasure of attending the Civic Tech DC x GW OSPO Hackathon, organized by Civic Tech DC and GW's Open Source Program Office. It was held at the Science and Engineering Hall at George Washington University. I had the opportunity to assist in the event by registering participants and generally helping out with inquiries. I later joined the attendees in the judging rounds. It was great to see everyone come together to solve real-world problems.
The hackathon featured two civic projects. RideScore DC is a project focused on building models that incorporate safety scores, a stable base map, or a production data pipeline, and developing interactive maps (UIs) that assess street safety in Washington, DC. I was fascinated by one of the demos where the builders built a 3D model of a cyclist navigating the streets of DC. It felt like playing a video game where you could control the cyclist with the keyboard. It included real images of buildings, streets, and surrounding areas where each object would change as the biker changed positions. I think this would really be helpful to someone who is unfamiliar with DC and wants to bike safely.
The hackathon also included another track on FEC (Federal Election Commission) data, which focused on pulling financial data from sources and showing where money comes from and how it affects political decisions. I saw that many participants built dashboards and visualizations to show this in detail. One of the participants built a mobile app that lets the user pick a state in the US for exploration. It then shows all House representatives and delegates in that state and lets users customize a representative with visual elements and share it. This project didn’t directly address the problem statements that the project was trying to solve, but it stood out to me because it could serve as a good starting point for people who are unacquainted with politics or for those who are not actively involved in civic life.
What made this collaborative hackathon fun and interesting was the fact that there were no winners. It mainly focused on collaboration rather than creating a competitive atmosphere. I have attended many hackathons in the past, and most of them felt like a competition. Participants usually focus on rankings, which could blur the line between collaborating to win and collaborating to learn. This hackathon, however, focused on constructive feedback from the judges, which allowed the participants to place emphasis on their project and to learn from each other.
Overall, this hackathon was a meaningful experience as I got to see people with different backgrounds gather together to tackle some of the challenges occurring in the city. I saw how technology can be used for public good, from helping people find safer routes while biking to making financial decisions in politics available to the public.