Hacking for change at Google
By Patrick Copeland,
Google.org
Cross-posted with the Google.org
Blog
On June 1st and 2nd, thousands of developers from across the U.S. came together at nearly 100
different locations to participate in the first ever
National Day of Civic Hacking. Using
public data recently released by the
government on topics like crime, health and the environment, developers built new applications
that help address social challenges.
At the Googleplex in Mountain View, we hosted nearly 100 developers, statisticians, data
scientists, and designers, who stayed long into the night hacking together prototypes that
show how data on health and the environment can be used to enrich lives.
Fusion Tables and
Google App Engine were used to
prototype, and groups relied on
BigQuery as a workhorse to crunch
the biggest datasets. Participants used Google+ Hangouts to connect with hackathons in other
states and collaborated with Google Apps and platforms.
Here are a few highlights from the hackathon that stood out as useful, visually stunning, and
informative ways to use public data:
- Eat Healthy for
Less, the winner of our Mountain View hackathon, is a mobile web application that
uses the Consumer Pricing Index to suggest healthy recipes that can be made on a
budget.
- Data+, a reimagining of how we
access data, can make exploring public datasets more intuitive and easily understandable for
everyone.
- Detoxic.org is a web experience and
Android app that shows you toxic sites and landfills nearby that you might not know about so
that you can take civic action against toxic waste.
Many of the ideas have great potential, and we are encouraging participants to
continue their work. We hope that the National Day of Civic Hacking will be a catalyst for
innovation in this space, and encourage you to keep track of our tools for civic developers at
g.co/civicdevelopers.
Congratulations and thanks to everyone who participated!
Patrick Copeland is director
of engineering at Google.org, where he works to build systems that leverage Google's reach to
help people around the world.
Posted by Scott Knaster,
Editor
