To help us prioritize bugs and features to fix and implement in Spokin we are organizing a focus group for October 18th with the help of Open Seattle. If you are a member of the civic tech community please consider joining! Community Tech (Spokin) Focus Group Tuesday, Oct 18, 2016,…
Participating in Microsoft’s Hack for Good program
This year we participated in the Microsoft “Hack for Good” subdivision of their oneweek hackathon, working with several people internal to Microsoft to explore a problem for Spokin. The Nonprofit Hackathon session was brought to us by Microsoft Philanthropies, the Garage and 501 Commons, hosted on the Microsoft Campus on May 23rd. Here was our…
Spokin Soft Release Party
This July we hosted a party in the cloud room celebrating the “soft release” of Spokin. The site is still pretty rough around the edges, but we knew it was time to start engaging users and soliciting feedback as we approach a final release in the fall. …
Spokin Visualization at the UW iSchool Capstone Event
This spring we had the opportunity to work with a student group at the UW for an iSchool capstone project. As a final project before graduation, a team of students created a general purpose network visualization for our Spokin communities using D3. They wrapped up the project with a poster and demo…
Demo’d Spokin at the City of Seattle’s Open Data Policy launch event
As users of the City of Seattle’s open data, we’ve been really excited about the proactive stance the City has been taking toward increasing transparency and engagement with citizens through their Open Data program. They recently “launched” a new Open Data Policy, formalized by having the Mayor sign…
Ignite Talk: The Data is In: (Top 5 Ways) How to Improve your Neighborhood Community’s Wellbeing
Our Executive Director Shelly Farnham gave an Ignite talk last week to a sold out house of over 800 people at Town Hall last week. Below is the video, and a slightly extended version of the talk in text. The Data Is In: How to Improve Your Neighborhood Community’s Wellbeing Greetings everyone! …
Network visualization in Spokin
Network visualizations are a risky feature to add to community tool. While they can provide a good overview of a community and its connections, they require some training to interpret, so are often not well received by every day users. Still — we wanted to explore the option, so were…