Code for New River Valley just turned one year old and we couldn’t be more proud of all the things we accomplished in 2015. This time last year, we decided to start a Code for America Brigade in Blacksburg, following the lead of three other cities in Virginia and over 100 cities around the US. Incredibly, we have grown to 80 members, many of whom have come out to one of our hack nights or our events. We formed a number of partnerships and worked on a bunch of great projects and we are extremely excited to look back on all our work in our year in review. We’re also looking ahead to 2016 and we need your help! We’ve listed a number of ways that coders and non-coders alike can get involved.

Hack Nights and Events

Hack nights are our regular meetups where we work together on open source software projects that primarily benefit the New River Valley and Virginia communities. Thanks to TechPad for hosting every one of our 34 hack nights this year. We ate pizza and got a lot of great work done at these hack nights, but we’ll get to that later. We’re still meeting every other Thursday night. If you want to come help us in 2016, check our meetup page for the next hack night.

In addition to our hack nights, we participated both of Code for America’s days of action, Code Across and National Day of Civic Hacking.

Code Across took place in February and served as a way for us to introduce our young group to the Blacksburg community. Thanks to Virginia Tech’s University Libraries for co-organizing this event with us. Waldo Jaquith opened the event on a Friday night with a keynote speech about Open Government Data in Virginia. The next Saturday we conducted a number of theme based discussions between experts, stakeholders, and technologists where we explored applications of open data around mapping, journalism, and public policy and how technologists could help solve problems experts were facing. These discussions laid the groundwork for a number of partnerships and projects that we developed later in the year. This blog post has more about the event and a video of Waldo’s talk.

In May, we hosted our first Hackathon for National Day of Civic Hacking at Racksburg. Thanks to Rackspace for providing the space for our event and for encouraging a number of their developers to come hack with us. Three awesome projects were started that day, including SafeWalk Blacksburg, which we would finish and launch a few months later. Check this blog post for more information on the day and the other projects we worked on.

Partnerships and Projects

We are extremely proud of the partnerships we have formed this year and the projects we have worked on to help people in our community. We are so thankful for everyone who has worked to partner with us and to all the people who have put their time, effort, and energy into building these apps.

Thanks to the Director of Technology at the Town of Blacksburg, Steve Jones , and the Director of Information Technology at Montgomery County, Phil Martin who have been our primary government partners since day one. Without their support, many of our projects and partnerships would not be possible.

, and the Director of Information Technology at Montgomery County, who have been our primary government partners since day one. Without their support, many of our projects and partnerships would not be possible. We partnered with the Blacksburg Police Department to build SafeWalk Blacksburg, a mobile app that helps residents and visitors find safe walking routes in Blacksburg via color-coded road segments indicating our safety scoring.

to build SafeWalk Blacksburg, a mobile app that helps residents and visitors find safe walking routes in Blacksburg via color-coded road segments indicating our safety scoring. Blacksburg Transit shared data, resources, and tons of encouragement at our Hackathon and throughout the year on a number of projects that are still in progress, including a new text messaging service to get information about stop times.

shared data, resources, and tons of encouragement at our Hackathon and throughout the year on a number of projects that are still in progress, including a new text messaging service to get information about stop times. Virginia Tech’s University Libraries helped us host events and advised on working on open data projects with departments and research groups at the university.

helped us host events and advised on working on open data projects with departments and research groups at the university. VT Engage has connected us with the College of Engineering for two semesters to provide a small group of students who work on our projects for their community service course requirement. These students have contributed to Code for Hampton Roads’ Restaurant Health Inspection app and to OpenStreetMaps’ parking data in Blacksburg.

has connected us with the College of Engineering for two semesters to provide a small group of students who work on our projects for their community service course requirement. These students have contributed to Code for Hampton Roads’ and to parking data in Blacksburg. We provided advice and some technical help to the Appalachian Foodshed Project in their effort to use LocalWiki to share information between groups in the region who work to address issues of community food security.

in their effort to use to share information between groups in the region who work to address issues of community food security. We added Blacksburg to Code for America’s Click that ‘hood , a game that uses open data to help people learn about the neighborhoods in their city.

, a game that uses open data to help people learn about the neighborhoods in their city. We visualized the impact of two bills in the 2015 session of the Virginia General Assembly that proposed slight alterations to voting districts in Montgomery County . Our work on this project was covered in our regional newspaper, The Roanoke Times.

. Our work on this project was covered in our regional newspaper, The Roanoke Times. We collected and analyzed court case information to help the Roanoke Times report on area hospitals and their pattern of settling cases in a way that made them difficult to find. One of our Brigade captains received an award from the Virginia Coalition for Open Government for his efforts to open this court data.

Finally, we got some coverage in the press that we are pretty proud of — here, here, and here.

Looking Forward to 2016

We are looking forward to an even better second year as an organization, and we need your help and participation to make it the best it can be. Of course, we need coders to help us build cool things, but we also need more people to help us manage and operate the group. Check out the details below.

Projects

We always have projects that are ready to be worked on, and we encourage new ideas as well. Here are some of the projects that we hope to complete in 2016. Many of them are still in the planning phase. If you or your organization are interested in working on one of these, come to a Hack Night or just email Ben (ben [at] codefornrv.org) or Neal (neal [at] codefornrv.org).

NRV Park Finder — an app to make it easy to find the parks with the amenities users looking for

— an app to make it easy to find the parks with the amenities users looking for Blacksburg Parking App — an app that ties into the new electronic parking meters so users can find the best places to park downtown

— an app that ties into the new electronic parking meters so users can find the best places to park downtown Daycare Center App — an improved website to help parents across the state find daycare that fits their needs

— an improved website to help parents across the state find daycare that fits their needs WIC Nutrition Credit Mobile App — an improved application and approval process to help women and children in poverty get access to the supplemental nutrition resources the WIC program offers

— an improved application and approval process to help women and children in poverty get access to the supplemental nutrition resources the WIC program offers Virginia Tech Student Voter Information — a website to help Virginia Tech students navigate the registration and voting process in Montgomery County

Additionally, there are a number of other ideas that are ready to be started from interactive budget viewers for the cities and counties to simple things like redesigned websites for small towns. We love new challenges as well, so if you have something for us to work on let us know or come share it at one of our Hack Nights!

Hack Nights

Speaking of Hack Nights, our current schedule has them every other Thursday evening starting at 6pm at Techpad above PK’s in downtown Blacksburg. We are planning to have a speaker or special guest once a month at a Hack Night that will come in and talk about a particular municipal or nonprofit project or the principles surrounding our mission. We’ll keep everyone posted via the Meetup group, so be sure to join to get updates!

Get Involved

Finally, we need your help and involvement! There are lots of things to do and many different ways to contribute, whether you know how to code or not. Here are some of the areas we need help with:

Storytelling — a person who can talk and write about the various projects we’re involved with and share that on social media and with news outlets

— a person who can talk and write about the various projects we’re involved with and share that on social media and with news outlets Subject Matter Expertise — how do we take this Excel budget data and make it into a meaningful interactive chart

— how do we take this Excel budget data and make it into a meaningful interactive chart Fundraising and Network Building

Project Management

Liaisons with government and community entities

The typical time commitment is just a few hours a month. All you need is a passion to help your fellow citizens through better open data access and more efficient government and community organizations! If you believe Code for America’s mission and you want to get involved, please email Ben (ben [at] codefornrv.org) or Neal (neal [at] codefornrv.org).