ThinkChicago - Lollapalooza

[derekeder]

Date: August 1, 2018

Event summary

ThinkChicago is part of ChicagoNEXT, an initiative of World Business Chicago. The goal of the program is to draw university students to come live and work in Chicago.

As part of their programming around the Lollapalooza festival, they bring in 200 college students to participate in a 'civic tech challenge'. I have been advising them on this challenge for the past 3 years and have mentored students and spoken on panels about civic technology.

This year, I gave a keynote address and talked about 'The opportunity of civic tech'. Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_PFnqOJXQibk3pnz7eBo0W7iURsweZPEfqQUa3FfAP0/edit#

After my talk, a panel discussion was held with Adam Hecktman (Microsoft), Kate Olson (UI Labs), Aviva Rosman (BallotReady), Carleton Nolan (Chicago CTO), Thomas Stovall (Im Black in Tech) on civic tech in Chicago.

Here are the civic tech challenge prompts for the students:
TC_Prompts_2018_FINAL.pdf

Takeaways

• My talk seemed to go over pretty well. Got lots of good questions from the students both during Q&A and after
• Is There Sewage in the Chicago River and Chicagos Million Dollar Blocks were probably the best received
• The panel that happened after my keynote was pretty cool to see. The focus was on civic tech in Chicago and it was a bit of a trip to see people I didn't really know (though some I did) talking about how they got into the field of civic tech. We're legit!
• Afterwards, the students participated in an ideation challenge that was facilitated by Beth Bond and Jason Kunesh and mentored by about 20 different volunteers (I did not participate in that part)

Photos

Panel discussion

Next steps

I will continue to participate in future ThinkChicago events. They do two each year - one around Lollapalooza and one in the Fall.