In this post I will discuss the meeting I had with code for the Carolinas.
Code for the Carolinas is a Civic Tech volunteer organization with a mission to use technology for the people of the Carolinas,
in service of more equitable and just communities.
They have weekly meetings to discuss the goals of the organization and to have "mapping Parties' '. The Goal of these parties is to go through and work on mapping a section of the maps we are working on through open sidewalks. We start every meeting with an ice breaker to warm everyone up. We had a good amount of guests show up for this meeting, some familiar with the project, others just getting started. Bucky, one of the speakers during the meeting, took the new folks to a break-out room to explain the project and how we use Openside walks to update the map.
Opensidewalks is an open source platform that uses geographic map data to create GPS routes for apps.
Our goal is to update the downtown Raleigh maps and the other eastern Carolina maps we have.
Since I was familiar with the platform I spent my time during the meeting updating a location in the Raleigh map. I updated a few curbs and then left a note on what I updated on the website. Other members were also updating maps and answering questions to those who needed any help.
One thing I took away from our meeting is that since Code for the Carolinas is a new organization they are looking for more prime members and growth. The projects are vast in scope and more members can make the updating maps much faster. But with new members there has to be a sense of direction.
So far I am a fan of Civic Tech and Code for the Carolinas is the first organization I've worked with. I would like to keep contributing to the openside walks project because I believe in the overall goal and because the platform allows for mr to add to the project whenever I have free time to update a map.
Code for the Carolinas has sparked my passion for online volunteer work. I am excited to explore the world of civic tech and see how I can lead my data analyst skills to a project. I could see myself in the future looking at starting my own Civic tech project and with an organization like Code for the Carolinas I would have a community that could help me set up my own project.
I'm currently learning to code and in our meeting we discussed future projects that seem to involve coding and that sounded exciting. I want to find more ways to be involved and as my skill set improves I know I can do more.
I would definitely recommend Code for the Carolinas for anyone that is interested in Civic tech or just looking for ways to contribute to the community even if it's in a small way. It is all Volunteer so you don’t have to pay for anything and there isn’t an exception for you to know how to do everything. Code for the Carolinas are more than willing to answer questions and help you get started.