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Discussion on: Global Scope Discussion (Jan 31)

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jayrav13 profile image
Jay Ravaliya

Excited to join this convo! As a developer, I'm most excited about this because I've been wanting to use my skills for civic projects, and it seems that it may be more important than ever to get involved now. I may not be at every rally, but it would be great to use my skillset in any helpful way possible.

So to kick off, any advice or resources for me? For example: best ways to approach these problems, resources for advice, currently ongoing projects, etc.

This is a bit high level of a question, but aiming to get a conversation going for us less familiar to get started!

Thanks!!

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letmelol2001 profile image
let mut guess

I just found this today, looks promising:
progcode.co/

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

That also brings to mind codecorps.org/. It's a good initiative and also a very well-run open source project.

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

Have you checked out their slack channel? Mostly curious about how active it is...suppose I could download it myself though :D

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I think so much of it is about drawing positive energy from the community and trying to capture it for long term gain, not just one-off projects that instantly lose momentum. Here in New York, we started a civic-minded tech group called Make A Diff and we do various events surrounding education, and getting down to work.

Last Saturday we did a sort of mini-conference on personal and organizational privacy and security and this Saturday we are having our second Workathon. The workathon vs hackathon difference in our mind is focusing on contributing to great long-term projects with leadership and momentum, rather than spreading ourselves too thin.

Not to say the hackathon model doesn't also work. I helped mentor the Debug Politics NYC hackathon earlier this month. The energy was great and so were the projects. I hope they grow to really become great tools.

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jayrav13 profile image
Jay Ravaliya

This is awesome feedback, thank you! Yes, I was at one of the initial Make A Diff meetings and intend to get more involved. Let me check it RSVP for this weekend is still open, would be great to join in and see how I can help.

As someone that has been to more hackathons than I can remember, it'll be nice to switch gears and take this approach, especially when it matters the most.

Thanks!

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Yeah, I think what we always need to remember is that we're in this for the long haul in most of what we do. Peter Thiel makes the point in his book Zero to One that the value of a startup is realized years or decades in the future, and not right away. Great book. Definitely not an endorsement of Thiel himself. I feel I need to say that every time I bring up that book. 😊

I think it's important to be steady and committed to projects even if that means less frenzied excitement on the initial push.