Please give us feedback (Resend of message from meetup.com)

[Shawn Looker]

Hey Everyone!
We have a meetup coming up next Wednesday, and a lot of people haven't been showing up.  Now's your chance to tell us why!  Please tell me what you like most and what you like least about our meetings, or what would really cause you to regain interest and come back.  Ryan and I are new to this, and if we're doing something wrong or going over stuff that isn't very interesting to you guys, please let us know.  Our goal is to make this interesting for you guys so that we can get more people interested in civic hacking.
I'm pretty thick skinned, so please let us know how we can change for the better!
Thanks,
Shawn

[Shawn Looker]

So someone suggested that we have a project based session.  We started a bi weekly hack night for just this purpose.  As a group we brainstormed some ideas, and there were two projects that people were interested in.  

The first was a way to let normal citizens "adopt" a storm drain and make it easy to report if one was obstructed.  This program has been really popular in other areas.  Hawaii has "Adopt a Tsunami Warning Beacon" and Boston and New York have "Adopt a Fire Hydrant".   This also is going to pull data from all of the water sensors in Las Vegas to give you an idea of what areas are flooded when it rains.  

The second idea was the winner of a Civic Hackathon late last year.  It was an app that helps you find your lost dog or report a found dog.  It hits the national registry for animals, to let you report your dog as missing or report a dog as found.  It will be both mobile and web based and allow you to upload pictures of the dog.  It also checks local animal shelters to see if your dog may be there, or to adopt a pet from one of those shelters.

Please keep the feedback coming.  We want to stay relevant and interesting for you guys.

Shawn

[David Hodnett]

I haven't been attending the meetings because it's simply been busy busy busy this past quarter. I know the group wants constructive criticism so...

Is the group large enough that we can work on multiple projects at the same time? Or perhaps a better way of phrasing the question is, if I want to work on something else and needed advice on where certain resources are and how to handle them, can we still attend the meetings and ask questions? For example, let's say I want to create an iOS app that shows me where and how much parking is in downtown (useful if the city implements demand-pricing). If the group understandably wants to work on pet rescue and they envision creating a Ruby on Rails Web App, I'd still like to be able to ask how to find traffic data and based on your prior experiences, what would be the optimal way to search it.

If my above question does indeed belong in a FAQ, that should also probably be a project in its own right. I like Google Groups but the search-first nature doesn't make it easy to just browse and see what people have already done, what people want help on and what resources are available.

-David

[David Hodnett]

And...  after I posted that, I found out that both traffic data and a dedicated Code for Vegas website are in the list of proposed projects posted last Jan 19th.

David

[Russell Deviney]

I have missed the last couple meetings due to conflict in scheduling, I have plans to attend the meeting next Wednesday.  I have not received any real feedback from the Department of Water Management yet but I have not given up on trying a couple different routes.  Hopefully will hear something back before next Wednesday so I can provide an update.

Russ

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[Shawn Looker]

Ha!  Both still good questions, and adding them to a FAQ would indeed be a great suggestion.  I'll work on that for the website.