walls.corpus

By Nathan L. Walls

Open government in Raleigh and BarCampRDU

Sunday, 19 May, 2013 — civics barcamprdu

Untitled

Above: Cristóbal Palmer, Justis Peters and Dan Sterling open BarCampRDU 2013

May 18, 2013 marked the return of BarCampRDU after an 18-month absence. There were five session slots followed by lightning talks. All the sessions I attended were in some way interesting (see below for a list), but I want to start by focusing on one by Jason Hibbets, “Open Source All the Cities!”.

Overall, I was impressed at Hibbets' passion for civic involvement. I was also pleasantly surprised by the number of Open Data/Open Government initiatives already in-progress in Raleigh. It's something I've had a desire to see and participate in, but did not know was thriving. In particular, I'll be making use of SeeClickFix to request some traffic calming in my neighborhood. I also want to have a look through Raleigh's open data portal to see what I can pull out and futz with.

For as much as government is complained about, a lot of time, it's just “there” for a lot of folks. I don't know if there was ever a golden age of civic involvement, but I hypothesize that we have better neighborhoods and cities if we learn more about how to affect change in our neighborhood and follow-up on it. What I mean by that is making sure problems with infrastructure are reported, instead of assuming someone in Public Works knows. It means asking for sidewalks, crosswalks and traffic calming to help neighborhoods more walkable. It means reporting problem properties, starting a neighborhood watch, having a block party, cleaning a neighborhood creek or just clearing the storm drains down the block.

These aren't partisan issues. Think of civics as a sense of stewardship for what's around you. I am a steward, my neighbors are stewards, if they choose to be, city government is a stewardship, too, and one that I can influence. You can, too.

My raw notes for Jason's talk:

  • Explaining open source to a non-technical/unfamiliar audience
    • Open source is like a recipe
      • Ingredients
      • Process
  • Principles
    • Transparency
      • Code
      • Roadmaps
      • Bug reports
      • Creates accountability
    • Collaboration
      • Hierarchy vs. peer-to-peer
      • Foster innovative ideas
    • Rapid prototyping
      • Release early, release often
      • Fail faster
    • Meritocracy
      • Best ideas rise to the top
        • Best code tends to win
    • Passion
      • Projects exist because people are trying to scratch their own itch
  • Open source as a philosophy past software engineering
    • opensource.com is where discussion happens about things that can have open source principles applied to other areas
  • Civics beyond government
    • Opening up a channel back to government
    • Creating a community
  • Elements of a open source city
    • Culture/participation
    • Open government and data policies
  • Catalyst: CityCamp Raleigh
    • 200 people each of the last two years
    • Triangle Wiki
      • Had a Triangle Wiki Day
        • 50 people showed up including city council members, mayor
    • RGreenway team built the RGreenway mobile app
      • iPhone
      • Android
    • Goal is to do something after the Camp
    • CityShape – Mayor's Challenge
      • “Where should we put more density?”
    • SeeClickFix
      • Bug tracking for city infrastructure
        • Potholes
        • Tree branches
        • Graffiti
      • During Hurricane Sandy, people used the tool to organize + source help
      • Bonner Gaylord
        • Open Gov advocate and city councilman
        • Piloted in his district and city council ended up adopting
      • Goal is to break down political boundary barriers (e.g. Raleigh and Cary)
      • You can set-up watch areas to see when other people submit items in your area
      • City council, mayor and local media all get pinged when an item gets submitted
    • Open government resolution
      • City of Raleigh will consider open source software
      • Established an open data portal
        • City put $50,000 and hired an open data manager toward that initiative
      • Open Raleigh website
      • Data Portal
  • Code for America
    • Peace Corps for Geeks
    • Built “Adopt a Fire Hydrant” for Boston
    • Other “Adopta” solutions
      • Sidewalks in Chicago
      • Bus stops in Raleigh
      • Storm drains in Seattle
      • Tsunami Sirens in Honolulu
    • Brigade program
      • Code for Raleigh
        • Active
        • Participated in “Race for Reuse”
          • We already have applications that are good, how can we increase their adoption?
      • Cary just adopted a brigade
      • Durham is close to having one
      • Proposed: Triangle Code for America Division
        • Get multiple brigades together to share expertise
  • He wrote a book, The Foundation for an Open Source City
    • Used IndieGoGo to fund
  • Get involved!

Other sessions

The other sessions I attended were:

  • Organizing Tech. Conferences
    • BarCampRDU 2013 organizer Jeremy Davis led a retrospective on the organization of BarCampRDU 2013 and the elements that make a technical conference successful
    • Worth a post on its own
  • Git Internals
    • Jimmy Thrasher did a nice whiteboard session of how Git does what it does
  • Getting Kanban-odoros Done!
    • Chris Imershein led a session talking high level about
      • Getting Things Done
      • Personal Kanban
      • The Pomodoro Technique
  • Pebble API
  • Lightning Talks
    • There were several, but two in particular I liked.
      • Justis Peters talking about several Coursera courses he is taken or has taken around machine learning and neuroscience
      • A talk on the value of full-spectrum lighting (if someone can tell me the name of the woman who presented that, I would love to update the post accordingly)

Event photos

I took a few. Check out the set I put together over on Flickr.

Thank you

The BarCampRDU 2013 organizing group and volunteers did a fantastic job with the event. Thank you, all, for your efforts in rebooting the event. Having BarCampRDU back is great for the local community. Thank you, too, sponsors.

I'm looking forward to BarCampRDU 2014.

Little d devops

Tuesday, 26 February, 2013 — devops

Asking “What is DevOps?” is a question I've heard some variation on frequently over the last couple of years as it's blown-up as a career niche. There's been a counter-movement. DevOps as a term is about as well-defined as Agile is for software development, which brings me directly to my point.

There's what engineers I work with call “Capital A Agile.” Think dogmatic practice of Scrum, where absolutely everything has been processed out to the hilt:

  • Sprints are always n weeks
  • Releases are always n sprints
  • Sprint teams always have n Engineers and int(n/2) QA Analysts
  • The retrospective is always at 3 pm on the Monday after the sprint finished

Process isn't bad. Defining process is great and on the whole, having guidelines similar to the four above is healthy. What's less healthy is the word always in each of these. Capital A Agile is a process smell, particularly when additional rules get layered on regarding grooming sessions, and so on.

Conversely, “little a agile,” will probably have less strict process definition:

  • Sprints last two weeks
  • Releases are two sprints
  • We aim to have teams of four to six engineers and two to three QA analysts
  • Our standing meetings are …
  • All points are renegotiable when the need to be

Keeping with the sprit of the Agile Manifesto, process is important, but not as important as healthy interactions within the team.

To that end, think of Scrum and Kanban as process and planning design patterns. Just as it isn't smart to force an inappropriate design pattern where it shouldn't be in software, it's not smart to force more process than the team requires to deliver what the business needs.

How does this relate to DevOps? Just as Agile practices within a company can ossify, so too can DevOps. Think instead of little d devops, loosely-coupled and evolving best practices for getting developers to think of software all the way through production, indeed of deploying to production as a beginning and systems administrators and infrastructure engineers facilitating an entire team to be able to own what ships, how it ships and how it lives once shipped.

Triangle voting guides

Sunday, 21 October, 2012 — civics

With the November election in just another couple of weeks, it's past time for me to get ready for early voting. In my last post, I pointed out info regarding early voting and registration info. Hopefully you're already registered. If not, you can register and vote at one stop voting in North Carolina until Nov. 3.

What about selecting candidates? On my ballot, I have 32 offices and one bond referendum to vote for. Twenty one of those offices are contested and of those, only three have a third-party (Libertarian) or unaffiliated candidate. Several judicial races are uncontested. The race for North Carolina attorney general is also uncontested. That's a pretty sad state of affairs, partly related to North Carolina's ballot access policies.

Outside of the presidential races, I have a fair amount of research to do. I use a mix of candidate websites and voting guides.

Checking around today, here's what I found that covers North Carolina broadly, the Triangle or Raleigh:

My own approach is going to be breaking up my sample ballot into chunks and researching three or four races a day, instead of trying to get through everything at once.

Your vote

Tuesday, 9 October, 2012 — civics

On November 6, 2012, you need to vote. Not just for president, either.

In North Carolina, there are races for governor, lieutenant governor and other Council of State offices, state legislature, congress, judgeships, county commissioner, etc. The down ballot races get far less attention, but it's more likely that your vote will matter more. Please take the time to get ready.

First, If you're in North Carolina and you have not already registered, you can do so until Oct. 12. Starting Oct. 18, you can vote early. If you haven't already registered, you can register and vote the same day. See the NC Board of Elections site for more. In Wake County, visit the county Board of Elections early voting site for more info.

Second, know how you're going to vote before you go. Research. In the Triangle, the N&O has a voting guide prepared by the NC Center for Voter Education.

Third, know when and where you're going to vote Nov. 6 or through early voting.

No excuses, check your schedule, make sure you can vote, then make sure you're prepared to vote. It matters.

Habitat 67/Montréal

Sunday, 9 September, 2012 — photography travel

Habitat 67/Montréal

I've finally started editing photos from our June trip to Montréal. The photo above is along waterfront, south of the old port, looking across a quay to Habitat 67, a housing complex built as part of Expo 67.

Our friend and host for the week, Igor, showed us around different parts of the city our second night in town, and we drove by Habitat 67. It was rather striking.

Later in the week, photo walking the Pointe du Moulin site, we were given a hint to walk around Silo No. 5 by a couple of guys walking a dog and, through a bit of a fence, and we're at the end of the pier Silo No. 5 sits on and Habitat 67 is right across the water. In a nice coincidence after we got back from Montréal, Stars announced The North the album cover for which features Habitat 67. It's well worth a listen.

I have a small, but growing, set of Montréal photos over on Flickr. Check it out.

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