Looking Back at the White House Hackathon

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/03/02/looking-back-white-house-hackathon

by douglasback • 13 years ago

22 13 13 years ago

pbateman• 13 years ago

I would personally enjoy some kind of hack that causes the White House to respond to successful petitions with something other than glib dismissal.

TruthElixirX2• 13 years ago

I believe that "hack" is called a new government.

Tangent:

The U.S. government is one of the oldest governments to not have a major political reform. The U.S. is one of the youngest countries though. Same Constitution (though it is bent for whatever purpose is "needed" at the time), same general layout, etc.

The U.K. has shifted to a democracy since the formation of the U.S. Germany has changed its power structure a few times. Same for China, Japan, etc.

The U.S. is in need of some deep major reform, and I am pretty sure every political ideology agrees with that (just don't agree on the type of reform).

I really think it would be in everyone's best interest though if the U.S. underwent peaceful Balkanization.

I am not sure why people in California have to live under the same rules as someone in Georgia. Their interests are completely different, their values, their demographics. It would stop a lot of wasted productivity over stupid bickering. "I want my kid to hate the homosexers and not learn about devolution!" Cool, Georgia can fuck off and become a shit hole. California can go full People's Republic of Kalifornia, and quit sending so much money to the federal government.

I mean Obama is the leader of 300+ million people. Doesn't that just seem insane?

It would also probably end the wars overseas.

I just don't understand people's want to hold the union together. Just let it go.

loeg3• 13 years ago

Political reform sounds nice. I don't have too much to say about that; I mostly wanted to voice disagreement with your tangent:

De-federalizing destroys a lot of the political and economic clout that the US can hold over other, smaller countries. This is to the advantage of all the states; I don't think any state seriously wants to secede from union and lose the benefits the federal government entails. No one is forcing the states to "hold the union together" against their will.

Other benefits of a federal government: shared currency and unified economic zone makes for more efficient interstate trade (see: Germany); shared federal agencies make for more efficient shared resources vs every state doing its own thing; etc.

And more specifically, re your statement "I am not sure why people in California have to live under the same rules as someone in Georgia:" they really don't. States write their own laws (in addition to federally-imposed laws for all states). Example of the day, some states have laws legalizing marriage between same-sex couples, other states have laws explicitly forbidding marriage between same-sex couples.

niggler• 13 years ago

Are any of the people mentioned "notable"? Not to sound glib, but none of the names of the experts stood out in any way

k_kelly• 13 years ago

This is pretty grim.

On the one hand it is good that the White house had a hackathon. On the other hand they didn't. Nothing interesting really got built, the time limit was brutally restrictive and it might be childish to say but seeing everyone at a hackathon wear business clothes is really weird. You really don't need a suit to be serious.

In the end it seems like this was done so that at some point down the road they can say the Whitehouse had a hackathon.

msielski• 13 years ago

I think it was a good first step. It may be fairer to judge the event against the history of collaborative software development at the White House (nonexistent) than against that same history elsewhere.

jeremymcanally• 13 years ago

Why in the world wouldn't we wear business clothes? We were visiting the White House for crying out loud. What a useless criticism. Not only are there rules, there's a certain amount of respect one should show an occasion like that.

Likewise, what in the world would you call "useful"? Hurling ignorant things like that sounds silly if you don't follow it up with something "useful."

I spent a lot of time talking with the organizers and their superiors at the hackathon and trust me this wont be the last one they have.

douglasback• 13 years ago

The time limit is only “brutally restrictive” if you assume that people spent only 9 hours the day of working on their projects. We had a week of access to the API documentation as well as access to the API developers to ask questions.

And I can't speak for anyone else who participated, but my project is going to live on and continue to improve. Maybe one day you'll even find it interesting. I suspect others who participated will do the same with theirs.

iqster• 13 years ago

I was one of the participants and I had a great time. I'm probably a bit of a hackathon junkie. I judge my involvement in such events based on a few metrics. Did I learn something new? Did I have a good time? Was I able to get something working in time for the demo? I was satisfied on all three counts.

My project, along with I think 3 others, touched on map visualization. In the past, I've used Google Maps and Google Earth to do geographical visualization. However, I recently "discovered" SVG and ended up writing a visualizer from scratch. Basically, I started with an SVG map from wikipedia and added hover, and coloring capabilities to it. As I was writing this code, I kept wishing I had jQuery like support ... which led me to discover Raphael.js and jquerysvg :)

Going into the event, I was a bit nervous. However, by hour 2, I was pretty comfortable. People were helping each other and sharing their code. I'm not a big Github user. When I ran into a problem, it was kinda cool that I was able to go over to Scott Chacon (he helped figure out the problem in under a minute).

One of my criteria for a successful hackathon is that I can show a respectable demo. In this regard, I could have done better. As others have noted, we did have access to the API for a week. However, since I was busy at work on a project (which, incidently, we are demoing in Vegas tomorrow), I definitely had less than a week. I was impressed with pretty much every demo. What is noteworthy is that most people presented their projects. At the average hackathon I go to, it is probably 50%. It was also nice not seeing start-up pitches being disguised as hackathon presentations. My project could have been better - but whatever - I stood up and presented and that matters to me. I think some participants might have used my code, which made me really happy :)

Looking Back at the White House Hackathon

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