The Shuri Project

[derekeder]

On Tuesday, Aug 14, 2018 I gave a presentation to The Shuri Project on "What is civic hacking?" at New Life Baptist Church at 11026 S. Indiana Chicago, IL 60628.

The Shuri Project is part of the ]Henry Williams Love Foundation](https://henrywilliamslove.org/) founded by Kyla Williams, former Executive Director of the now defunct Smart Chicago Collaborative. The Shuri Project is a six-week summer technology mentoring program for girls ages 8-12 with the goals of keeping them safe while building self-esteem and increasing their tech aptitude.

Here are my slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ELHUZYmkEKyK_XR0bBvpokdtX5ccd0hDL7bJHlxd_Oo/edit#

I talked about 4 civic tech projects:

• Second City Zoning, Open City & DataMade
• ClearStreets, Open City & DataMade
• My Building Doesn't Recycle, Claire Micklin at Chi Hack Night
• Chicago's Million Dollar Blocks, DataMade
• Illinois Sunshine, DataMade & ICPR

Takeaways

• There were some questions and clarifications early on about what 'hackers' are and that I was one of the good hackers.
• They were also surprised that both Claire and I weren't getting paid for making the projects we worked on. I explained (with the help of one of the other teachers) that the work is worth doing, even if we're not paid, and that we received payment in other ways, like getting exposure and having a project to put in our portfolio
• They were interested in how old I was and what my favorite dessert was.
• Near the end we talked about the bad kind of hacking, and I shared with them some ways they can protect themselves online http://bit.ly/cryptochecklist. It was also pretty clear that being safe online is really hard and asking kids, let alone adults, to take some of the complicated steps described in that checklist is a bit much to ask.

Photos

Next steps

• Kyla is presenting at Chi Hack Night next month!
• I would be interested in giving this talk again to the next cohort