Our hack at it

 6/5/2013

This past Saturday, Tulsa took part in National Day of Civic Hacking by inviting people to hack “Tulsa Wiki.” And so we did.

As the name suggests, Tulsa Wiki (www.tulsawiki.org) is a collaborative website about our community to which anyone can contribute. The Tulsa City-County Library hosts the site. For the most part, any and everything that people find interesting about Tulsa and Tulsa County can have a page: places to eat outdoors, famous Tulsans, parks with fountains to splash in, etc.

To add to Tulsa Wiki, you just need to register at the site. And then you’re ready to hack, er, contribute. That power comes with a big deal of responsibility. But that was the spirit of National Day of Civic Hacking — people using their computer know-how for the greater good.

A quick search of the site let us know that there was no page about Goodwill Tulsa’s wonderful works. In just about 2 1/2 hours, however, we’d set up a page with our basic information, a little bit of history and some pictures. Here’s how it looks:

http://www.tulsawiki.org/Goodwill_Industries_of_Tulsa

We can add more when we have the time, which is part of the organic nature of Wikis. You can watch a page grow from a tiny plant to a massive tree, teeming with branches.

So even though hacking day is gone, the opportunity to participate remains. Coders, entrepreneurs and local government have started a conversation, looking to develop civic projects that use technology to improve our communities. Example: Apps that use public data, or make that data easier for citizens to access. Much thanks to TCCL and Code for Tulsa for leading the local charge.

Photo by Modisane Kwanza  Luke Crouch of Code for Tulsa explained the drive behind National Day of Civic Hacking at TCCL on Saturday.

Want to learn more? Check out http://www.tulsalibrary.org/faq/how-do-i-contribute-tulsa-wiki  or http://codefortulsa.org/  or share this with others who might want to contribute.