DIYcity Cincinnati

From DIYcity

Join us over on the main site: http://diycity.org/local-group/diy-cincinnati

Contents 1 Projects Underway 1.1 Cincinnati Twitter Bots 1.2 CityCouncil2RSS 2 Brainstorming 2.1 Sunlight Labs -style Hackathon 2.2 Local Food Distribution 2.3 Bicycle Based Businesses 2.4 Cincinnati Twitter Bots 2.5 Cincinnati Wiki 2.6 hackerspace / co-working space / free geek / tool library / free culture shop 2.7 local currency app 2.8 your idea here 3 People

Projects Underway

Cincinnati Twitter Bots

• fschipotlebot:
  • status: done http://twitter.com/fschipotlebot
  • copy of the shakeshack concept
  • created using twittbot.com

• traffic_cincy
  • status: running http://twitter.com/traffic_cincy
  • stability may be uneven while i figure out how to keep this up and running on my host.
  • looking for a better feed
    • yahoo rss doesn't cover cincinnati area
    • traffic.com rss is confusing
    • possible XML (non-RSS) source: http://www.buckeyetraffic.org/services/api/index.html (covers all ohio)

CityCouncil2RSS

Context: Although a lot of what council does is put online, it would be nice if we had some rss feeds and other ways to browse through their activities. The current CMS used by city council is far from user friendly and only meets the bare minimum definition of openness and transparency.

Proposal: Use a database to model the output of city council (including potentially minutes, ordnances, resolutions, etc.) and provide a user friendly web-based interface to that database.

Inspirations:

• http://www.opencongress.org
• http://www.creamcitizen.org/pg/groups/86/open-government-open-data/

Current status:

• I've begun the process of "scraping" and archiving some of the documents council puts online have created an RSS feed of council minutes.
• I've experimented with automatically adding contextual links into things like the meeting minutes. Using a simple regulr expression and outbound links to my HereInCincinnati Wiki.
• My ongoing experiments can be found here: http://hereincincinnati.net/citycouncil/

Future directions:

• create detailed model of city council's outputs/actions (i.e ordinances, resolutions, etc)
• automated "scraping" of council's website using cron scripts

Brainstorming

Sunlight Labs -style Hackathon

• http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2009/03/24/host-own-hackathon/
• http://wiki.sunlightlabs.com/index.php/How_to_host_a_hackathon

Local Food Distribution

Context: Existing methods of distributing locally grown food (farmers's markets, CSA's) may not be filling all potential niches.

Problem: Buyers such as restaurants, corporations or individuals wishing to buy in bulk do not have a general-purpose market in which to shop for locally grown food.

Proposal(s):

• A wholesale produce clearing house: a place to buy and sell bulk produce for local producers and buyers. source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CinciLocavore/message/3148
• round-robin truck delivery

Inspirations:

• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CinciLocavore/message/3162
• http://www.cityfresh.org/
• http://www.freshforkmarket.com/
• http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/slow_food/blog_post/restaurant_supported_agriculture/
• http://cincinnatifarmersmarkets.org/
• http://in.marketmaker.uiuc.edu/marketplace_home.php
• http://localfoodsystems.org/about
• http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009513.html
• http://davemenninger.blogspot.com/2009/04/platforms-on-which-to-build-local-food.html

Current Status:

• taxonomy of local food distribution methods:
  • one-to-many: farmer's markets
  • many-to-one: CSA's
  • one-to-one: restaurant-to-farmer
  • many-to-many: ???

Future Directions:

• create an open source version of Fresh Fork's proprietary web-interface: http://www.freshforkmarket.com/purchasing.html
• many-to-many!

Bicycle Based Businesses

• http://wendmag.com/greenery/2009/03/pedaling-to-profit-the-upswing-of-bike-powered-business/

Cincinnati Twitter Bots

• your idea here

Cincinnati Wiki

http://wiki.hereincincinnati.net (admittedly something of a pet project for me, but would love to get others involved).

hackerspace / co-working space / free geek / tool library / free culture shop

Context: There are big benefits in having a real-world space in which to work and share ideas.

Proposal: Create a space for people to work on and share projects.

Inspirations:

• http://256.makerslocal.org
• http://blog.cowtowncomputercongress.org
• http://pumpingstationone.org/blog/
• http://www.nycresistor.com/
• http://techshop.ws
• http://freegeek.org
• http://freegeekcolumbus.org
• http://thelonghaul.org
• http://sporeprint.info
• http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

Current status:

• https://groups.google.com/group/cincihackerspace
• http://www.cinci2600.com/
• http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotcinci

Future Directions:

• meetup
• design patterns: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2133.en.html

local currency app

we could do a local instance of this open source local currency web app: http://www.opensourcecurrency.org/

your idea here

People

User:DaveMenninger