HackSF presentations

Presentations from HackSF:

Eviction Defense Collaborative

Winner: Team 3 "We will help you stay" text message campaign 

Reaching vulnerable segment who are fearful and intimidated via text message on cell phone, which everyone has. They will run a highly targeted and culturally sensitive campaign.

Key Message "It's Your Home and we want you to stay"



They will run language specific creative on ethnic media.



The winning team.



Team1: Pyramid scheme

Create objects that conveys the following 2 messages:

"Don't Move" and "Know your Rights"

Physical campaign- send 50 pyramids to churches, community centers, etc.
Digital campaign - website with quiz to direct you to the right resource.



This was the team I joined- creating physical Pyramids would have been fun ;)

Team 2 "I am San Francisco" campaign 

Displaying people's faces on bus stops and websites.
Key Message: "I am San Francisco"

Website to ask simple questions and direct to the website with resources.

SF Goodwill

Winner is Team 3: Alarm clock app 

A mobile app that makes money donated to GoodWill if you don't wake up on time. Simple buy clever!

The winning team.

Team 1. Goodwill pop-up store + mobile app





Team 2. Goodloop

They had 2 Goals: 1. Show that we are more than thrift stores 2. Raise money. They target people under 40 to donate to GoodWill. They will create a mobile app called "Goodloop" which is similar to Taskrabbit, which has "get good" and "give good" options, and if you donate, you will get some kind of task or training.

La Casa de las Madres

Winner is Team4: Know the number campaign

There are women suffering from domestic violence who can't reach out for help by themselves, so they will create allies for them - group of people who doesn't need help themselves but are willing to help, people who you can turn to.

This team will create the "Take the pledge" website, so that they can get the phone number.

They submit pledge, and stickers are given out.



The winning team.



Team 1. Campaign to raise awareness & education "Expose the Secret"

Domestic violence by nature is rarely visible and happens behind closed doors. It is seen as taboo and difficult to discuss. It is not always easy to recognize or is denied, and it is perceived as a "Poor-person problem" -> they will bring the Domestic Violence conversation out of the shadows and educate the community.

This team will run targeted Comcast spots/YouTube ads, bus shelter posters, etc

This is a poster from one angle, when you change the angle- different message appears.





Looks like a nice family photo.



But when you change the angle domestic violence reality shows up.



They will put those on bathroom stalls as well.









They also have "reverse makeup" idea -when you play the video, a woman is taking off her make up, and bruise appears on her face.

Team 2. Twitter campaign

Making people tweet #1000voicesstrong



1. Heatmap of Domestic Violence. Green is places that has domestic violence, Blue is places to get help.



2. Tweet campaign - Tweet map of people talking about domestic violence.



3. Platform to share their stories anonymously but with zip code

Key Message: "It's not just you, domestic violence is happening everywhere"

Team3. domestic violence video campaign

Word of mouth, a website to share conversation.
This team will put posters in boutique which has URL to video, which has URL for "more info". Many women don't know what is normal, so they want to show what is a normal step.



Congratulations to the winning teams, the non-profits will receive $5,000 each to implement your ideas!

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki

HackSF

Today I joined HackSF in the afternoon.

http://www.letshacksf.com/

HackSF was an event that nonprofits based in San Francisco (La Casa de las Madres, the Eviction Defense Collaborative, and Goodwill of San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin) talks about their missions. Each organization shares one key challenge it faces that, if addressed, would have a significant positive impact on its ability to fulfill its mission. Hackathon teams will then have 24 hours to come up with their best ideas.

Day2 is presentation- the prizes ($5,000 each) will be given to the nonprofits so that each of them can implement the winning idea devised to benefit their organization. Judging criteria is as follows:

1. Presentation
2. Impact - how likely that it will create positive impact
3. Sustainability
4. Innovation - original, creative

Shannon Spanhake from San Francisco Mayor's Office of Civic Innovation giving welcome talk.



3 non-profits gave their pitches.

La Casa de las Madres is working on social justice and anti domestic violence. They have a mission to respond to calls for help from domestic violence victims of all ages, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They have 24 hour hotlines, partner with SF police department, and runs confidentially located emergency shelter (364 women and children accessed for up to an 8 week stay). They have Community-based programs etc. 2.4 million dollar operation budget. 10,000 community members.

http://lacasa.org/

"Domestic violence is not just physical violence. It is about power and control. It is an escalating pattern of abuse in which one person is an intimate relationship controls the other through force, intimidation, or the threat of violence."



"Strike Out Violence Day" - 42,000 reached, $35,000 raised.

"1000 Voices Strong" campaign.




SF Good Will is an organization aiming to break the cycle of poverty by helping people get jobs and become self-sufficient. They are helping people in recovery from eviction, came out from jail, etc and providing on-the-job training, job placements, education, job partnerships, etc.

http://sfgoodwill.org/



Donation and eCommerce is their revenue source.





Diane Joiner story

"Go BIN" - will be placed in big apartments in SF, easy for residents to provide recycle clothes. Frog Design designed the bin!



Challenge: Get San Franciscans under 40 to invest in their community by investing in Goodwill.

Eviction Defense Collaborative is an organization that defends citizens from eviction lawsuits.

http://www.evictiondefense.org/



Usually lawsuits are very long fight, but eviction lawsuits happen really quickly and the tenants only have 5 days to respond. They really need protection. EDC assists anyone and do not turn anyone down, since usually really poor people are thrown into those lawsuits. EDC prepared necessary paperwork for 2,003 cases a year.

Services that EDC provide includes:
Legal assistance- The Eviction Defense Collaborative provides counseling and legal help to tenants during the eviction process. Programs include preparing a response to the lawsuit, limited representation at the settlement conference, and preparation of requests for delays of the sheriff's eviction.

Rental Assistance- The Rental Assistance Program provides one-time, no-interest loans to tenants at risk of losing their residence and becoming homeless. Follow the link for more information on who we help, how we help, and if we can help you.

Challenge: To empower tenants around the City with the resources to preserve their housing in the face of illegal eviction threats.



"Tech is part of the solution to displacement"

Unlawful detainer procedures and time chart

Presentation file of EDC

Hacks

After the pitches by the non-profits, we spread into teams and started to hack.



I decided to join the EDC team.

Resources:

2012 Eviction Report

Hack SF Nonprofit Brief of EDC

Partners that can help:

ACCESS Center (SF Superior Court Self Help Center)   AIDS Housing Alliance AIDS Legal Referral Panel Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Anit-Eviction Mapping Project Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus   Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach Bay Area Legal Aid Bayview/Hunters Point Community Legal Causa Justa :: Just Cause Chinatown Community Development Center Curry Senior Center Dolores Street Community Services - MSROC Homeless Prenatal Program Housing Rights Committee Independent Living Resource Center Justice and Diversity Center - Homeless Advocacy Project Legal Assistance to the Elderly PODER San Francisco Rent Board   San Francisco Tenants Union   San Francisco Veterans Equity Center - BiSHOP Self-Help for the Elderly Senior and Disability Action South of Market Community Action Network   Swords to Plowshares Tenants Together Tenderloin Housing Clinic - Ellis Act Tenderloin Housing Clinic - CC SRO Collab

Relevant Data

Housing

Monthly Rent Board Statistics (Petitions, Appeals, Evictions)

These monthly statistics are published in a report format (PDF) showing things like number of appeals, evictions, etc.

http://www.sfrb.org/index.aspx?page=47 (PDFs)

Rent Board annual eviction reports

The Annual Eviction Report is submitted to the Board of Supervisors every year and reflects eviction notices filed with the department from March thru February. This includes the pdf versions of past years as well as the current year.

http://www.sfrb.org/index.aspx?page=46

Rent Board annual statistical reports

These reports are produced roll up statistics on the work of the Rent Board. They include stats on evictions, petitions, and appeals as they relate to the work of the Rent Board.

http://www.sfrb.org/index.aspx?page=48

Rent Board Referral Listing

This is a list of external agencies and organizations that may be relevant to tenants.

http://www.sfrb.org/index.aspx?page=17

Housing Code Violations (aka, Housefacts)

Housefacts is a data standard for reporting building inspections including violations, locations and owners of the properties. You can learn more here: http://housefacts.me, spec available here: https://sites.google.com/site/housefactsdatastandard/hfds/specification, data here:

https://data.sfgov.org/Public-Health/Housing-Code-Violations-San-Francisco-CA/739v-w6y3

San Francisco Housing Authority Parcels

These are spatial files that can be opened in open source software like QGIS or proprietary software like ArcGIS. This shows the location of SF Housing Authority owned parcels.

https://data.sfgov.org/Construction-and-Housing-/San-Francisco-Housing-Authority-Parcels/ennt-h5ib

Housing Affordability Gap by Neighborhood

The data illustrate median two bedroom home sale prices per neighborhood with an estimated income needed to afford the median priced home versus what the median neighborhood household income is as of the 2010 American Community Survey. These data are represented spatially and require some form of GIS software to open.

https://data.sfgov.org/Public-Health/Housing-Affordability-Gap-by-Neighborhood-San-Fran/nyy3-sijf

Hack SF Github Repository

1) a Sinatra webapp that sends and receives JSON and places them in a Redis server. It's a very simple way to store data and pass it around. This has instructions on how to deploy to heroku.
2) an HTML boiler template that has a reset css file as well as jquery and some simple addons in a plugin.js file. this should get you running on a static html site. if you want to use something like twitter bootstrap that can be included.
3) an HTML boiler template that also has a PHP mobile detect for making mobile webapps and includes all the stuff that is in the HTML boiler app.

View from the venue:







Day2 presentation results can be seen here:

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki

How we started Hack for Japan #hack4jp

I was asked to write in English about how we started Hack for Japan back in 2011, so will be translating the blog post I wrote in Japanese here.

Hack for Japan is a developer community that we started immediately after the Magnitude 9.0 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant accident hit Japan in March, 2011.  Many developers wanted to utilize their technical skills to contribute to responding and recovering from the disaster that hit our country.

This is a group photo from our first Hack for Japan hackathon in March 21, 2011, 10 days after the earthquake. We organized hackathons in 4 venues on that day, and continued them in May with 6 venues, July with 5 venues, and so on.

==How we started==

Big earthquake of Magnitude 9.0 struck northern Japan on March 11th, 2011. Right after this happened, we had many email threads here and there about running a hackathon to tackle this disaster. We wanted to consolidate those threads. We also wanted to talk with Amazon Japan and Yahoo Japan and other tech industries to make it a larger movement, but at the point of March 17th, we just had decided that we will run the hackathon on 3/19-21 and we were deciding everything as we move. The project itself was in a "launch and iterate" situation :)

I was in Austin for SXSW when the earthquake happened, was communicating with everyone in Japan online till I got back to Japan on the evening of 3/17. In fact it was my birthday, but I completely forgot about it due to all the disaster situation. My colleague +Takuya Oikawa was in Fukuoka then, I talked with him over the phone from the airport and decided that we are going to host the ideathon / hackathon on 3/19-21, and I went to our office in Roppongi directly from the airport and started working on planning the event over night. We hadn't decided anything at that point- what technology we will use for the online ideathon 2 days after, we hadn't gotten any of the venues for hackathon.

At 3/18 2:10 AM, I sent an email to our Google Developers Experts (GDE) mailing list - a group of developers I worked very closely with, and started getting feedback and advice about the Crisis Response hackathon we were planning to host. Back then, Google Wave existed, and so I wrote that "I am thinking of using Google Wave as a tool for ideathon". +Atusi Nakamura, who was then Google Wave API Expert replied "I think Google Wave is an excellent tool to expand on ideas, but hard to consolidate, select and concentrate. You should probably use it together with Google Moderator." His advice was exactly right, and  it would have been really hard to run the ideathon if we only used Google Wave.

Another GDE +Yukio Andoh started creating a slide right on that day entitled "Crisis Response UI - what UI+UX designers can contribute to crisis response services" and made it public. 

Crisis Response UI 20110318

View more presentations from Yukio Andoh

The email threads I had with the GDEs during these several days went over 100 posts. I won't be able to introduce everything here, but it was a crazy amount of emails. I would like to thank all of the GDEs for your advice and support- without your help, we could not have made this happen!

==Finding physical venue==

It was impossible to host hackathons in Tokyo during that time, due to after shakes that were still hitting Japan, and companies were refraining from hosting events, so we needed to find somewhere in Western Japan. However, me and my staffs were all based in Tokyo and we have never run events in Western Japan. Furthermore, as you can imagine, everyone in Japan was busy coping with the disaster in one way or another - and I was there trying to ask "someone" to provide "somewhere" as venue for our hackathon, 2 days away from now. It is impossible for any company - whether it is Google, Yahoo or Rakuten - to make it happen. The only reason why it was possible, was because of the help of the local developer community that we work with - Google Technology User Group (GTUG) and its organizers. (Google Technology User Group has changed its name to Google Developers Group as of now)

On 3/18 5:22 PM, I sent an email to +Daisuke Yamashita who was then manager of Kyoto GTUG whether we can use Kyoto Research Park (KRP) as venue. He made a phone call to KRP immediately- and set up a meeting from 6:00 PM with them, and we had the green light to use the venue. Crazy speed, and his email to me said:

"Count on me- I will run the whole event in Kyoto. My organizational experience of Hackathon is highest among anyone in Kansai (Western) region in Japan."

+Takashi Yokoyama manager of GTUG Chugoku saw my email saying that I wanted to run this crisis response hackathon, and 4 hours later he had already negotiated and nailed the venue and made it available to announce to public. He was in fact joining another developer event on that day, so started to announce the hackathon and called for attendance right on the spot.

I sent an email to Kyushu GTUG at 3/18 8:56 PM, and one of their members +Shinjiro Watanabe replied to me at 9:29 PM (only 30 minutes later!) that he has already reserved the venue and ready to run the event.

In Shikoku, it was hard to find the venue in Takamatsu and we almost gave up. But one of the members of Shikoku GTUG, +Yoshimasa Kawano wrote us an email at 3/20 3:33 PM "I know it's already last minute but can't we run a hackathon in Shikoku on 3/21? I can work on getting a venue in Tokushima. If there is minimum 3 people willing to attend, it's worth trying." This was awesome call, and Shikoku venue came to reality.

I would like to thank all of the GTUG managers and members. Without your help, Hack for Japan hackathon did not exist.

==Go West!==

So we announced the event on 3/19, and the ideathon started on that day, and hackathon was going to be held on 3/21 which was only 2 days later, and it was a national holiday, Monday after the weekend which most people would naturally have had holiday plans. So it was very hard to attract developers to come to the hackathon.

"Would any of you please come to Kyoto to join the hackathon?" I sent an email to the GDEs at the last minute- on 3/20 12:46 PM. Heroicly, many of the GDEs +Shumpei Shiraishi +Makoto Anjo +KOMATSU Kensaku and +Atusi Nakamura all replied "I can go!" "I can go!" and got on the bullet train to come to Kyoto.

Those GDEs were leading many of the projects at Hack for Japan, from suggesting the project ideas to leading the actual development. 

I would like to thank all of the GDEs. Without your help, Hack for Japan hackathon would not have been successful.

==Why We Were Able to Organize So Quickly==

We organized the event solely by using existing technology. If we were to build something new, we were unable to organize in such a speedy schedule.

* We used Google Form for registration. Great thing about Google Form is that if you are creating a simple form, you can do that in 2 minutes. If you get the participants fill in their names and venue they intend to attend etc, data will be collected automatically. Very convenient.

* We used Google Wave to discuss project ideas (Ideathon). It only takes 3 minutes to start a Wave. Once we had the thread, many people started to post their ideas and responses, and the thread got richer and richer- in fact we had 1,273 comments. Immediately after I wrote an email that I was "thinking of using Google Wave", Atsushi  (GDE) replied "OK I started Google Wave for you!" it was super super super fast.

* We used Google Moderator to vote on ideas and consolidate the discussions. You can make one in 1 minute. Anyone can post ideas and if you find an idea that you agree with, you can vote "I agree!" with one click. We had 537 participants post 237 ideas and 5,269 votes.

* After ideas were getting consolidated, we used Google Spreadsheet so that we can get the ideas in one place as a project list, easy to view. You can make a spreadsheet in 1 minute. We got the project leaders to fill in their project names, abstracts, name of the leaders etc, and members who wanted to join the projects could add their names under those projects.

* After a while we had a lot of information about various things, so created the official website using Google Sites. You can make a website in just 3 minutes.

* In order to share the code, we used Google Project hosting as the repository. Before I even thought about preparing the repository, Daisuke (GDE) emailed me "I made Hack4jp repository so let's use this!" That was super fast.

* For live streaming, we used Ustream. Some people were afraid we shouldn't use a lot of bandwidth during crisis, but I talked with someone from telecom (I used to work in the telecom industry...) and got assurance that it will not be a problem, so we livestreamed the event.

* For announcement and PR, we just used our blogs. We didn't issue any press release, but many people saw the blog post that we put together on Google Developer Relations Japan blog, Yahoo Japan Tech blog, Recruit Media Technology blog, etc and helped to promote the event. Thanks everyone!

This is the screenshot of my post on Google Developer Relations Japan Blog:
"Announcement of Hack For Japan”

==Many Many People Helped to Make This Happen==

When Atsushi (GDE) saw my email asking for them to come to Kyoto, he immediately got on the bullet train, and on that train, he created a logo and sent me an email from inside the train "I made the logo of Hack For Japan in the train!" Nobody would think this logo was created on the day before the event, inside a bullet train! This logo is still used everywhere as the symbol of Hack For Japan.

+Kazunori Sato who is ex-GDE and currently a Googler saw the logo and replied "Hey I can do livestream for you" and brought his livestreaming equipments and set up livestreaming account on 3/20 7:42PM- the night before the hackahton, and when I saw the account setting, the brand new logo was already embedded there. They are super super fast in getting things done.

When we started the ideathon, the amount of ideas posted on Google Wave and Google Moderator increased exponentially, and summarizing the contents was crucially needed. Honestly, I was juggling the whole thing and did not have any time to summarize the content- then +Dai MIKURUBE a Googler who was in U.S. then, took advantage of the time difference and while it was night time in Japan, he quickly created a summary of ideas posted on Wave. It was like a magic- thank you Mikurube-san!

Also +KaZuhiro FuRuhata one of the GDEs created a summary of comments on Google Moderator. Another magician! Thank you Furuhata-san!

Due to so many people who helped in various ways, Hack For Japan came to existence. Many many thanks to everyone who helped!

==Difficulties==

The difficulty of this project did not come from technology, but the nature of the event itself- we anticipated that from before the event.

Daisuke (GDE):

Before you announce, you should probably clarify that this is not a single-shot event, and that the presentation at hackathon is not the end-goal. Usually at hackathons, it is inevitable that the final presentation becomes the end-goal, and many of the functions end up not fully developed.

Of course it is good to release the services that are finished, but we should make sure that we let the participants know that for this event, the goal is to "build a service that really is useful for people in Tohoku, and that we support Tohoku using technology. If needed, they need to continue developing and/or updating data in the long term."

Yukio (GDE):

"Normally at hackathons, we create things we want to create. This hackathon is different. The product does not have to be flashy. It is our mission to create products that we know for sure that it will be useful, and develop quickly. We shouldn't be trying to develop everything- we should focus our limited resource on things that matter, and get robust and quick results."

Me: 

"Maybe the word hackathon might bring prejudice. Let's use the event title - Hack For Japan - as icon. Hack for Japan should provide an environment where people in Tohoku can post their requests online, people can vote on requested ideas so that we can focus on higher priority problems, and engineers can focus on developing them. It's about that whole process- which does include ideathon and hackathon as a portion of that process, but one-day hackathon itself is not the goal. We want people to think about Hack for Japan projects in the long term."

Hackathons are just triggers, and the most important thing is to create something that is useful and needed by the users, quickly create them and launch, and even if we don't create something new - hack through using multiple existing technology to solve the problem. Don't wait till the next hackathon to happen, but to continue developing important services even if hackathons don't happen.

More than 2 years have passed since the disaster, and the stage of the issues has changed drastically. We are approaching the problems in a different way, but we have one commitment which is the slogan of Hack for Japan... we will continue hacking till Japan recovers.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki