Bradley Holt and Amy Kirschner

Bradley Holt and Amy Kirschner

Attention developers, designers and hackers: Have you ever complained about the lack of tech savvy in local government and civic institutions? Well, here’s your chance to help.

A new group called Code for BTV — the local arm of Code for America — is launching an effort to bridge the gap between tech enthusiasts and the people who run our cities, towns and nonprofits. This weekend, June 1 and 2, they’re hosting a civic hackathon at Burlington’s Maglianero Café.

Writer Ginger Vieira previewed the event in this week’s Seven Days:

“Civic hacking,” explains Amy Kirschner, founder of the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility Marketplace, “is a way for people to get involved in government and their communities using technology.”

The idea is simple: Citizens work together with their local, state and federal governments, as well as with private-sector organizations, to solve problems. More than 5000 people — some professional coders, some techy dabblers, some hacking virgins — are expected to participate throughout the country in the first-ever National Day of Civic Hacking this weekend.

This article appears in May 29 – Jun 4, 2013.

Seven Days’ deputy publisher and co-owner Cathy Resmer is a writer, editor and advocate for local journalism. She works in the paper’s Burlington office and lives vicariously through the reporters while raising money to pay them. Cathy started at Seven Days as a freelance writer in 2001 and still has the Rolodex to prove it. As the paper’s first online editor, she launched Seven Days email newsletters and started the paper’s first social media accounts. Cathy has overseen Kids VT, Vermont’s...