The Civic Engagement Launchpad isn’t your normal hackathon. That’s something you’ll hear us say frequently. The Civic Engagement Launchpad is a hackathon where the mission doesn’t end after 48 hours. We know volunteers are looking to really dig into something impactful when volunteering their time and work with people they can learn from. We also know that tackling civic ideas or building open source software is hard, but that the effort is worth it. We want volunteers to use problem-solving skills, data, and technology to make a difference in our community. The process is the product here, so every step of learning and growing and testing along the way matters as much to us as the end result.

That’s why the backbone of Launchpad is a series of programming and workshops. At the Civic Engagement Launchpad, we don’t just feed you coffee and bagels and then send you on your way for a month of unstructured team working time. That would assume a ton of prior knowledge and lots of luck.

We’re fortunate to have the help of experts who will be leading the Launchpad’s workshops. For a second time, we’re particularly excited to have the Office of Innovation Management’s Innovation Consulting team facilitate most of the sessions.

Here’s a quick teaser of the workshops we have planned for #Launchpad2018. Note, while we of course encourage teams to attend all workshops, they are optional. So if your team isn’t available for one of the workshops during the month, don’t worry.

Saturday

  • Workshop - Team Forming, Expectations, and Role Setting

    Best for: all teams that understand it takes a diverse, psychologically safe team to deliver the best results

  • Workshop - Idea & Opportunity Discovery

    Best for: new teams looking to align on “what we we trying to solve and why”?

Intra-Month

  • Workshop - A Guide to Open Source Licensing (May 10th)

Best for: Everyone! We mean that. All projects at Code for Philly are required to be open source, and many projects also use existing open source code or data to built their project. This workshop will explain open source licensing, so you’ll be able to know what license the open source you’re using operates under, how that may limit changes you’re looking to make, and how to set up your own open source project the right way for future use by others.

RSVP for this hack night and workshop.

  • Workshop - Open Source Community Building & Management Best Practices (May 15)

Best for: Teams that want to maintain momentum on their project and learn how to make thoughtful, considerate contributions as team members. Topics will range from ‘how to best communicate with your team on slack’ to ‘common GitHub issues.’

RSVP for this hack night and workshop.

  • Workshop - Project Marketing, Pitching and Demo Advice (May 17)

    Best for: teams that want to crush it on demo night and feel ready to tell their story long after the Launchpad.

RSVP for this hack night and workshop

This is a unique set of programming lineup that’s gotten better each year. We hope you’ll take advantage.

Excited to roll up your sleeves? RSVP as a Launchpad participant here.

For general event information, please see our 2018 Launchpad event page here.