Code for Philly volunteers give back to our community by donating their skills and time towards not-for-profit, civic-minded, open source projects. Browse our community’s project directory to identify where you can volunteer.

New to Volunteering?

If you’re new to volunteering or creating your own project, please check out our Projects 101 Blueprint slides.

For detailed advice on starting your own project, check out our own github ‘getting started’ project repo.

FYI - All our Projects 101 content is open source. Submit your own pull request to make it better with your own suggestions!

Remember, you’re a part of a national community of civic hackers

Check out Code for America’s project page for more opportunities to volunteer or for inspiration on the next project to start here in Philly.

Looking for our Code for Philly Civic Cloud hosting information?

Check out our documentation and github workflow here

Dat Jawn Bootstrapping

Goal: Version Control for Data on the Distributed Web

We are creating an open-source adapter to allow Noms to store its data on IPFS. This trio of technologies will provide top-to-bottom support for distributed version control of tabular data.

Secondary Goal: A model project for mentorship and collaborative learning

We are structuring this project with a strong emphasis on mentorship and group learning so that it can function as a setting where people become great software engineers by contributing to this open source…

 Public Site  Developers

Addictive Science Prototyping

This project is my effort to get the startup Addictive Science involved with the local Philadelphia Science/Tech communities. Addictive Science is an online learning environment designed to virtually immerse everyday people in discovery & curiosity while engaging minds with STEM Sciences through online social discovery apps. I started building www.AddictiveScience.com as a means to embrace my new career in Science Communication and Technology. The programming & design goals of Addictive Science from conception were to make all of our code open…

 Public Site  Developers

Data Science for Civic Hackers Hibernating

IPython Notebooks on Data Science for Civic Hackers

Instead of an app, my plan is to create a set of IPython notebooks on how civic hackers can do data science effectively. We are currently experiencing a surge of new data and tools that can help us derive conclusions from the data. Software packages containing methods from Statistics, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence have been open-sourced and available for all to use. Like all tools, however, you have to know how to use these methods effectively. There are other great IPython notebooks out there related to…

 Developers

Hacking the Hackers : Understanding Hacking Dynamics Commenting

Hello PHL Hackers:

We are working to see how innovations are created and spread through hackathon competitions. We're curious to know how designers and developers can produce software/websites given the time restriction, with the focus on technological enablers such as gits and APIs.

We're looking for some hackers to help us understand these innovation dynamics.

Here's the link to the website for potential interview subjects & a mini-survey.

Hackers and Civic Innovators Invited! - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HydauEeMzWMvFqKUPmrqqKKr4RCB8ght1aZqwkHTNbI/edit

We'd…

 Public Site  Developers

Apps for Philly Maintaining

A living catalog of apps built for Philadelphians

Working Features

  • Basic CRUD for apps

Roadmap

Mentions

Mentions would be a new object in the AppsForPhilly database that tracks URLs for News stories, blog posts, notable tweets, etc that mention an app in the catalog. Another object, AppMentions, will link apps with their mentions.

Use cases

  • Hackathon organizers will bookmark stories following their events, tagging all the apps that each mentions
  • App creators will tag their own app with any updates or new media they post so the public will see it at the…
 Public Site  Developers