</> Code for Orlando

Attending your first Code-for-Orlando hack-night

by Chad Miller

What’s stopping you from coming to your first hack-night and getting started on a project? Perhaps you’d like to know a few things.

Why Code for Orlando Exists

Compared to huge rich tech companies and young exciting startups, government civic-service is not good at attracting tech talent.

That’s a problem. Government is the common platform, and literal infrastructure that we all share. When it fails, we must fail. When it succeeds, we can succeed. It is in our interest to make things better.

The people in Code for Orlando are volunteers, each working on whatever we care about, aiming to use our technical abilities to make a difference for the better. At hack-nights, hack-days, or hack-fests, we meet in person to synchronize efforts, rally support, spark new ideas, and get help.

We have officers that help grease the organizational gears, but projects and decisions are not dictated from the top. You define what you work on. Your active involvement and stewardship of code gives you authority over it.

Additionally, government doesn’t always know what it needs. While we should listen to advice and pleas, your job should be to help distill and use professional judgement, and avoid trying to invent “faster horses”.

Get Going

Our goal is to get stuff done. Our anti-goals are waiting for permission, and waiting to be asked.

Your marching orders, should you join us:

• Make things that are useful to lots of people. Make government serve citizens better. Remove barriers.
• Act like you’re the best person for the job, until you have a reason to think otherwise. Working code and loose consensus wins over authority and intent every day.
• Think first of your audience, not the technology. Kill toys. Be boring, not bleeding-edge.
• Play nicely with others. Make stuff that is maintainable. The best code is no code.
• Ask for help when you need it.
• Leave things better than the way you found it.

That’s it. Come to our next hack-night and get your idea started or help some place that needs you. And we do. We need you.