

Looking Back at the White House Hackathon - douglasback
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/03/02/looking-back-white-house-hackathon

======
k_kelly
This is pretty grim.

On the one hand it is good that the White house had a hackathon. On the other
hand they didn't. Nothing interesting really got built, the time limit was
brutally restrictive and it might be childish to say but seeing everyone at a
hackathon wear business clothes is really weird. You really don't need a suit
to be serious.

In the end it seems like this was done so that at some point down the road
they can say the Whitehouse had a hackathon.

~~~
jeremymcanally
Why in the world wouldn't we wear business clothes? We were visiting the White
House for crying out loud. What a useless criticism. Not only are there rules,
there's a certain amount of respect one should show an occasion like that.

Likewise, what in the world would you call "useful"? Hurling ignorant things
like that sounds silly if you don't follow it up with something "useful."

I spent a lot of time talking with the organizers and their superiors at the
hackathon and trust me this wont be the last one they have.

------
pbateman
I would personally enjoy some kind of hack that causes the White House to
respond to successful petitions with something other than glib dismissal.

~~~
TruthElixirX
I believe that "hack" is called a new government.

Tangent:

The U.S. government is one of the oldest governments to not have a major
political reform. The U.S. is one of the youngest countries though. Same
Constitution (though it is bent for whatever purpose is "needed" at the time),
same general layout, etc.

The U.K. has shifted to a democracy since the formation of the U.S. Germany
has changed its power structure a few times. Same for China, Japan, etc.

The U.S. is in need of some deep major reform, and I am pretty sure every
political ideology agrees with that (just don't agree on the type of reform).

I really think it would be in everyone's best interest though if the U.S.
underwent peaceful Balkanization.

I am not sure why people in California have to live under the same rules as
someone in Georgia. Their interests are completely different, their values,
their demographics. It would stop a lot of wasted productivity over stupid
bickering. "I want my kid to hate the homosexers and not learn about
devolution!" Cool, Georgia can fuck off and become a shit hole. California can
go full People's Republic of Kalifornia, and quit sending so much money to the
federal government.

I mean Obama is the leader of 300+ million people. Doesn't that just seem
insane?

It would also probably end the wars overseas.

I just don't understand people's want to hold the union together. Just let it
go.

~~~
loeg
Political reform sounds nice. I don't have too much to say about that; I
mostly wanted to voice disagreement with your tangent:

De-federalizing destroys a lot of the political and economic clout that the US
can hold over other, smaller countries. This is to the advantage of all the
states; I don't think any state seriously wants to secede from union and lose
the benefits the federal government entails. No one is forcing the states to
"hold the union together" against their will.

Other benefits of a federal government: shared currency and unified economic
zone makes for more efficient interstate trade (see: Germany); shared federal
agencies make for more efficient shared resources vs every state doing its own
thing; etc.

And more specifically, re your statement "I am not sure why people in
California have to live under the same rules as someone in Georgia:" they
really don't. States write their own laws (in addition to federally-imposed
laws for all states). Example of the day, some states have laws legalizing
marriage between same-sex couples, other states have laws explicitly
forbidding marriage between same-sex couples.

~~~
chimeracoder
> De-federalizing

Interesting that you should choose this word, since 'federalism' is associated
with the Federalist Papers, which actually promote the kind of limited federal
government over the states that GP is referring to. Hamilton, who authored the
Federalist Papers, is also responsible for the kind of centralized economy
that you describe, by creating a federal bank to assume the states' debt after
the war. (The other half of this compromise was that the nation's capital was
moved from New York City to what was (at the time) a mostly uninhabitable
swamp in Maryland).

Even more ironically, the Federalist Papers were written primarily to convince
the then-conservative New York (and a few other states) that they would be
permitted their own 'states' rights' under the new constitution.

~~~
loeg
I do not disagree with anything you are saying. My language could have been
more clear — I did not mean 'moving from the federal system (divided powers,
central government) to one with _less_ state powers,' but rather
TruthElixirX's idea of moving from the federal system to separate states with
no central government.

------
iqster
I was one of the participants and I had a great time. I'm probably a bit of a
hackathon junkie. I judge my involvement in such events based on a few
metrics. Did I learn something new? Did I have a good time? Was I able to get
something working in time for the demo? I was satisfied on all three counts.

My project, along with I think 3 others, touched on map visualization. In the
past, I've used Google Maps and Google Earth to do geographical visualization.
However, I recently "discovered" SVG and ended up writing a visualizer from
scratch. Basically, I started with an SVG map from wikipedia and added hover,
and coloring capabilities to it. As I was writing this code, I kept wishing I
had jQuery like support ... which led me to discover Raphael.js and jquerysvg
:)

Going into the event, I was a bit nervous. However, by hour 2, I was pretty
comfortable. People were helping each other and sharing their code. I'm not a
big Github user. When I ran into a problem, it was kinda cool that I was able
to go over to Scott Chacon (he helped figure out the problem in under a
minute).

One of my criteria for a successful hackathon is that I can show a respectable
demo. In this regard, I could have done better. As others have noted, we did
have access to the API for a week. However, since I was busy at work on a
project (which, incidently, we are demoing in Vegas tomorrow), I definitely
had less than a week. I was impressed with pretty much every demo. What is
noteworthy is that most people presented their projects. At the average
hackathon I go to, it is probably 50%. It was also nice not seeing start-up
pitches being disguised as hackathon presentations. My project could have been
better - but whatever - I stood up and presented and that matters to me. I
think some participants might have used my code, which made me really happy :)

------
niggler
Are any of the people mentioned "notable"? Not to sound glib, but none of the
names of the experts stood out in any way

