Elevator Pitch
Have you ever wanted to make a positive impact in your community using your programming skills? While Open Source development helps society, sometimes it feels intangible. This talk is about leveraging Python to create a tool to find and fund the cleanup of messes within Seattle’s green space.
Description
One of the major things that convinced my wife and I to move across the country to Seattle and the PNW 2 years ago, was the impressive collection of natural beauty and well maintained green space. So, when I walked by a park and creek reserve on the north end of the city, only to find more trash than green space, I was mortified. Working together with several individuals from Reddit we got the park to a reasonably clean state, removing over 400 gallons of trash. The experience made me realize, however, with over 480 parks, that as the city grew we needed a more self-sustaining solution to this problem.
After sharing the story on Reddit, one thing that struck me was how many people were eager and capable of physically helping with the problem but had insufficient supplies or funds, and how many people couldn’t physically help, but were eager to throw money at the problem. I’m not political, and I certainly don’t have the time or ability to clean up 480+ parks, but like many of you, I know how to throw some code together. So I decided to build a tool that would connect those individuals with the funds to help to those with the time and physical ability. This talk is about how I created that tool, which consists of REST API, Website, and Android/IOS application using only Python and Open Source technologies. Finally, it is about how all of us as programmers have the power to make a visibly positive impact in our community even from the comfort and familiarity of our keyboards.
Outline:
- 1 Minute: Quick Introduction
- 4 Minutes: Running into and fixing the immediate problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/6uj6kk/one_of_my_favorite_things_about_seattle_is_the/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/6urgyb/we_did_it_reddit/
- 5 Minutes: Building a simple Rest API to upload pictures and geolocations of trashed areas, mark them as clean, and encourage community and competition.
- 5 Minutes: Building a web interface to interact with the Rest API, using front-end compiled Python.
- 5 Minutes: Building a cross platform IOS and Android application using only Python.
- 3 Minutes: Putting it all together
- 2 Minutes: Closing thoughts, encouraging everyone to look for opportunities to use their unique skill sets to help out not only the OpenSource community but the real life community where they reside.