At Hacktoberfest, I got to see how tech is used to help people who aren't really developers. I had the opportunity listen to two talks.
Evelyn built a RAG chatbot for council meeting docs. The PDFs were image-based, and you couldn't even select-copy the text. She ran them through OCR, converted the text, and fed the results into a chatbot. Now you can ask questions about anything discussed, and it pulls the answer. A great tool that helps communities stay informed when they can't make it to every city meeting.
Dave built OpenDayton.org (https://opendayton.org) — an MPC server on top of Dayton's open data. Housing data, service calls, you name it. Raw datasets are intimidating, and most people don't know how to work with them, so he built a tool that handles them for you. You connect with your coding agent, ask a question, and it queries ArcGIS and runs SQL behind the scenes. Residents get answers without touching a CSV.
I came in with an open and curious mindset to see how civic tech can be used. I had a lot of fun and left with some Hacktoberfest swag, great conversations with other curious developers, and the intention to actually contribute code to a civic project this Hacktoberfest.
If you're into civic tech and haven't gone to a local hackathon yet, go. It's worth it. What are you thinking about building that someone who isn't a developer could actually use?
#hacktoberfest #Hack #buildinpublic #civictech #opensource