On Saturday, the Hack for Reno Summit spent the day discussing how the city can bridge technology and government in the area.
In the past, Hack for Reno has been a weekend hackathon event, where apps were built to better engage the local community.
Saturday’s summit was a bit different and instead brought together educators, designers and city officials, to talk about real problems that Reno is faced with.
Andrew clinger, the City of Reno Manager, was one of more than a dozen speakers at the Hack for Reno Summit.
He presented Reno's new open data portal which provides an inside look as to what's happening in the city.
“They can go out and see crime statistics, they can see information on our budget, debt, building permits and that sort of thing," says Clinger.
This technology will allow city officials to make decisions which can be backed up by collected data.
Clinger says this will not only build trust in the local government but will also better engage locals.
“We're hoping that there's citizens out there that look at that data and maybe build some great apps for the mobile devices or whatever that we didn't even think about," says Clinger.
Another presentation focused on how using the fundamentals of data science can help people discover insights from technology.
Will Kurt is a data scientist who gave the presentation, but he says what impressed him the most from the event was the civic engagement between the software community and officials from the city.
"You should be close to everyone that you work with in your community in all capacity and this is really an event that I think sort of shows that for Reno, shows this happening in real time and I think it's a real exciting thing to be in a city doing that," says Kurt.
