Formerly the CodeForVegas GitHub Organization and the Code for Vegas Foundation, now focused on not just code, but all forms of Innovation!
Our main entrypoint for the curious, Innovate for Vegas Foundation Home is now hosted on GitHub using GitHub Pages. As of this update the static content we had published already has been moved over with a few minor updates, as we migrate to our Agile for Volunteers infrastructure and per-initiative and per-component-project page content (taking advantage of project Pages for individual repositories).
We have default Community Health documents in the usual place which apply across our presence here on GitHub and beyond. Find them and refer to them as needed:
Please visit our Howtos repository documenting how to get started with our organization and some basics about projects, tools, and a growing list of details and helpful hints:
Our organization implemented and is follow an adaptation of Agile Methodology aimed at valuing the time of all volunteers contributing to any project or other effort while also enabling progress to be made on projects and their respective components.
We have a Discord Server for discussion and engagement with our Communities at large (those who would like to participate through discussion or perhaps just lurking), feel free to join the discussion (our actual project efforts should still take place closer to the work, mostly on GitHub).
If you would like to be added to this GitHub organization (InnovateForVegas) and be a Contributor of Creative Works to our Civic Volunteer endeavors, please add a discussion item to our Join Request discussion category (be logged in to your preferred GitHub Account):
Please consider these steps prior:
- Visit our Howto docs and check out the Welcome other sections…
- Check out one of our existing projects (start with the overviews linked in the Projects table in this README)
- Consider cloning or forking, authoring a pull request, creating an issue, or generally starting with some proactive participation. This includes pull requests against the doc-howtos project!
- If you do not already have a GitHub account, please obtain one. Creating an Account on GitHub
The original Code for Vegas brigade (before there were brigades) as it was took a very long break beginning in February 2016, but had as of 16 June 2022 re-formed as a completely independent Nevada Nonprofit. Today we are a Nevada Nonprofit 501(c)(3) Public Charity in good standing, our official Purpose Statement:
To enable and encourage Ideation, Innovation, and Implementation to make our communities better.
For more information about our organization, the status of our renaming, and relevant State and Federal database search locations if you are curious, please visit here
Our organization is extremely thin and all volunteer. That is, none of the people listed here, and possibly not listed here, who make our organization go, are doing so without compensation, completely on a volunteer basis.
- Managing Director : Dan Hugo
- Director : Mary Norris
- Director : Shawn Dean
- Director Emeritus : Shawn Looker
Our local tech and non-tech scene is as alive as ever, which makes now a great time to get involved with making Las Vegas and surrounding areas a great place to live or visit. One way to do that is to join this effort and work with municipal partners and our local communities to identify where we can make a difference, and then make that difference happen!
This is an inclusive organization from top to bottom. In fact, you can participate even if you have never and don't want to write Code. Non-technical contribution to your community is not only encouraged, but it is essential. If you are reading this and do not use GitHub, you are still quite welcome to join in, and please share that sentiment with your neighbors, friends, and family!
Note that due to lack of participation within the Greater Vegas region, we are focusing more on remote participation from anywhere on the planet, collaborating with others to enable and encourage our values elsewhere and vice versa!
We are a top-to-bottom volunteer organization. Those in governance and advisory roles (officers, directors, advisors, external committee members, and perhaps others) do not receive any form of salary or other compensation other than legitimate expense reimbursement where necessary. We are in this for the rewards found on the horizon.
In order to obtain supplies, food and snacks for our Monthly Hackathon Meetups, printing of business cards, cloud hosting fees outside of free tiers, and other such things, will be paid for by these very same uncompensated volunteers, or by donations from the community and beyond. Ideally these will be individuals who are interested in supporting the efforts of their own local friends and family members, though we are certainly interested in hands-off sponsorship from larger entities if there is a good fit with our goals.
Would you like to donate to support our organization? Here is a hosted donation page at Stripe, your email address will be used to send a thank you note… we have received our 501(c)(3) determination as of 12 October 2022, so that any donation may be deductible. This is not tax advice, please consult your tax preparation professional.
Remember: until our various financial tools are updated to reflect our new name, you may see Code for Vegas Foundation and we would remind you that the update is in progress to change the one word in our name…
Each of the top-level project areas we are working on has an Overview repository with at least a summary README.md file, including some reference links and other info. These will ideally be developed collaboratively using the Agile for Volunteers approach, ie these are not specs handed down from on high, but project goals developed by those working on and benefiting in some way from these projects (as members of our communities at large…).
There is a naming scheme for projects, and we use tagging to help navigate a growing collection of repos here on GitHub. We are also exploring the use of GitHub Projects for issue tracking,
| Project Overview | Description |
|---|---|
| Open Transit | Making it smart to move around our Smart City using open tools developed right here in and near Las Vegas |
| Open Data Capture Platform | Crowd sourced Open Data for our Smart City |
| Smart Social | Tools for a Smart City to communicate with itself |
| My Muni | The Human Interface for a Smarter Smart City |
| vLocal | Privacy aware digital identity platform for locals |
| Infrastructure | Tools, methods, docs, politics, best practices, etc for this organization and its projects and participants |
| Welcome | A visitor version of the Human Interface for our Smarter Smart City |
| Challengers | A platform for those who enjoy participating in Hackathon Challenges, for recognition and prizes |
Overview project repositories begin with ov- to be found more easily. All project repositories are tagged with ifv- prefixes in lieu of namespaces, to allow them to be grouped across various repo names.
Raymond Loewy - MAYA - Familiar Surprise
“To sell something surprising, make it familiar; to sell something familiar, make it surprising.”
— Raymond Loewy
We are always updating our online presence, here on GitHub, on social media platforms, and on our own website(s), be sure to check them out!