Intertwine – Untangle Austin’s Problems

[elidchan]

Short description of the idea (140 character tweet):

An open innovation platform for doers, dreamers, and data geeks to solve our most pressing social problems

What is your project concept or idea? What challenge or opportunity will it solve?

Americans donate $200B a year, yet social problems persist because efforts are fragmented and current solutions are mostly guesswork. Intertwine brings everyone together online to untangle problems, spark ideas, and experiment to learn what really works.

Intertwine combines:
• Real world experience from nonprofit and government workers AND the communities they impact
• Untapped creativity from hackers, designers, and social entrepreneurs
• Scientific method, used by researchers and data scientists to determine what really works

By integrating these elements Intertwine aims to cultivate breakthrough solutions to our most pressing social problems.

Here’s a specific example: Homelessness in Austin.

Intertwine will draw in diverse participants to develop a deep, shared understanding of homelessness in Austin. This includes crowdsourcing connections to related social problems: the drivers of homelessness such as mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence; the impacts of homelessness such as healthcare and law enforcement costs; broader issues like poverty; and narrower issues such as the fact that the homeless often lack valid ID. Each problem in the network serves as a hub where participants can share experiences, news, research, and data to further understanding of the issue.

Upon this foundation, participants generate new ideas and refine them with the community. Ideas might include new ways to secure housing for the homeless, new ways to identify and helping those at greatest risk of becoming homeless, or new ways of collecting better data to inform other solutions.

Of course, ideas must ultimately be judged by the outcomes that can be achieved when they are implemented in the real world. Intertwine will facilitate the sharing of results and help launch new projects, where each is really an experiment that must be measured so everyone can learn and improve based on the data. In the homelessness example, how many homeless can be taken off the street through a given intervention and how many stay off the street 6 months, a year, 3 years later? And what is the cost, both direct and net of the savings due to lower ER, jail, and shelter costs?

Intertwine will catalyze the development of better and more cost-effective solutions, enabling each well-intended dollar to do the most good.

Who will benefit from your project? Describe the humans at the center of the problem - who are they?

How would they benefit? Can you tell their story?

Do you have photos of them? Or quotes?

Intertwine creates value for a diverse set of beneficiaries:

The ultimate beneficiaries are those who are impacted by the problems being solved, whether directly or indirectly. In the homelessness example, the prime beneficiaries are those who are currently homeless and those who would otherwise become homeless. Hospitals, police, and taxpayers also benefit from reduced costs associated with homelessness.

Nonprofit and government workers benefit by learning from other communities facing similar issues and also by connecting with researchers who can help them measure program outcomes.

Researchers benefit by gaining access to a wealth of real data that might lead to new insights and publication.

Foundations and philanthropists benefit by discovering proven solutions as well as promising new ideas.

Hackers, designers, and social entrepreneurs benefit by discovering real problems worth solving and gaining access to end users and domain experts to enable the creation of real solutions and sustainable business models.

Issue area(s) relevant to your project idea:

[Look at the right sidebar ↗️ ! Do you see the Labels? Pick a few]

• Children & Youth
• Economic Development
• Economic Opportunity
• Education
• Environment
• Food/Hunger
• Health
• Housing
• Mobility/Transportation
• Neighborhoods
• Open Government/Transparency
• Public Safety
• Sustainability
• Other: Social Innovation

What is the current state of your project idea? [Pick more labels ↗️ ]

• I tested a prototype and want to build it

Tell us more about the current state of your project idea.

Do you have any links to text, mockups, code, or data?

We’re building the Intertwine platform using a Python/Flask stack. The front-end currently consists of Jinja2 templates, HTML, and CSS, and we plan to incorporate React.

You can now upload sample data from JSON files and browse through a network of interconnected social problems. Soon, you will be able to create new problems and connections via the web interface and begin sharing content.

Our github is located here: https://github.com/IntertwineIO/platform

Tell us about yourself.

What is your background? Why is this challenge important to you?

Are you representing a group in submitting this project idea?

Intertwine is Eli Chan and Brian Bruggeman. Eli has held roles ranging from software engineering and product management to strategy and data science leadership over his 15+ years in high tech. Brian has written software for planes, trains, and automobiles, big data, biometrics, full stack, and games over his 20 year career. Now, both Eli and Brian wish to give back.

We believe technology can unleash human potential around the world to solve our most pressing challenges. That’s what drives us to build Intertwine. If that motivates you too, join us!

We’re looking for hackers with UX/design, JavaScript/React/D3, HTML/CSS, and/or Python/Flask skill sets. We’re open to people contributing in different ways. A potential project for the hackathon might be to create a visualization of the problem network using a technology like D3.

[kdodia]

This idea has a lot of potential! I have some experience in Bokeh if you think that could be useful, but I have always been looking for an excuse to spin up on D3.

[elidchan]

@kdodia - thanks for your interest! Bokeh could be useful, but probably wouldn't be our first choice for graph visualization. However, we'd love to be your excuse to pick up D3! :)

[kdodia]

Sounds good to me!

On Sun, May 8, 2016 at 8:06 PM Eli Chan [email protected] wrote:

@kdodia https://github.com/kdodia - thanks for your interest! Bokeh
could be useful, but probably wouldn't be our first choice for graph
visualization. However, we'd love to be your excuse to pick up D3! :)

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#19 (comment)

[ssharif1]

ACTION NEEDED

Hello Project Champion,

Please provide the following:
Full Name + Email Address
You can comment here or send to [email protected]

We are going to be sending out a note + newsletter to our 345 (as of May 18) attendees sharing our submitted projects before the event and your hackers will want to know who you are. Additionally, we have PC-specific communication that we want to make sure that you are included on.

Thanks,
ATX H4C Staff

[mateoclarke]

Hi @elidchan. Your project has been accepted!

Now that your project has been approved, here are some things we suggest you do next:
https://github.com/atxhack4change/2016-project-proposals#once-your-project-is-accepted-here-are-some-things-we-suggest-you-do-next

You will receive an email in the next few days asking you to confirming your speaking slot for the Saturday morning pitches.

Please let us know if you will no longer be able to champion your project at the hackathon.

[danielhonker]

@elidchan - you should have received an invite to join Slack (I think you were still on the team from last year). If you haven't already joined the team and seen the Slack channel for your project, it's #intertwineatx (reactivated from last year). We'll be sending out an email with details on pitches soon.

[elidchan]

@danielhonker - Would you please also invite my cofounder, Brian? I sent Sarah his email address. Thanks!

[ssharif1]

@elidchan @danielhonker @mateoclarke - Just forwarded Brian's info, thanks!

[brianbruggeman]

@elidchan @danielhonker Great! Thanks everyone.