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Hackathon takeaways, on the State Capacity Ecosystem Substack
What the teams built, the three lessons the night taught, and the winners. Coming soon.
Public Engagement Hackathon: September 30
The announcement: the three problem streams, the judges, and how the evening ran.
Overview
Our second hackathon packed about 80 people into a room at the CUNY Graduate Center. Unlike the June build night, teams got two narrowly scoped themes and were asked to color inside the box: tools that help New York's 59 community boards run, and tools that help the city capture, triage, and act on what New Yorkers say.
Teams formed at 5:30, built from 6:15 to 8:30, and demoed to the judges in three-minute slots. The strongest projects came from people who already knew the problem firsthand: board members tired of PDF stacks, residents who had sat through rezoning hearings, organizers watching complaints pile up on social media with nowhere to go.
Hosted with our partners Civic Roundtable and CUNY PIT Lab. Dinner was on Civic Roundtable.
The goal
What we set out to do:
- Test whether scoped themes beat an open brief. June proved a room can ship 20 prototypes in an evening. September asked whether tighter problem statements produce tools closer to adoption.
- Put the judges' own problems on the table. Five experts pitched the frustrations they live with, from transit-oriented rezoning to centering communities in city plans, so teams matched real needs rather than guessing at them.
Projects produced
The winner, the two runners-up, and three more tools from the night. Every tool with a public link is in the Proof Points gallery.
Winner
Budget Requests
The first central place to see every community board's Capital and Expense Budget Requests since 2019, with the agency's response to each, combined from NYC Open Data and the Register PDFs. Click a district on the map to see its requests, compare them against the district's 311 complaint categories to spot gaps, and draft a follow-up email to the agency or elected official.
Open the app ↗
Runner-up · Hosted on this site
Hearts & Minds
A radar for the NYS Office of Customer Experience: the biggest problems New Yorkers hit with Medicaid, laid out in the order people move through the program, sized by people affected and shaded by how often each one is mentioned online. Select a problem to see its trend and public YouTube stories in residents' own words. Problem counts and trends are sample data.
By Douglas Dahl & Sherry Liu. Republished with permission.
Open the radar →
Runner-up
In the Zone
A single map of where density is low near transit and what would change for residents and planners if those lots were rezoned for housing. It skips modeling the whole land use process and gives residents and planners the same starting point.
Public link coming soon
BoardOS
Gives a community board member every piece of information they need before a meeting on one screen, instead of reading a dozen PDFs by hand before each session.
Public link coming soon
Robert Rules
Teaches new community board members how a meeting runs under Robert's Rules of Order, built from a CB6 member's experience arguing procedure in real meetings.
Public link coming soon
Mamdani, Fix This
Takes every TikTok asking the mayor for help and routes it to the relevant agency and a public queue, so a viral complaint turns into something trackable.
Public link coming soon
Themes
Two scoped themes plus the judges' own problems. Teams self-selected at matchmaking.
Community board operations
New York's 59 community boards run on volunteer members, a staff of two or three, and improvised filing systems. Build paths: a meeting assistant for Robert's Rules and resolution drafting, a member educator ahead of the 2027 term-limit turnover, and an end-to-end tracker that connects each resolution to its target agency and follows what happens.
Public voice at scale
New Yorkers filed 3,655,040 requests through 311 in 2025. Build paths: a complaint-pattern dashboard that maps where complaints fall below expectation, a citizen-observation toolkit, and tools that turn social media, hearing testimony, and participatory budgeting ideas into something an agency or a board can act on.
Judge specials
Problems the judges brought themselves, pitched on the night: mapping the areas around transit stations zoned C8 or M1 that should allow housing, with a focus on the Bronx, and how a big-tent coalition gets things done without biting off everything at once.
Expert judges
Raj Korpan
CUNY PIT Lab; Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Hunter College
Raj researches artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, explainable AI, and socially aware robotics through Hunter's Trustworthy, Intelligent, and Explainable Robotics (TIER) Lab. He pushed teams on who their AI is designed for, whose perspectives are missing, and whether trust, explainability, and inclusion are built into the product.
Jeremy Ney
Author, American Inequality
Jeremy maps America's regional divides county by county for more than 25,000 readers, work covered by TIME, The New York Times, and NPR. He works full-time at Google and teaches as an adjunct professor at Columbia. He pushed teams on how data reveals the less obvious relationships behind social problems and how to turn those insights into solutions.
Sara Lind
Co-Executive Director, Open Plans
Sara leads Open Plans, a nonprofit working to transform how people experience New York City's streets and public spaces. She has guided major public policies, driven agendas in City Hall and Albany, and shaped the narrative on making New York's streets more livable, safer, and joyful. She pushed teams on connecting public voice to the public realm.
Amaury Dujardin
Public Policy Manager, Citizens Union
Amaury helps lead Citizens Union's legislative advocacy in Albany and City Hall and manages the organization's candidate evaluations, after nearly a decade in politics before turning to policy. He pushed teams on closing the gap between constituents and the officials who represent them, so reaching out feels less like shouting into a void.
Abbey Kos
Expert judge
Abbey joined the panel after the announcement went out and pitched her own problem statements to the builders alongside the other four judges.
Event archive
The original event page lives on Luma as a historical archive of the hackathon: agenda, signups, and logistics as they ran.
View on Luma ↗Want one of these for your agency?