March into civic tech with us! This month, we’re all about exploring new avenues, building new things, and creating new opportunities for civic engagement. Join us!
March 2
Resilient Coders Demo Day at Startup Institute
Diversity and inclusion in the innovation community are core priorities of ours at Resilient Coders that we share with our friends at Startup Institute. If you’re not familiar with Resilient Coders, we teach young and early-career Bostonians from traditionally underserved communities web development skills.
On Thursday, March 2nd, Startup Institute will be opening their doors to our current cohort of talented UI developers as they graduate from Resilient Coders Bootcamp. They will have spent the last eight weeks learning about accessibility, responsive CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and git. They will have gone out, procured clients, designed and built websites for those clients, and invoiced them for their work. This is an opportunity for them to meet potential employers, and showcase their work.
Are you looking to hire junior-level dev talent? These coders have what it takes to be high-impact hires; you’re invited to meet them as they pitch their skills, ambition, and hustle.
March 3-4
The European Conference 2017 at Harvard University
Jean Monnet once expressed that “crises are the greatest unifier.” Today, Europe undoubtedly faces many challenges – slow economic growth, extreme right-wing politics, large refugee inflows, and a frozen conflict in the east, to name a few. However, these challenges also present opportunities – to better understand the forces pulling toward disintegration and to reimagine a Europe that can better deliver on the promise of common peace and prosperity.
The aims of the European Conference 2017 are to forge innovative, potentially disruptive solutions to Europe’s greatest challenges and propose ideas for bold leadership directly to the current and future leaders of Europe.
March 7
Learn Lab Educators and Students Workshop: Blended Learning with Office 365
Office 365 is free for students and teachers of Boston Public Schools! You may be aware of some of the great tools available in Office 365, but do you know how you can use OneDrive, Skype for Business, and OneNote Class Notebooks to help you incorporate blended learning in your classroom? Let’s explore blended learning, its impact on teaching and learning, and see how the full suite of tools provided within Office365 will help you build a robust learning environment that fosters student success.
March 8
International Women’s Day: Equity in Tech
Join AIGA Boston and EF, for an event on International Women’s Day. We will be hosting a reception, a screening of a special premiere episode of “Fix My App,” produced by Expose UX in partnership with Ladies that UX, and panel discussion with local women leaders in the Tech and Design industries.
International Women’s Day acts as an important catalyst and vehicle for driving greater change for women and moving closer to gender parity. For IWD 2017, they are asking people to #BeBoldForChange to help forge a better working world. Join us, learn about their stories, and share your actions for change.
March 9
Data-Driven Research, Policy & Practice: Lessons from Boston, for Boston
In recent years multiple conferences, both here in Boston and elsewhere, have proclaimed the promise of “urban data,” “smart cities,” and the like, helping to stimulate this rapidly growing field. The time is now ripe for a different type of conference: one that showcases the extensive urban data science and policy work occurring within the region with a focus on cross-sector collaboration. In this spirit, “Data-Driven Research, Policy, & Practice: Lessons from Boston, for Boston,” to be hosted by the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), will feature a broad range of data-driven work occurring in the region, spanning the academic, public, private, and non-profit sectors.
Over a day and a half, the conference will include: sessions composed of short talks by faculty, students, policymakers, and practitioners describing their work within the Boston civic data ecosystem; a keynote on the big-picture implications of this work; and other programming to facilitate the sharing of ideas. The goal of the event is two-fold: 1) provide a platform to highlight cutting-edge work in the region; and 2) catalyze new connections and synergies across institutions and disciplines.
March 14
BostInno’s Tech Madness Bracket Reveal 2017
This March, BostInno is bringing the tech community together for some healthy competition… bracket-style. The goal of Tech Madness is to generate awareness and excitement for the city’s top tech players, from the “favorites” (late-stage tech pillars) to the “diaper dandies” (seed round startups).
March 15
Reducing Emissions by Pricing Carbon: How Microsoft and Yale are leading the charge
From college campuses to Davos, carbon pricing is a policy instrument regarded by climate scientists, economists, and political and business leaders as an important part of efforts to mitigate global climate change.
We have an exciting panel:
Microsoft’s TJ DiCaprio will explain how in its first four-and-a-half years the company’s carbon pricing program changed the company’s culture, reduced carbon emissions by 9.5 million metric tons, purchased more than 14M MWh of renewable energy, helped reduce energy consumption more than 10% across the Redmond campus, and impacted more than 7 million peoples’ lives in emerging nations. TJ is Senior Director of Environmental Sustainability at Microsoft.
Yale’s Casey Pickett will present the experience and results of the Yale 2015/2016 pilot program and what comes next, following the leadership decision to use the campus as a test bed for carbon pricing. Casey is Director of the Carbon Charge at Yale.
BU’s Kenneth Pucker will discuss effective carbon pricing and organizational behavior based on accurate measurement of climate impacts. Ken is the former COO of Timberland and Lecturer, Organizational Behavior, at the Questrom School of Business.
ProPublica’s Andrew Revkin will moderate. Andy is Senior Reporter on Climate Change at ProPublica and former environmental reporter at The New York Times, where he wrote the Dot Earth Blog.
This event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
March 16
Harvard Coop Author Series: Andrea Gonzales & Sophie Houser
The Harvard Coop Author Series Presents: Girl Code
Andrea Gonzales & Sophie Houser
Perfect for aspiring coders everywhere, Girl Code is the story of two teenage tech phenoms who met at Girls Who Code summer camp, teamed up to create a viral video game, and ended up becoming world famous.
March 19
Inviting local artists: musicians, composers, dancers, choreographers, actors, arts and performance managers, writers, tech people (sound, lighting) engineers, costume designers, visual artists and anyone who is interested in looking for new people to collaborate with, ideas for projects, financial and marketing advice, and sharing their work with others.
March 23
Generation Citizen Trivia for Changemakers
Test your trivia mettle in this exclusive best-of-Boston matchup, pitting teams from Boston’s industries against competitors in their sector to see who can clinch the grand ChangeMaker’s Cup. For a critical cause: every point you earn at Trivia for ChangeMakers will help a local classroom of Generation Citizen young people create change on a pressing community problem.
March 25
HackWitus is the first student run hackathon at Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT). This is a 24 hour hackathon that will take place on March 25th to March 26th at Wentworth’s Ira Allen Building. This event is made possible thanks to the Wentworth Computer Science Society, a chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery, along with support from many scholastic and administrative departments at WIT, Major League Hacking (MLH), and the generous sponsors that donated towards this event.
Love creating stuff on your computer and LOVE baseball? Come hack with us on March 25 at General Assembly!
The sixth annual Boston Baseball Hack Day is a fun, friendly one-day hacking competition (also known as hackathon, hackfest or codefest) for baseball fans. It will also be held in three other cities besides Boston: Philadelphia, Montreal, and Chicago.
March 25-26
Join us at Brandeis University’s annual Printathon! Organized by Deis3D, Brandeis University’s 3D Printing club, the Printathon challenges you to use creativity, design, and 3D printing skills to solve practical problems. This 24-hour event will be a team competition judged by a panel of industry leaders and technology specialists. We’ll be providing food, tech, and lots of great prizes to win!
March 28
Cafe Night at Roxbury Innovation Center
The monthly Café Nights @ RIC are energetic and dynamic events where innovators and entrepreneurs can find one another and collaborate to bring their dreams to reality.
These regular gatherings provide a space for conversations and scheduled programs to inspire a wide range of attendees from different backgrounds and industries to connect, share ideas, and grow their ventures. The Café is open to all members of the innovation community—stop by to try it out.