September 17 and 18, 2016 Open Data Hackathon: TOProsperity

Andi Argast is a strategist, writer, and facilitator working at the intersection of digital technology and the social good sector. Her research and work explores online advocacy, community engagement, and digital literacy, with a focus on how Canadian nonprofit organizations use technology for social change.

Andi is a project manager at the Toronto Open Data Institute, a node of the UK-based Open Data Institute, and also recently managed a national digital literacy initiative for Canadian non-profit organizations.

Greg Bloom is a Civic Imagination Fellow with Civic Hall Labs. He is the founder of Open Referral, which is promoting open access to resource directory data (i.e. information about the health, human, and social services available to people in need). Before Open Referral, Greg managed communications for Bread for the City, the District of Columbia's pre-eminent anti-poverty service provider. He is a certified cooperative developer and a dedicated community organizer, with more than a decade of experience in GOTV, class-action labor lawsuits, municipal budget battles, death penalty abolition campaigns, community wireless networks, and even a backyard chicken legalization movement. His writing has been published in In These Times, Civic Quarterly, Personal Democracy Forum, and Code for America's Beyond Transparency.

Patrick is interested in liquid democracy, decentralization, the changing nature of work, and quasi-antagonistic approaches to systems change. Patrick is the project lead for Councilmatic Toronto, which aims to make the affairs of city hall more accessible to regular citizens.

Yale Fox's Rentlogic works with the City of New York to analyze millions of building inspection records and rank each building based on quality. Their listings include additional information that most renters wouldn't know about until it's too late-like mold, heat and hot water problems, rodents, cockroaches, broken elevators, unexpected rent increases, or if the landlord has a tendency to keep the security deposit-all so that renters can be fully informed before signing a lease. He's also the director of LandlordWatch, a website that combines citizen-journalism, housing activism and problem solving with social technologies. LandlordWatch uses open government data provided by the City of Toronto respecting building inspections in order to create transparency in the rental housing market.

Carmen is part of the Policy, Planning and Performance Management team at the library. In her role as a Planning Specialist, she engages in long and short-term planning for the organization and develops standards, performance measures and evaluates methodologies and outputs on library projects and services.

Her recent projects include supporting the Open Data initiative, updatinig the library's Service Delivery Model and being part of the library's 2016-2019 Strategic Planning Team.

Lina is responsible for supporting branch-level innovation initiatives including the Digital Innovation Hubs and the mobile emerging technology kit, Pop-Up Learning Labs. Lina works closely with staff to bring new and emerging programs and partnership opportunities to various communiteis in Toronto

Giles is a librarian, computer geek, photographer and ex-engineer from Toronto. He has a degree in Mechanical Engineering (Toronto), and another in Library Science (McGill). He spends his spare time writing Python, HTML, Bash scripts, whatever language he's learning right now, working with Linux, travelling and watching movies.

Heath Priston holds degrees in Urban Geography and Urban Planning from the University of Waterloo, where his research studied social polarization in Canadian cities. Heath works as an analyst in the Social Policy, Analysis and Research section at the City of Toronto. He was the policy lead for development of the Toronto Youth Equity Strategy, and he also supported development of the Toronto Seniors Strategy and the Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy 2020. His current role is to provide research and evaluation expertise to community development and human services initiatives across the City.

Mark Richardson is an I.T. Consultant in the SAP Analytics ecosystem. He is actively involved as a citizen around the Open Data and Parks and Recreation processes at Toronto City Hall.

Safiah Chowdhury is a Policy Development Officer at the City of Toronto's Employment and Social Services division where she works on social policy and program design including the Poverty Reduction Strategy. Prior to her work at the City, she was a Studio Y Fellow at the MaRS Discovery District where worked on community-based social interventions.

Reema is a digital project manager with a background in web development. She aims to make systems work better through people, process, design and technology. She is interested in how to measure value.

Bianca Wylie is head of the Open Data Institute Toronto, co-founder of Civic Tech Toronto and an Associate Expert at Open North. She has an extensive professional background in both community engagement and the technology sector. The Open Data Institute Toronto supports the use of open data in public policy, civic tech, and political engagement.

In his current role as Project Leader on the library's Innovation Team, Ab. supports the development of programs, partnerships, and other initiatives for the library's digital innovation spaces. Initiative have included the Innovator in Residence, the Maker Festival and the library's inaugural hackathon in Fall 2015.