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April 2019 Newsletter

Smart Cville promotes the use of technology and data to help communities find innovative solutions by facilitating the exchange of ideas between civic institutions and citizens.

In this issue:

  • Save the Date: Civic Innovation Day
  • Data Transparency and FOIA
  • What Three Words: Addressing Data Deep Dive
  • All Hands On Deck
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Save the Date: Civic Innovation Day


Smart Cville and the LinkLab at UVA are announcing the launch of a free, grassroots Internet of Things (IoT) network in Charlottesville. The two organizations have purchased and deployed technology from the Things Network to provide a set of open tools and a global network to build an Internet of Things applications. In order to raise awareness for the network and inspire innovation, Smart Cville is hosting an IoT-focused Civic Innovation Day on June 1. The 2019 Civic Innovation Day will ask participants to come with, or form at the event, teams to develop IoT solutions related to environmental sustainability, multimodal transportation, and other IoT focused community projects.

Charlottesville currently hosts five to ten active IoT network gateways, covering most of the City. Not only do places like Smart Cville and UVA have gateways running, but also community-based organizations like Computers4Kids and Charlottesville High School. Is your organization interested in hosting a gateway? Are you a maker with experience with LoRaWAN or Arduino devices and want to contribute? Contact us. Read the full press release on our blog.

Interested in attending? Let us know you're coming!

Data Transparency and FOIA

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On March 25th, Smart Cville partnered with the Virginia Coalition for Open Government to teach Charlottesville members of various Boards and Commissions about the Freedom of Information Act and specific legislation surrounding the act. More than 30 members attended the event to learn how they can support transparency and openness between

This event was covered by NBC 29 and c-ville.com. You can read both articles by clicking on the hyperlinks.

What Three Words

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Did you know in nearly 170 countries, the addressing standard for various national postal services, businesses, or humanitarian organizations is to use three unique words as addresses? In these countries, each 3m x 3m square location has its own three unique words. This system also automatically places similar sounding addresses as far away from each other as possible (see the image above). This is very different from how our national postal service operates. At our open data deep dive we were able to hear from City Engineering Draftsman Pam Murray on how, historically, addressing has worked in Charlottesville and the changes that have been made to this process over time. We also had the opportunity to work through a GIS activity to understand how geocoding addresses work when using area-based datasets.

If you are interested in walking through this deep dive on your own, we have stored some resources from the deep dive on our events page.

Couldn't make it to this data deep dive? Keep up to date on future deep dives here.
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All Hands On Deck: Virginia School Discipline Project

Spread the word! Smart Cville is actively looking for a content curator for our Virginia School Discipline Project.

The VSDP provides access to information about the student discipline process in Virginia public schools. We have found that this information is often extremely difficult to find, and typically are provided with the sole intent to sell legal services. While the VSDP does not provide legal services, it does give you an idea of what information you should be aware of and what resources are available for families going through the school discipline process.

Are you or someone you know interested? Let us know here.

How You Can Help...

  • Donate to our non-profit or sponsor an event.
  • Email us to set-up a coffee/chat!
  • Share our newsletter with someone who may be interested.
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