Author Archives: Luke Bacon

Our first ever Outreachy Internship

By Luke Bacon | Published: May 5, 2017

Today we’re excited to announce that Hisayo Horie will be working with us for the next 3 months in our Outreachy Internship position. Before we introduce Hisayo, and the project we’ll be working on together, let us tell you a little about how the Outreachy application process has gone since our announcement blog post just […]

Posted in Announcement, Outreachy, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Tagged , , | 1 Response

Join us for a 3 month, paid, full-time internship and start transforming our democracy

By Luke Bacon | Published: March 24, 2017

The OpenAustralia Foundation team and contributors redesigning street development notices at the Frontyard Hackfest 2016. Photo by Lisa Cross Are you passionate about open source technology and improving our society? Come work on the OpenAustralia Foundation’s open source projects and learn how to fix bugs in Australia’s democracy with a paid, full-time, and remote Outreachy […]

Posted in Announcement, Outreachy | 9 Responses

See you at the Pub Meet, February 28th in Sydney

By Luke Bacon | Published: February 16, 2017

I hope everyone’s having a good start to the year, and keeping cool. If you’re in Sydney, come say hi at our Pub Meet on Tuesday evening February 28th, at the Trinity Bar on Crown St, ten minutes walk from Central. RSVP and see details here https://www.meetup.com/OpenAustralia-Foundation/events/236977994/ We’ve had a busy month since the last […]

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Hacking democracy and playing the long game – Luke Bacon at linux.conf.au 2017

By Luke Bacon | Published: February 10, 2017

Last month Henare and I were in Hobart for linux.conf.au. We met lots of really nice people working on a dizzying array of interesting projects. Linux.conf.au is Australia’s biggest conference for people building and using Free and Open Source Software. People come from all over the world to be there. Henare and Matthew from the […]

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Join us for our 2016 End of Year Picnic in lovely Sydney Park

By Luke Bacon | Published: November 29, 2016

To celebrate all our achievements in 2016, and all you great people who make them possible, we’re having a little party on Sunday the 11th of December in Sydney. We’d love to see you there! While some of the biggest contributors to OpenAustralia Foundation projects are spread across Australia, unfortunately a national tour is not […]

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There’s no better way to learn how easy FOI requests are than to make one

By Luke Bacon | Published: November 24, 2016

Most people I speak to about making Freedom of Information requests think it’s too difficult to waste time on—it’s for lawyers, not them. When I’ve seen our FOI system presented in a teaching context, the clear message is ‘FOI is too hard, too slow, and too expensive’. The message has sunk in, including with journalists, […]

Posted in Event, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , | 4 Responses

Ask Your Local Councillors

By Luke Bacon | Published: June 21, 2016

PlanningAlerts makes it easy to impact what happens to your local buildings, parks, streets, and infrastructure. Over the last 7 years almost 40,000 people have signed up for alerts and thousands of you have made official comments on development applications for everyone to see. But there are more ways to impact what gets built and […]

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Picking a focus for the final push on our current major project

By Luke Bacon | Published: June 13, 2016

A couple of weeks ago Kat and I spent some time working out how best to spend the remaining time on our latest major project: helping people impact local planning by making it easy for them to write to their local councillors through PlanningAlerts. I thought it would be useful for our team, and anyone […]

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Our submission to the Inquiry into procedures for counting and reporting the vote in a division

By Luke Bacon | Published: March 17, 2016

These are the buttons Ukrainian MPs use to vote *cough* @AboutTheHouse @AuSenate *cough* #auspol #qt #parliament pic.twitter.com/j69R72a248 — Henare Degan (@henaredegan) November 13, 2015 If you follow this blog, or our projects like OpenAustralia.org.au or They Vote For You, you’ll know that we work hard to increase peoples’ access to information about what goes on […]

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Civic Tech Monthly, October 2015

By Luke Bacon | Published: October 23, 2015

Welcome to the ninth edition of Civic Tech Monthly. Below you’ll find news and notes about civic tech from Australia and around the world. It seems like October has been a busy month for everyone. All around the world people are flat-out launching new projects, presenting at conferences, and sharing plans and ideas. This edition […]

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