The July speakers at OpenAccessPHL are attacking big problems

At the July convening of OpenAccessPHL at Pipeline Philly, we heard from Nikki Johnson Huston of Donafy, Briana Morgan of Philly Open Health, Kahiga Tiagha of ITEM, and Sean Lynch of Penn Apps Fellows.

OpenAccessPHL also announced the official launch of CivInc impact stories.

Through CivInc, OpenAccessPHL is encouraging people to share about how OAP has had an impact on them. CivInc invites OAP participants to share about any products, services, programs, organizations that they operate and that have had a positive impact on them through an introduction via OpenAccessPHL members, website, convenings or emails. Submissions that OAP receives during the third quarter of this year may be eligible for micro-grants of $1000 as well as additional support from OpenAccessPHL.

Nikki Johnson Huston of Donafy

Johnson Huston talked about her app, currently available on iOS, called Donafy, which allows citizens to easily locate, notify and donate to nearby nonprofit organizations that service people in need of housing, food, medical care, mental health, job assistance and LGBT services. Currently the app allows you to notify or donate to over 100 organizations, and Johnson Huston added that she has been approached by six different cities and is looking to launch an android version soon. She also noted that Donafy is looking to partner with more nonprofits in the app.

Briana Morgan of Philly Open Health

Morgan began her presentation by talking about how inaccessible some data is, even though it’s online. That included one set of data that opened in Excel 2.0 from 1987, and another  that instructed users to copy and paste the data. To help fix that problem, she’s currently working with Code for Philly and Girl Develop It Philly to help make Public health data more open and available. She’s currently working on freeing data from Office of HIV Planning’s Epidemiologic Profile, or “epi profile,” a gigantic PDF document around 400 pages long containing general population data about Philadelphia and its eight surrounding counties. Read more about the efforts in Generocity.org’s article from last year.

Kahiga Tiagha of ITEM

ITEM, an organization founded earlier this year, stands for stands for the inclusive technology and entrepreneurship movement. The organization is working towards gathering minority and women techies and entrepreneurs to discuss their projects, companies, and latest tech news.

Sean Lynch of Penn Apps Fellows

Penn Apps Fellows, an all volunteer organization run by students, aims to help bring talented tech students to help startups and tech companies. In six words, Lynch described the organization’s goals as to “Help Grow the Philly Tech Community Grow.” Lynch helped found the organization, and several of this year’s fellows were in attendance, although the other co-founders were not — Lynch said his co-founders could not come because they are busy graduating from high school.

The next convening will be August 14 at 4 p.m. CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia.