Hack for North Philadelphia at #QuestHacks next week

Filmed over the course of 10 years and focused on the evolution of one North Philadelphia family, “QUEST” premiered as a documentary last year at the Sundance Film Festival and has gone on to win a slew of awards from multiple festivals.

The family at its heart, the Raineys, includes father Christopher (known as Quest), mother Christine’a (known as Ma Quest) and their children. But their story is also one of community.

Next week, the QUEST Community Engagement Project, Code for Philly and Resolve Philadelphia (citywide newsroom collaborative Broke in Philly’s parent org) are hosting for a Community Digital Solutions Day inspired by the film, called #QuestHacks.

The goal is to convene North Philly residents, civic leaders, technologists, journalists, activists, project managers, data scientists and the like to address the neighborhoods’ problems with technical solutions — though, similarly to last year’s Reentry Project hackathon, participation doesn’t require any technical expertise.

There are three separate events happening in the coming week for the hackathon:

• “QUEST” screening — Watch the film with Code for Philly on Monday, Oct. 29.
• #QuestHacks kickoff night — Meet with other soon-to-be-hackers, form project teams and discuss potential problems to tackle at Church at the Advocate (run by the inspiring Rev. Dr. Renee McKenzie) on Friday, Nov. 2.
• #QuestHacks project day — Get to work with your mixed-experience team on drafting layouts, exploring tech tools and more at Church of the Advocate on Saturday, Nov. 3. Lunch will be served.

Not sure what, exactly, the end result will be? That’s part of the point: Hackathons are collaborative by nature, and participants decide what their work will look like as they go. At that Reentry Project hackathon, for instance, four teams came up with a bilingual resource website, a mentor matching app, a text-for-resources service and an app for returning citizens’ families — all of which were conceived organically through the day.

The topics that will be addressed during the hackathon will be inspired by the movie’s themes, so you’ll do best if first you see the documentary in question. (If you can’t attend the screening, email tmcintyre@codeforphilly.org and ask for a link to the film, or look on iTunes.) Peep the trailer here: