What is a scope-a-thon?
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A scope-a-thon is a day-long collaborative event where local experts convene to scope and plan solutions that incorporate data and technology to address community challenges. Participants, who are often individuals with a niche area of expertise, aim to scope a solution for clients, who are often representatives for local organizations working on social issues. Similar to a hack-a-thon, a scope-a-thon focuses more on problem definition than on building a finished product. This is because while "sprinting" to end products works for the technological development community, solving social issues requires more intention and participation from experts in a given subject matter. Scope-a-thons present a unique opportunity to dedicate time and effort to understanding local challenges _before_ developing solutions to address them.
Scope-a-thons provide communities the opportunity to unite organizations and individuals across sectors to better understand the needs, challenges, and opportunities for data use in solving local issues. Scope-a-thons can be a great showcase for open data as a problem-solving tool and can be framed like a competition where the winning participants get a prize to implement their plan to address a client's issues. Hosting a scope-a-thon may well be the key to uniting technologists, data experts, social workers, teachers, service providers, activists, and students in your community to brainstorm data-driven solutions to local issues.
A model that took off in Chicago
In 2015, South Side Civic, a student organization at the University of Chicago, hosted the first annual Civic Scope-a-thon to help local community-based organizations work with students at the Harris School of Public Policy, the Department of Computer Science, and local technologists to solve organizational challenges using data and technology. The first Scope-a-thon was created to give organizations committed to social change in Chicago an introduction to local tech and data capacity, and to give them a space to problem-solve together. The intent was to combine the local expertise of organizations working on the ground in neighborhoods with the technological or academic expertise housed nearby at the University of Chicago.
The Sunlight Foundation had the pleasure of attending the third annual Civic Scope-a-thon in October 2017 in Hyde Park, Chicago. This playbook is based off of the model piloted by South Side Civic to coordinate that event. South Side Civic organizers reviewed this playbook before publication. We are grateful to them for sharing their time, expertise, and exemplary work. South Side Civic organizes locally at Chicago's ChiHack Night, a collaborative space for civic hackers and open data enthusiasts to come together around solving local issues.