Chi Hack Night

CTL-E-6379 · Institution · other · 2012–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07565 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6379.

Chi Hack Night is Chicago's weekly civic-technology community: a volunteer gathering to build, share and learn about civic tech using open data. It was founded in March 2012 as Open Gov Hack Night, starting with four technologists including co-founder Derek Eder, according to Government Technology and Chi Hack Night's own board history. Meetings follow a Tuesday pattern — food and socializing, announcements, a headline presentation, then breakout hacking — and projects have included lobbying-data, vacant-building and snowplow-tracking tools. In 2019 Chi Hack Night completed its transition to an independently run membership nonprofit, with an 11-person board and 41 voting members, holding 48 events that year. It remains, in its own description, Chicago's weekly event to build, share and learn about civic tech.

The record

• Also known as: Open Gov Hack Night

Notes

NON-CLAIM: the original name Open Gov Hack Night is sourced (Derek Eder's own history: 'We dubbed this event Open Gov Hack Night (now Chi Hack Night)'), but a formal Code for America brigade affiliation for Chi Hack Night itself was NOT established from a fetched source — Government Technology only frames it as the kind of movement Code for America's brigades seek to foster. Brigade status is not asserted. GRADE BASIS: Verified — subject-primary plus independent Government Technology corroboration for founding, pattern and work. BLOCKED EDGE: founded_by → Derek Eder — Eder is not a live record. NOTE: Chi Hack Night's 2019 programme included data-ethics programming, but no sourced organisational link to EB-34 exists; no edge is staged on it. PHOTO: HELD with a named candidate (see media). CURATOR'S JUDGMENT (DRAFT): The friendliest record in the packet — civic tech as a Tuesday-night habit, not a hackathon. It shows the graph's technology lane has a community, not just systems. (Draft judgment, not fact.) PHOTO CLEARED at merge by the head (Lane A) — see this record's media layer: Chi Hack Night event photograph, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Relationships

• Chicago — located in
  Chi Hack Night is Chicago's weekly civic-technology gathering, per the institution's own site; the City of Chicago is live record CTL-E-1475.

Sources

• “2019 was the most introspective and transformative year for Chi Hack Night since we were founded in 2012… transition completely to an independently run non-profit organization with an 11-person Board of Directors and a 41-person Membership… We put on 48 Chi Hack Night events. If it's Tuesday, it's hack night!” Accessed 2026-10-29. (primary source · build store)
• “Every Tuesday evening, there is a civic tech meetup in Chicago… This event is called Chi Hack Night, and it's been happening since 2012”; “Chi Hack Night started with basically four volunteer technologists… Derek Eder… Juan-Pablo Velez, Scott Robbin and Tom Kompare.” Accessed 2026-10-29. (build store)
• Derek Eder listed as “co-founder of Chi Hack Night when it was started in March of 2012.” Accessed 2026-10-29. (primary source · build store)

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Record CTL-E-6379 · Combined Graph record U-07565 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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