🎉 Welcome to the Team! 🎉
This isn't a boot camp. It's not a course.
Join us in the "🏢│Software Engineering" channel of our Discord server for an ongoing, real-world web development project – You're invited to join the team!
Ever wonder what it's like to join an existing software development team and jump into real code? Now is your chance. This isn't just a tutorial. It's a real project – already in motion – and you're joining the team!
✅ You'll join a real, ongoing project
✅ You'll work in a team environment
✅ You'll learn modern tools (Git, GitHub, Figma, Jira, etc.)
✅ You'll build with Python, Django, SQL – and AI
✅ You'll grow based on the tier you join
🛠 What You'll Be Doing
We're building a voting application that empowers everyday Americans to understand and engage with legislation on the national, state, and local level. Bills are often dense and difficult to read — so we're using the OpenAI API to help automatically summarize complex legislative text into clear, digestible language for the public.
Users will then be able to:
- View simplified versions of real bills
- Highlight each statement with green (agree), red (disagree), or grey (neutral)
- Generate a nuanced analysis based on their input
- Contribute to a collective public opinion profile that reflects what real citizens think
We're using:
- Python with the Django framework for our backend
- SQL for relational data and analysis tracking
- OpenAI API to summarize legislative text and extract key ideas
- HTML/CSS/JS for interactivity and user engagement
- Clean, accessible UI to make voting feel personal and easy to use
Together, we'll be:
- Building data models for bills, summaries, user responses, and AI output
- Integrating the OpenAI API to generate real-time summaries
- Designing intuitive interfaces for user voting and highlighting
- Creating logic to transform user input into readable public sentiment insights
- Managing permissions, user roles, and security best practices
- Deploying improvements in real-time and reviewing each other's code
🖼 Why This is Different
Most events are tutorials. This one is a real project that you can jump into and shape. You'll experience how it feels to collaborate, contribute to a live codebase, and see your work go live — while building a civic tech tool with real impact.
👥 Who Should Join
- Python beginners who want to apply their skills to a real Django app
- Developers curious about using AI tools like the OpenAI API
- Full-stack devs who want to contribute to a democracy-enhancing platform
- Anyone passionate about making legislation more accessible and inclusive
🎁 Benefits (Based on Your Tier)
👀 Observer (FREE Tier)
- Join live sessions
- Watch and listen to a real development team coding in real-time
- Join a growing community of software developers
👩💻 Apprentice Engineer (Premium Tier)
- Join live sessions with mic/video access
- Ask questions and receive answers in real-time
- Learn Git and GitHub workflows
- Join Pair Programming sessions via Live Share
- Contribute to code via pull requests
- Participate in weekly planning, retrospectives, and development syncs
🎨 Front-end Engineer (Premium Tier)
- All Apprentice benefits plus:
- Build intuitive user interfaces for highlighting and voting
- Work on design systems and visual feedback mechanisms
- Collaborate with designers in Figma and bring designs to life
- Ensure accessibility and responsiveness
🌐 Full-stack Engineer (Premium Tier)
- Everything in Frontend + Apprentice plus:
- Full access to Django views, models, serializers, and routing
- Work with SQL databases and custom queries
- Integrate and manage the OpenAI API for summarization
- Help build sentiment aggregation systems
- Learn secure handling of user input and data privacy best practices
- Manage deployment, testing, and project architecture
🎓 What You'll Learn
- Python and Django real-world application design
- SQL for modeling structured legislative data and responses
- Integrating AI with the OpenAI API
- Git, GitHub, pull requests, and collaborative development
- API design and secure backend development
- UI/UX for civic technology
- Real deployment strategies and live feature shipping
- SO MUCH MORE!
If you're interested in getting hands-on experience building real-world projects on a real team, sign up for a free trial on Patreon or just join the session as an observer to see what we're all about!
