[open-government] Open Data hackathon updates

Wed Dec 1 23:59:49 UTC 2010

Ton - Thank you so much for this update. This is exactly what the day is 
supposed to do... great to hear such an early success.

Now worries on not getting a lot done - getting together and building a 
community is probably the number one goal. If, with only a few people, 
at the end of the day you can have a project well on its way I think 
that will be a great outcome. To have one in an alpha state that you can 
show around would be great.

Your email has me excited. I also want to recognize in some cities there 
may only be a small handful of people - and this is just as important as 
a city where maybe 20-30 people gather. I want people organizing these 
events not to feel overly stressed. Our goal is not to create a giant 
set of apps (that would of course, be fantastic). But let's focus on 
getting together, building some local community, and try to nurture a 
few successes, even if those can't be completed on the day - let's get 
them well scoped out and started so we and others can pick them up later 
and finish then. The most advanced goal is to for each event to have 
something they can demo to more people understanding what open data is 
and why it matters, as well as getting more developers and citizens 
engaged in future hackathons.

On 10-12-01 12:00 PM, Ton Zijlstra wrote:
> Hi David, all,
>
> That sounds very good.
> Here in our city (Enschede, Netherlands), the civil servants we have 
> been working with for the local event have ensured the release of a 
> number of data sets for the event, from geo stuff like house numbers, 
> neighbourhoods and districts, to polling stations, mail box locations, 
> bus stops, businesses and their activities, and soil 
> quality/pollution. So the event is triggering the first wave of data 
> sets here, which I think is already a good result. To help stimulate 
> that, I have offered the city council to spend a number of days of my 
> time, in exchange for more data sets being opened up. There's a good 
> chance they will take me up on the offer.
>
> We here in Enschede don't think we will get a lot done this Saturday, 
> and we will only have a handful of people most likely. But it's a 
> promising start bringing local people interested in this together for 
> the first time, and we will do on-line presentations of whatever we do 
> build. We already have set up a video exchange with the team in 
> Helsinki Finland to talk about results at the end of the day.
>
> Will go through your ideas, so we maybe can jumpstart some of the 
> activities on Saturday.
>
> best,
> Ton
>
> -------------------------------------------
> Interdependent Thoughts
> Ton Zijlstra
>
> ton at tonzijlstra.eu <mailto:ton at tonzijlstra.eu>
> +31-6-34489360
>
> http://zylstra.org/blog
> -------------------------------------------
>
>
> 2010/12/1 David Eaves <david at eaves.ca <mailto:david at eaves.ca>>
>
>     Hello everyone interested in the Opendata hackathon.
>
>     1. I've blogged a couple of ideas (here
>     <http://eaves.ca/2010/12/01/international-open-data-hackathon-irc-channel-and-project-ideas/>
>     and here
>     <http://eaves.ca/2010/12/01/sunlight-foundation-and-the-international-opendata-hackathon/>)
>     that people can hack on this Saturday. Again, I think the
>     localizing other projects will be the easiest way to get some
>     quick wins. (Hope to move this to the wiki shortly)
>
>     2. I'm trying to find ways to encourage non-developers to
>     participate by describing ways they can contribute to projects
>     (hope to move this to the wiki shortly) (see blog posts above)
>
>     3. Created an IRC chat room: irc.oftc.net <http://irc.oftc.net> #odhd
>
>     Somethings I'm thinking about:
>
>     1) ensuring people demo the ideas that they are working on, or
>     even better, complete
>
>     2) Getting feedback after the day to learn:
>     a) did people have fun
>     b) were they able to raise awareness/build community
>     c) do they want to do it again
>     d) what could we do better/build on our successes
>
>     Okay, focused on Saturday 100% now... so excited.
>
>
>
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>
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