[open-government] Open Data hackathon updates

Thu Dec 2 00:38:04 UTC 2010

Hi David and all,

Just to let you know we finally updated some information about the São Paulo
event on the wiki: http://www.opendataday.org/wiki/São_Paulo,_BR (in
portuguese, but google translator can always help).

Still missing some project ideas and participants names on that, but those
might come along the way.

Let me explain a bit of what's going on in our end. Our event in São Paulo
starts on saturday at 0:00 and it ends at 11:59 (BRST). It happens at our
very own just recently rented hacker apartment! We, at Esfera, just rented
an apartment in front of our workplace to start a "hacker residency"
project: a space for people from all around the globe to come, stay over and
hack cool projects.

The international hackathon will represent the opening of this new space and
I can't even tell how exciting it is :)

People will be able to stay over and sleep at the apartment before and after
the hackathon if they need to, so we might do some showcasing on sunday
morning. We are setting up a streaming channel, and we are also planning an
agenda of chats with cities that will be hacking away during the weekend, so
we can collaborate more closely with them. Already have Warsaw (Poland),
Porto (Portugal), Brasilia and Belém (Brazil) on the target. But will be
definitely using the #odhd IRC channel as our main communication tool during
the day, so it will be easy to connect with everyone else.

Other than that, I am in Brasilia now, and I feel the hackathon here is
going to be a great success. The group who is leading it is really lively,
and they got organized with some cool people from the government, who are
eager to participate.

We are all happy and excited for saturday!

Talk more soon,

Daniela

2010/12/1 David Eaves <david at eaves.ca>

>  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
> +31-6-34489360
>
> http://zylstra.org/blog
> -------------------------------------------
>
>
> 2010/12/1 David Eaves <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 #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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