[School-of-data] Event GovHack – Beautiful Data

[Patrick Atwater]

In the spirt of passing along contests, please see here for a $5000 essay
contest our startup just launched. In particular, folks here might be
interested in the budgets question <http://staghuntenterprises.com/budgets/>,
which explores the potential of flowing financial data:
*
*
*"How might machine readable financial data that’s easily interoperable
across municipal jurisdictions transform how we manage public resources?  *Your
task is to fully imagine what machine readable data that’s easily
interoperable between state and local government might mean.  How might
that impact how a governor unveils a revised budget?  How might that change
how a City Council might deliberate in open session on an issue like
Glendale’s recent water rate increase?  How might that transform how we
manage a major capital project like the 710 tunnel expansion in Los Angeles?

*Bonus Points* for thinking through what sort of machine learning questions
would be interesting to tackle with this scale of data availability."


On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:22 PM, David F. Flanders <dff.ands at gmail.com>wrote:

> Some nation wide data hackery here in Australia :)  please do pass onto
> your Australasia friends :) /Flanders
>
> *Event GovHack – Beautiful Data*
>
> *au.okfn.org | May 8th 2013*
>
> As most of you will have heard, the Australian Government’s annual ‘open
> data’ event (GovHack) is taking place across the country this year with
> prizes from $500 to $5000 on offer!  GovHack this year has recruited 8
> cities including our fair city of Melbourne!  Naturally, many in the Open
> Knowledge community are already involved around the country (see the
> #GovHack tag for further postings).
>
> Here in Melbourne, Dr. Fiona Tweedie and myself (David F. Flanders) are
> organising the event in collaboration with the The Age newspaper’s
> DataPoint team and the Research Tech Services at The University of
> Melbourne.  Our thanks to Steve Manos & Marc Moncrief for their leadership
> to make this happen.
>
> Fiona and I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you why the Melbourne
> event will be different from the other GovHack events.  First, the theme of
> our event:
>
> Not only are we hoping to make the event itself beautiful by inviting a
> diverse range of people and ideas; in addition, we are are so confident
> that Melbourne will produce the most beautiful data hacks that we are
> putting up a prize that anyone can win #FriendlyRivalry.  *The challenge
> is simple: take any open data or knowledge and make it beautiful.  The
> prize to be announced soon.*
>
> *What is an example of a winning idea?*  Naturally, we don’t really know
> yet (“beauty is in the eye of the beholder”).  However, the team we think
> would have won at last year’s GovHack (and who did win a prize) was
> @RuthEllison & @EilvDeece. Ruth & Alaistair took historical temperature
> data for Australia and turned it into a graph showing the overall rise in
> temperature. They then designed the graph into a piece of jewelry and had
> it laser cut into beautiful pieces of art.  We want to see more of this
> creativity, using data to tell a beautiful story and designing it so that
> it inspires discussion.
>
> *Who should attend?* Designers, Journalists, Researchers, Developers,
> Storytellers, Makers, Cartographers, Artists, Students and anyone else who
> works with data on a regular basis and has the desire to make it beautiful!
>
> *When does this event happen (and can I just check it out)*:  Perhaps you
> are not sure about this thing called ‘hacking’?  Why not just come to the
> launch party and partake in the drinks, nibbles and games we have planned
> Friday evening May 31st, 2013.  We’ll start at 6pm in Media House (the HQ
> for The Age newspaper, next to Southern Cross station).  The prizes will be
> announced from the Nation’s capital, we’ll then have a game called ‘balloon
> bingo’ where everyone will get to know one another’s skillz through a mix
> of balloons and bingo (plan on having fun and meetings lots of interesting
> people!):
>
> balloons + bingo = fun & new friends!
>
> The main event (and ‘beautiful hacking’ space, as provided by The Age)
> will be open all day on Saturday and Sunday (June 1st & 2nd).  All
> competition entries will be due on Sunday evening at the close of the
> event.  Each team will need to submit a video of their entry and upload it
> to the GovHack website.  See the GovHack website for all the prizes!
>
> Finally, if you are interested in participating make sure you grab a
> ticket here (tickets will be released in daily rounds):
>
> http://govhack2013.eventbrite.com.au/
>
> If you have further questions or would like to sponsor a prize yourself
> (so you can see your data be turned into something beautiful or
> functional), then please contact @DFFlanders or @FCTweedie for Victoria
> prizes or @PiaWaugh for national prizes.
>
>  Original Page: http://au.okfn.org/2013/05/08/beautiful-data-govhack/<http://pocket.co/sU5l8>
>
> Shared from Pocket <http://getpocket.com>
>
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>


-- 
Patrick Atwater
A California Dreamer <http://www.patrickatwater.com/>

*The Daily Stag Hunt <http://www.dailystaghunt.com/>*

E: patrickatwater at gmail.com
C: 818.259.2709
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