Calling all hackers... Wellington Hackathon fast approaching
On November 1-2, geeks, freaks, and residents are coming together to hack Wellington City in the heart of Miramar, Wellington’s creative suburb.
Now that the elections are over we can get back to what is important, hacking the Coolest Capital in the World and starting down the path to a Smart City.
A Civic Hackathon is an intensive session that brings together residents to tackle a particular challenge for the city
In this case, we’ve chosen the challenge to be how we improve transport in and around Eastern Suburbs and the city. While it is being held at Miramar we have people from all over the region already taking part.
We already have a bunch of ideas being talked about including applications that can track buses, understanding when traffic is at a low ebb and notifying us to travel then to the city, rewards for riding bikes, ideas about car parks, and a whole bunch more.
We are also laying our hands on a bunch of data and hardware so we can experiment and create some prototypes that will eventually transition to the real world. Sensors, counters, trackers, and maybe drones.
Everything that we come up with on the day will be open sourced to the world. Prototypes, Apps, data, the works. We want to share with the entire city the ideas that we come up with whether they are technical, practical, or just plain crazy.
Over the weekend you can bring your own group of people, join a group, be Mysterious and do your own research, and at the end we’ll come back together and see what ideas we have to improve the transport.
We’ll feed you, give you some beer and a cheap deal for dinner, lots of coffee, an Internet connection and a place to work in the heart of Miramar’s Movie Zone and you will come up with ideas that change the city.
At the end of it all, we’ll all vote on the ideas and the ones that are the craziest and smartest (and most likely to get us in trouble) will be presented to the City Council and the Mayor, in Dragon’s Den style.
The Hackathon is opening to anyone and everyone, free to register, however places are limited so get in now. Remember, you can register now, and change your mind later, though if you do that, we’ll be sending the drone after you.
