27 March 2014
Registrations open for Auckland’s first civic hackathon
Designers, developers and innovators are being encouraged to register for a weekend of 'hacking for good’ in what will
be Auckland’s first ‘civic hackathon’.
HACKAKL:Transport - to be held on the 24th and 25th of May at AUT University’s Sir Paul Reeves Building - is free to attend and is being
supported by Auckland Transport (AT) in conjunction with AUT University and software house Propellerhead.
The weekend will bring together bright minds who are interested in utilising open government data to develop fresh ideas
that will help improve Auckland.
In the run-up to the event, Auckland Transport will publish a beta application programming interface (API) that will
open up a wide range of the organisation's data, including real-time bus information, geo-coding, roading and congestion
data.
Roger Jones, Auckland Transport's General Manager of Business Technology, says: "this is a great opportunity for AT to
open itself up to new ideas and innovation”.
"I love the idea of being able to democratise government data. This is an exciting opportunity to use crowd-sourcing of
ideas to find innovative solutions to some of the everyday problems we face in Auckland," says Andrew Weston,
Propellerhead's Managing Director.
AUT senior lecturer at CoLab: Creative Technologies, James Charlton, will be onsite as a creative advisor during
HACKAKL:Transport.
“In the creative industries there is a huge amount to learn by taking things apart, “breaking” them and discovering how
they work. Hacking fits in well with the innovative, student-centred approach we take at CoLab. So you can be sure there will be a bunch of AUT students joining a cross section of people from the creative industries
as they pop the lid on Auckland City’s ‘big data’!” says Charlton.
A key goal of the event is to establish a community that will drive the civic hacking and open government data agenda in
Auckland.
Those interested in being part of HACKAKL:Transport should register at hackakl.org.nz
Notes on 'civic hacking':
On the Code for America blog, Jake Levitas defines civic hacking as"people working together quickly and creatively to make their cities better for
everyone." Moreover, as Levitas points out, civic hacking does not necessarily involve computer expertise or specialised
technical knowledge; rather, it is a collective effort made up of people who want to make thingsbetter for themselves
and each other, whether they are an ordinary citizen or a programming prodigy.
ENDS