City celebrates Open Data Day with Regional Hackathon

Over 150 people packed into City Hall this weekend to celebrate International Open Data Day with a Hackathon hosted by The City of Calgary and the Calgary Regional Partnership. Over the course of the weekend, thirty five teams put their heads together to create apps and websites using open data from municipalities across the Calgary region.

“This weekend is all about collaboration, brainstorming and problem solving” says Walter Simbirski, Open Data Strategist with The City of Calgary.

“This event gives citizens the opportunity to be innovative, challenge the norms, and use the resources that we already have available in new and thoughtful ways” Simbirski said. “We believe that in opening up government data, we can achieve increased efficiency, increased innovation, and increased transparency – with the goal of making the community better and serving citizens better every single day.”

Teams were judged on a number of criteria including citizen value, a score that assessed the product’s ability to show economic, social, or environmental benefits to the community. After three days of intense brainstorming, programming and pitching, three teams came out on top as this year’s Hackathon winners.

1.CycloConnect

A crowd sourced app for bicyclists to plan their routes and monitor the availability of bike storage around the Calgary region.

Team members: Ellyn DuMont, Linh Duong, and Maha Jamil

2.Plugin Calgary

A citizen engagement tool for municipalities to provide challenges based on their environmental, social, and economic programs and participants would collect points for completing challenges.

Team members: Jill Langer, Ireti Fakinlede, and Stella Lee

3.Transit Krowd

A near-time data collection app that allows bus riders to see how full their upcoming bus is, and share information about the condition of buses, trains, and transportation shelters around the region.

Team members: Teddy Seyed, Abhishek Sharma, Alaa Azazi

The Calgary Region Hackathon was an opportunity to promote the use of open data, and encourage citizens to create innovative solutions to deliver City services in a more efficient and effective manner. Open data refers to data that is available to the public at no cost, and can be used for any purpose including commercial use.

For more information on The City of Calgary’s Open Data Catalogue, visit data.calgary.ca.

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