Hey techies, want to do something cool for the neighborhood? P’raps you want to check out Startup Weekend GOV.
Startup Weekend is a cool series of events worldwide where technophiles gather for a intense, weekend long friendly competition to team up and create new services and applications, in the space of just a couple days. Participants work through the day and night, surviving on pizza and energy drinks while they go from concept to creation.
And Seattle is to play host to the first Startup weekend specifically targeted at improving government and our relationship to it, with a focus on ideas that will improve public safety, utilize open data sets, and/or improve the lives of Washington residents.:
Seattle is about to be host to the first-ever Startup Weekend GOV, April 27-29th at City Hall. This event is a joint partnership between Seattle, King County, and the State of WA. Approximately 150 local designers and developers will collaborate over the weekend to build Web and mobile applications with a focus on Washington residents and specifically the open data sets available at data.seattle.gov, datakc.org and data.wa.gov.
But don’t despair, luddites and troglodytes, you can play, too! The public is welcome to submit ideas and vote/comment on existing ideas for the apps that participants will take on. All ideas welcome!
Also, the public is invited to a pre-event on April 19th at 6 pm at City Hall. There will be business and technology workshops on working with government and open data and to discuss the apps they’d like to see built. The public is also invited to watch teams demo their finished apps on Sunday, April 29th at 6 pm at City Hall.
If you’re a designer, techie or otherwise inclined to participate, tickets go on sale April 2nd.
Thanks to Marina “I left my heart in Wallingford” Martin for the tip.