StartupYard Announces “Prague Hacks,” the City’s Biggest Ever Open Data Hackathon: June 12-14
We’re pleased and excited to be able to announce, after months of planning, that StartupYard, along with an impressive team of partners, will be hosting Prague’s biggest ever city Hackathon, entitled “Prague Hacks: Improving City Life.”
When: June 12th to 14th, 2015
Where: Node5, Prague 5
Joining Forces
Together with Otakar Motejl Fund, reSITE, GisMentors, the City of Prague Institute for Planning and Development, IBM, Node5, The Vodafone Foundation, and Microsoft, StartupYard will welcome local hackers, programmers, entrepreneurs, and creative people of all stripes for a single mission: to improve life in the City of Prague, using the city’s own open data.
This will be a non-profit event; the largest of its kind, and will be held at our home base, the notorious Node5, as well as being streamed live online.
What’s a Hackathon?
A Hackathon is a non-stop collaborative session in which groups of people work as quickly as they can to come up with a finished product, based on a simple idea. That product can take any form, like an app, a web service, or even a game. The event is for anyone with an interest in the city- not just programmers.
All About the Data
The City of Prague, through the Institute for Planning and Development, will make available reams of data, including geodata, data on transport, crime and safety, elections and government, as well as land use, and more. Those joining the Hackathon will propose their own ideas for open-source, or business applications for that data, and divide themselves into teams to tackle different problems that interest them.
The object of the Hackathon is two-fold. First, and most importantly, Prague Hackers should focus on using this open data to improve city life in some way. That improvement can take almost any imaginable form, be it a business, a visualization, or a free service, or something else entirely.
Second, it is our hope that this Hackathon will push the city of Prague to focus on the collection and free availability of city data, so that businesses, political movements, non-profits, and others may have access to more and higher quality information and insights into how the city works.
Better data and more available data means that we have a better chance of improving life in the city together, making our city safer, stronger, and more resilient to social, technological, political, economic, and climatic changes.
A Fast Track For Funding and Sponsorship
Sponsors Vodafone Foundation, Microsoft and IBM will provide hundreds of thousands of Czech Crowns worth of sponsorship in the form of software licenses and hosting for new projects that result from the Hackathon. In addition, eligible participants will be invited to present their results to the reSITE conference, taking place June 18th and 19th in Prague.
Non-commercial projects that show promise will be invited to join the Vodafone Foundation Accelerator, and commercial projects can be fast-tracked for the StartupYard Acceleration program, with up to 280,000 Euros in seed investment available.
