Miramar_Peninsula_aerialHackMiramarWellington is running its first Civic Hackathon the first weekend of November to tackle transport issues in and around Eastern Suburbs and the wider city. The Hack Miramar folks have got a bunch of people involved already and they’ve got spots open if you want to join in and they’re looking for freaks, geeks, and companies that want to showcase their Smart City and Internet of Things devices, so get in.

A group of like-minded individuals are coming together on the 1st and 2nd of November this year to participate in Wellington’s first Civic Hackathon. A hackathon is an intensive session where a group of people are giving a civic problem, data, tools, and bring their own skills & resources to solve that problem. Hackathon comes from merging “hack” and “marathon”.

If you’re not a developer, data geek or planner then all good as you can drop your Peninsula transport ideas on the interactive map that will be used to inspire and challenge the teams that come together on the weekend.

A number of sponsors have come forward already and are providing them with raw data and sensing devices that we can utilise to capture data that has otherwise been unavailable. They want more of course, so if you have hardware in the Internet of Things and Sensing area, they’d love you to loan it to them in the run up to, and over the weekend, so that they can play with it.

While this has been branded a “Miramar” Hackathon it is open to everyone within the Wellington region. They expect that, if this is successful, future hackathons can be established across the city to solve various problems and tackle challenges. The long term goal of these events is to help Wellington City become “Smart”, as in Smart or Sensing City. That is, using people, ideas, art, technology, and a slew of other factors to increase the happiness, well-being, and productiveness of a city.

You can register here and vendors who want to help out can contact them here.

(Today’s post comes to us from former ‘ista Miramar Mike. Thanks Mike!)