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!)