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!)