Open Hamilton is hosting our second hackathon during the weekend of March 2nd to March 4th 2011.

The event will be headquartered at think|haus and will bring Hamiltonians together for a weekend of civic hacking, learning, and community building.

• Build great apps for the citizens of the Greater Hamilton Area and join other cities as part of the international events to build apps for humanity
• Demonstrate the value of Open Data for the cities of Burlington and Hamilton
• Serve as a model of engagement and participation for other nearby cities
• Foster open local government that empowers citizens to meet our the needs of our communities by transparency in government information
• Bring Hamiltonians together with the shared purpose of improving our municipal government using our unique skill sets in a showcase of positive civic engagement
• Help brand Hamilton as an ambitious technologically aware city that is tackling the challenges of civic society by working in collaboration.
• Empower citizens to improve our municipal governments
• Give citizens the tools and information to better engage in civic society, life, and governance
• Show the Greater Hamilton Area is full of talented, creative people that love our city
• Allow everyone to use their skills for civic good
• Spark innovation by creating collaborative teams with individuals that may not other meet
• Take back the word "hacking" to it's original meaning of constructing with a positive outcome

What's a Hackathon?

A hackathon brings people together to do great things with people they know and other they've just met.

Why the term "hack"?

The first meaning of "hack" described the modification of hardware to make it better, faster, add features or make it do something great that it originally wasn't intended to do. We're "hacking" the city to make it better by taking information and modifying it to better serve our community.

When and Where?

It all begins Friday, March 2nd, 2011 and wraps up Sunday March 3rd (Don't worry, you're allowed to go home and nap.)

Locations are to be determined, but will likely be at The Staircase Theatre at 25 Dundurn St N, Hamilton.

Projects will be decided upon at the opening event and the groups will decide their times over the weekend.

How can I get involved?

Everyone can contribute their time and skills. You don't have to commit to the entire weekend, and you can choose to only be an observer. Pun intended: were Open to all! If you can only make it out for an hour, that's great. You can attend the opening and closing events only. It's up to you, you're in control. Here's a brief summary of how some of the types of people can join in.

Are you:

• An artist with only an hour of free time that weekend? Great, come out for an hour and contribute a graphic to a project.
  
  
• A developer looking to build something as part of a team learning new coding skills? We need computer cowboys and cowgirls like yourself to wrangle data into something useful. That means visualization, notification, integration, etc., all in the name of doing something crazy and fantastic. We also need you to eat all the food we'll have. (Seriously, some of us are concerned about eating too much in December.)
  
  
• A designer wanting to improve your web portfolio by giving to your community? We need people like you to make the everything look amazing, feel intuitive, and have a smooth user experience. The best application in the world that no one can use... isn't much use!
  
  
• Are you an information junkie? Can consume enough data? We need beautiful people like you to scour the local interwebs for interesting data, to help the rest of us figure out what's important.
  
  
• Aliens: You hovered over our East End trying to find a landing place in July and couldn't find any. We're sorry about that. Maybe you're interested in using the recreation app we're creating to find good landing sites. What size field do you require? Do you need a gas station nearby? Prefer soccer fields over baseball diamonds? Concerned about field flooding? The recreation app will include this information.
  
  
• A statistician or a lover of statistics? YES! YOU ARE SO NEEDED. Seriously. While we can find it, blow it up, calculate it, and make it look pretty, we needs us some mean number crunchin’ to present meaningful visualizations. Join up.
  
  
• MOST IMPORTANT - CITIZENS: We need you the most. If it weren’t for you, this whole thing wouldn’t be happening. We need ideas, cheerleaders, and friends to spread the word. Come out, get involved, and help us make our city better.
  
  
• Helping Hands - There's tables to be manned, food to be set-up, clean-up to be done assisting people to find their place and plenty more to be done. Join our Google Group and sign-up to assist in organising this event!

What Do I Need?

We will provide facilities, power, food and refreshments. Just bring your laptop, ideas, and enthusiasm to complete the mix.

Note: For those coming from outside of Hamilton, think|haus does have futons and a shower if you wish to request permission to sleep in the facility.

Help organise:

Open Hamilton will meet every Thursday evening in November. We need logistics, web designers, coders, graphics, and more to help with organising the event and setting up the event web page to make #Hack4HamOnt successful.

Designing the patterns to be cut on the plastic name tags, the posters to promote the event, a logo for the event, the t-shirts, helping choose what food is available at the event, promotion to local media, recruitment of volunteers, promotion of the event; these are just some of the things we need assistance with.

We meet this Thursday, November 10th, 6pm at think|haus. (Pizza and drinks will be provided)

Please visit the Open Hamilton Google Group, introduce yourself, and let us know what you like on pizza on our organising thread here.

Help with in-kind or prize gifts:

Do you, your organisation, or business wish to help the event by giving in-kind supplies or prize gifts to be drawn at the event?

Please contact event facilitator Joey Coleman by email: joey@thinkhaus.org