60 coding experts have spent 36 hours developing apps and software that could improve the community at the Bath: Hacked event organised by the Council, Bath Digital and The Guild.
Photo courtesy of Bath: Hacked
The thirteen teams assembled on Saturday morning and started hacking a range of data streams, such as the location of buildings, geography, and environment.
The brief was simple; to come up with something useful.
A wide range of apps and software was created with some hackers working through the night to complete their creation. Following a four minute presentation by each of the teams, the projects were judged by Valerie West of The Dyson Foundation, Doug Laughlen of LocalGiving.com and Ross Ferguson of Bath University.
They covered a diverse range of uses from finding a car park, finding out the standard of living of specific streets and utilising the Council Discovery Card in a wider range of ways.
The overall winner was Data Blitz – made-up of Mark Owen and Duncan Barclay whose creation looked at a new way of handling complex data making it visually appealing and accessible to members of the public.
The judges thought it was extremely innovative and could have wider implications for the Internet in general.
Councillor Paul Crossley (Lib-Dem, Southdown), Leader of Council, awarded the top prize to Data Blitz.
He said: “The work that the teams completed in such a short amount of time was remarkable. What impressed the most was the different ways in which the data that we opened up to the hackers was used. No two apps were the same.
“The Council will be approaching some of the hackers who created really useful apps that could be developed into full blown products that could benefit the community. As one of the main sponsors, we are proud to have supported the event.”
Richard Speigal, who chaired the event, said: “Every team contributed towards a massive success. The range and quality of apps was superb, as was the commitment of teams who chose to sleep at The Guild rather than going home.
“Over half of the projects were in a usable form by the end of the hack, which is tremendous and certainly not what we were expecting.”
There are now plans for a second official Bath: Hacked at the Digifest in October 2014.
The main prize fund was kindly donated by sponsors Invest Bristol + Bath, Mayden, Real World Studios and Vidahost.
