The second hackathon took place from April 8 to 10 in Moers. Anyone who was interested was able to sign up.
Thomas Kunsch
Hack Day in Moers – Reloaded
If something works, reuse it: 2nd Hack day in Moers with Bertelsmann Stiftung—experiences working with open data
When was the Last Moers hackathon?
What Is a Hackathon and a Hack Day?
Hacking has been around since at least the 1980s. The origin of the word goes back to the activities of innovators who wanted to find a way to make toast with a coffee machine. Hackers attempt to push the boundaries of what is possible.
A group of people called hackers get together at a hackathon. These may be veteran IT hackers, newcomers or everyday hackers. The event is open to anybody who wants to work together with others to find creative solutions to a particular problem. The participants themselves bring a problem to hack. The goal is to come up with something that benefits society.
Open data is ringing in a cultural change: filing cabinets are being opened.
Anke Knopp
Open data essentially means that public sector data from the public administration that is of interest to the general public is made available and will continue to be available to be transmitted freely to people and ongoing basis. This information may be used by regular people, institutions and companies. It does not include personal data or data that otherwise warrants protection. Basically, it‘s equivalent to the public administration offices opening their filing cabinets and drawers and making data such as household data, transport data, and geographical data publicly available.
Up to now, this data has rarely been available and not in a way that can be read by people or a machine-readable format. The idea behind open data is to promote transparency and the opportunity for people to work together with the civil service. This is not only at a municipal level, it also occurs at state and federal levels.
Practical for Every Municipality
Every municipality can make data available. To do so successfully, the general public and public administration contribute by removing files from the filing cabinets and digitizing them to add new value. This requires not only the creative minds who can code, but also people who are interested in and good at dealing with problems or finding solutions for development in municipalities.
