We fill a room with as many web and application developers, open data & visualisation gurus, user experience folk, accessibility peeps, augmented reality-ists, mobile maesters, user experience fanatics and anyone interested in open government as we can find and set them loose on government data sets to create new mashups, data visualisations and apps. We provide everything you’ll need to hack to your hearts content, for glory, or money, or both!

On hand will be:

• Data “owners” and mentors from a range of technology backgrounds
• Facilitators to help teams focus, and move forward throughout the event
• Copious amounts of power, wifi, food and caffeine
• A range of developer tools and support throughout the 48 hours

Governments collect and publish enormous amounts of data, but have limited resources to get it into the hands of their citizens in engaging ways. GovHack is an event to draw together people from government, industry, academia and of course, the general public to mashup, reuse, and remix government data. GovHack is about finding new ways to do great things and encouraging open government and open data.

GovHack runs over 48 hours starting with drinks and the competition announcements on the night of the launch. Mentors in a range of areas will be on hand to help out. Teams work through the weekend and by Sunday 5pm you have to have submitted your team page, 3 minute video and any code/source materials.

GovHack is open to everyone and anyone. From data vis, designers and UX’ers through to web developers and hard core application developers. Pull a team together to raise your chances of winning!

GovHack is about having fun and learning, regardless of your level of expertise. From first year university students through to hardened developers, everyone who gets involved will come away from the weekend with something new, whether it be code, content, an idea or new contacts.

Aside from having the opportunity to interact with your peers, get mentored by experts or show off your skills to a community who loves this kind of stuff?

Matthew Cashmore – Hack Days rock. They rock because when you get cool people in a room they do cool stuff. The essence of a Hack Day is achieving something remarkably amazing — awesome — in a very short period of time.You will also be in the running for prize money and grants for the best work undertaken with government data across a number of major and minor categories. The categories will be announced Friday night.

You can probably somewhat infer the categories from who our data and prize sponsors are, but GovHack is about what you can develop from Friday night till Sunday afternoon, and that work is what the judges will take into account.

GovHack day’s provide an opportunity to get exposure to new ideas from different perspectives about technologies and approaches you never get to experiment with in your day to day job or at university. This is an opportunity test run those ideas you’ve had, but never had the chance to partner up with someone or the dedicated time with experts around you to make the idea a reality.

Sound good? Yea we think so too.