You have 36 hours to hack Bath's Past, Present and Future

We’re delighted to announce our second big hack on 1st/2nd November as part of the Bath Digital Festival. If you’re passionate about our city and love making things, it’ll be 36 hours of fun and learning.

This time round we have more datasets, a proper data store, free food/drink, ace prizes and an all new track for first time hackers.

The Short Version…

Dates: Saturday 1st November 10am – Sunday 2nd November 7pm

Venue: The Guild Co-working Hub, High Street, Bath BA1 5EB

Tickets: Book here FREE »

Max. participants: 50

Max. team size: Unlimited

Themes & Prizes

Since the event also coincides with Heritage Open Week, we’re theming the hack around Bath’s past, present and future. Teams who most impress in any or all of these categories are up for a prize:

Heritage & History Award (£300)
Awarded to the team who best educates or excites us about Bath’s rich past.

City Life Award (£300)
Awarded to the team who tells us most about present day Bath and its citizens. Who are we?

Better Bath Award (£300)
Awarded to the team who wants to make Bath better. Is there a city issue you’re itching to solve? Make the future happen now.

Hacker’s Choice (£300 + Github Bronze)
Which team did you most admire? Awarded by popular vote of hack participants. Team members also receive 1 year Github Bronze plan.

Best Shipped Project (£300 + Github Silver)
We love shippers. A live project available for public use is all you need to be eligible. Team members also receive 1 year Github Silver plan.

Grand Prize (£500 + Github Silver)
Awarded to the team judged to have made the best overall project across all categories. Team members also receive 1 year Github Silver plan.

Plus! Best First Timer
An individual award to the person deemed to have most embraced the hack spirit and achieved a high level of personal learning during the hack. Winner will receive 1 year Github Bronze plan and a 1 day web developer course (or £300 off a longer course) with develop.me. Choose from:

Introduction to Web with HTML & CSS – (Monday 1st December)
Getting Started with WordPress: Installation, custom theming and plugin development – (Thursday 4th December)
Version Management with Git & GitHub – (Friday 5th December)

Timetable

Event start: 10am Saturday 1st November. Coffee, ice breakers and a quick primer from our open data heroes mySociety.
Official hacking starts: 11am (Saturday)
Official hacking ends: 4.45pm Sunday 2nd November
Team presentations: 5pm – 6pm (Sunday)
Judging & Prizes: 6pm – 7pm (Sunday)

The Guild will be staffed throughout the hack. If you want to work through the night, you can – feel free to bring a sleeping bag.

First time hackers

Bath: Hacked is about using open data to make useful things and we think open data shouldn’t be the preserve of developers. If you’ve never attended a hack, are only just starting out in tech and want to understand your city better – we want you!

Several teams have already offered places for apprentice hackers and we’re also making our data curators available to mentor you. Ideas and enthusiasm are the only prerequisites. It’s an exceptional learning opportunity.

Those who make it to the end will also be eligible for the Best First Timer prize.

Venue

The Guild needs no introduction as Bath’s finest co-working hub, located right in the heart of Bath. It’s also an amazing place to hack with comfy workspace, screens, A/V and a blistering fast Internet connection courtesy of Gradwell.

Address: High Street, Bath BA1 5EB

Food/drink

We’ll be providing free lunch on both days to all participants. There will also be a plentiful supply of tea, coffee, energy drinks and alcohol to ease you through the brainstorming.

If you have special dietary requirements, please let us know.

Judges

Our judging panel is spectacularly experienced at both the technical and community ends of open data. They are:

Dr Joanna Bryson, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Bath
Paul Crossley, Leader of the Council, Bath & North East Somerset Council
Benjamin Nickolls, Commercial Manager, mySociety
Ben Unsworth, Data Solutions Engineer, Socrata

Judging notes

Teams who want to be considered for prize(s) should submit a short slide deck presentation to our A/V staff by 4.45pm on Sunday
5pm – 6pm: rapid fire presentations, strictly no longer than 2 minutes per team
Presentations should be structured as follows: max. 20 seconds to state the problem, max. 20 seconds to state the tools/data used and the remaining time to show what you made. Feel free to use wireframes, screenshots or anything beautiful.
Time constraints won’t allow for project Q&As. Sorry!
Project don’t have to be shipped to be eligible for a prize but judges will give extra weight to complete projects.
All teams are eligible to win one or more prize categories – go for it.
Minimum team size: 1
Maximum team size: Unlimited!

No team? No idea?

Not every team turns up complete, and not every team has a hack idea. That’s why we’ll be running icebreakers and a matching board to help you find the right people to work with.

Skills in very short supply: Creatives and Data Analysts