City of London and UnLondon Digital Media Association
Announce over $5000 in Cash Prizes for Open Data Hacker Contest
The City of London and UnLondon, a grassroots digital media community group, are pleased to announce the winners of the first open data contest held in London.
The contest kicked off with a Silicon Valley-style ‘launch party’ held at APK live, featuring cutting edge art, performances, and video installations. As attendees mingled and met potential team-members, the contest rules, application forms, and access to the data was announced via the contest Website, www.budgetappcontest.com.
From November 10 to December 14, 2011, budget data, reports, meeting dates and other relevant information was provided to the public and hosted through the Open Data portal and Buzz Data (www.buzzdata.com/unlondon) as teams from across the city began to develop their apps.
“Our goal with the contest was to encourage local developers, designers, technologists and social media aficionados to discover new ways to engage the public with the 2012 City of London budget,” said Titus Ferguson, CoFounder of UnLondon. “We want to help create a culture of openness and accessibility in both the public and private sectors is a founding principle of UnLondon and we look forward to future projects with the City of London and the broader community in that effort.”
Mayor Fontana supports and encourages collaboration in London business. He says, “Strategic alliances and partnerships can often lead to new opportunities for business and that’s good for London business and the community. Developing new ways to share the City of London budget information and engage Londoners is no small feat yet our digital community jumped on this opportunity. I am interested to see where the new applications and our digital thinkers lead us.”
A day long “hackathon” was held at KoWork in downtown London on November 19 and provided an opportunity for contest entrants to collaborate with each other, meet potential team members and work on their submissions. The City of London presented additional information on the budget process and City staff were available for questions and tutorials.
Judging occurred between December 15 and December 20, 2011, and included judges with backgrounds in digital media strategy, user experience design, application development, and representatives from the art community.
Prizes are awarded in four categories: best overall application, best team application, best designed application and best solo submission. The following applications and teams were selected by the judges:
Best Designed / User Experience ($750): Do it Yourself London by Gavin and Zoe Blair, Shannon Gallagher, Denise Spiessens and Shawn Adamsson.
Top Solo Submission ($750): Noah Stewart
Best team submission ($1,250): Do it Yourself London by Gavin and Zoe Blair, Shannon Gallagher, Denise Spiessens and Shawn Adamsson.
Grand Prize ($2,000): Steven Shelby
In addition to the cash prizes offered by The City of London, community partners including The Windermere Manor , Harrison Pensa LLP, and KoWork London have provided in-kind prize donations to help the winners continue to develop and refine their submissions.
All applications will be made available for use by Londoners on the app contest website at www.budgetappcontest.com. Applications will be updated with information throughout the 2012 budget process and Londoners are encouraged to use them to learn more about the budget process and to provide their input directly to city staff.
About UnLondon:
UnLondon is a digital media association with a mission to “Gather. Create. Improve.” UnLondon was created to help London Ontario use technology and collaboration to explore new ideas, projects and discover new ways to complete existing tasks and events in an "un"conventional manner. The organization has been host to numerous events around London including PodCamp London (www.podcamp.ca) and StartUp Camp. UnLondon operates the UnLab, a physical maker space, out of the Research Park at Western Ontario. More is available online at www.unlondon.ca.
Contact
UnLondon Digital Media Association: Titus Ferguson, CoFounder
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519-636-0783
