Opening up Colorado With Open Data and Hackathons

I’ve been spending a little bit of time sniffing our OpenData resources, open government portals and related efforts (if you have details of a useful Open Government resource, portal or repository please share HERE). While doing so I’ve also stumbled onto some interesting resources and events. I’ve noticed that Colorado has some hacking going on and a couple of interesting events that are just around the corner.No huge surprise to me as Colorado is very well organized in this space and is making great strides. Personally, I love the OpenColorado resource, mainly because it brings together many local government agencies and orgs in one convenient location making it very simple for people to participate and share their data – a great example for Government! See  http://opencolorado.org – Note: OpenColorado is built using the awesome ckan open source data portal software, a powerful tool that any Government can leverage to help open their data to the public.

In April an awesome community hackathon event is taking place in Longmont CO and being hosted at Skyline High School (Longmont Hackathon) – I love the idea of doing this at a school – the perfect community venue! The City is involved in the planning, they have an official Twitter account @hackLongmont and also a facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Longmonthackathon

Not to be outdone, there’s also an interesting event in Colorado this May – enter Hack4Colorado. For 3 days (May 31 – June 2) developers, hackers, designers, and others will gather to hack and mashup data. Check out details at http://www.hack4colorado.com