Wikipedia:Meetup/Adelaide/GovHack 2014

Several members of the Adelaide Wikipedia Users Group took part as mentors in the "Unleashed 2014" national hackathon, also known as GovHack, a national competition designed to highlight the use and potential of open data.

In South Australia the event took place at the Victoria Square campus of Flinders University, between 11-13 July 2014. The discussion below is a record of AWUG participation in the event.

Preliminary discussion

Technical Mentors - Unleashed (GovHack Adelaide)

I suggested to the organising committee for Unleashed 2014 that having technical help for competitors from open source projects that provide data that is consumed by competitors would be helpful. The response was extremely positive and I am wondering if anyone would like to come into the competition in Adelaide which runs this weekend, 11-13 July 2014?

Help would be really useful particularly for the Opening night, Friday from 6pm, and Saturday morning 9am to 12pm. You would help competitors understand how Wikipedia (and associated projects) content is collected, its strengths and weaknesses, along with how it can be consumed (or used) in other applications.

If you can help out please contact me so I can pass your details on to the organisers so you can be admitted to the venue, name-tagged etc. Alex Sims (talk)

Where is it happening? Pdfpdf (talk) 12:05, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Level 1, 182 Victoria Square, Adelaide (Flinders University). I have 10 page PDF from the organisers with lots of information. Alex Sims (talk) 12:12, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

On the Day

Despite Wikipedia being used as a data source in the previous Govhack, there was little interest in Wikipedia by teams on the Friday evening and Saturday morning. There was a lot of interest in OpenStreetMap, and associated map generation engines, such as LeafletJS. These were used as infrastructure in a number of projects. I would suggest that if any help is offered next year, it is made available on the Data Mentors night on the preceding Thursday, when teams are gathering information about data sources. Analysis could also be usefully done on what data sources were used to guide any future help offered. Alex Sims (talk) 23:53, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

References in the media

• GovHack competition draws hundreds of entries from across country ABC News, 13 July 2014.
• GovHack sparks international interest, whets VC appetites The Advertiser, 14 July 2014.
• South Australia led the way in Unleashed 2014 last weekend with 122 hackers turning out to get creative with open data The Advertiser, 14 July 2014.