Join us on June 4 for Code for Oakland, the first ever Oakland hackathon/bar camp dedicated to building applications that meet the needs of our local community.

This event is being organized by Oakland Local, Urban Strategies Council, Innovative Oakland,  Code for America and a slew of others.

Not a software developer but have great ideas? You can help!

What’s going to happen?
The Knight Foundation and the FCC came to Oakland, CA in April 2011 to announce a major new tech competition called Apps for Communities that will award $100,000 in prizes to reward mobile and web-based applications that use government and public data to "deliver personalized, actionable information to people that are least likely to be online."
 
So, that’s where Code for Oakland comes in.  We’re pulling together a low-cost one-day Bar Camp that will bring government officials, developers, designers, and interested parties together for a day that will be devoted to looking at local datasets of use to people in Oakland, and that gives teams a chance to talk through, brainstorm and prototype their ideas before the competition closes on July 11.
 
Come win prize money for your ideas! Win prize money to support building an application to submit to Apps for Communities—over $2,500 in potential awards on the day.
 
If you are a coder, designer, developer, database guru, hacker then read about the bar camp event below...

If you are not a coder but represent local government, the nonprofit community or you are an Oakland resident and have ideas that you would love to see built into powerful applications to help your community, then we invite you to join our Community Listening Events.

What will happen at the bar camp event?
This will be a day of talking, brainstorming, planning. Optimally,  we hope to:

Discuss some of the local government data sets competition entrants might work with
Build connections between potential collaborators who want to build useful apps for local people and need to fill out their team/skills
Encourage the exchange of experiences, expertise and ideas between those involved in leading open government data initiatives around the East Bay and nearby.
Prototype ideas We hope there will be plenty of space for developers to hack on things — from refining core bits and pieces of technology to rapid prototyping of new ideas

****Community Members & Local Organizations****
Can I propose a session or suggest an app that would help my community?
Yes, especially if you are the owner of, or have access to, public data sets with Oakland/East Bay relevant information.  We are holding two free, public Community Listening Events at City Hall on May 24 and June 3 to develop your ideas into possible projects for the competition!  Sign up for one at http://cofpresession.eventbrite.com/     You can also propose your session as part of the data camp-post--send ideas to codeforoakland@oaklandlocal.com; and we will post them.
 
What kinds of topics will be covered?
Sessions will include things like:

    What are datasets that can serve low-income people and local communities of color?
    Finding open government data: catalogues, registries and metadata
    Working with data: Technical aspects of opening up government data
    Working with mobile: Mobile highlights to know
    Developer speed-dating: Find others to work with on your project

What kinds of outputs will there be?
Projected outputs include:

    Prototypes of ideas for Apps for Communities
    Formation of teams to work on projects for competition

Sponsors include Ramsell Corporation, Pandora, Full Court Communications, Urban Strategies Council, Lake Merrit/Uptown Association, SWIGO, Kapor Foundation, Winning Strategies and The City of Oakland (more sponsors welcomed)

Urban Strategies Council is sponsoring a special prize for the best mobile app built on their newly opened public API of all the Reentry and Social Service Providers in the East Bay.

There is also a special youth prize so please encourage youth to join us and show their talents!

For more in depth information on this event and to register visit codeforoakland.eventbrite.com