Who Should Attend?

Anyone that is interested in contributing to an open source project that will free or otherwise enhance government data can gather to brainstorm and hack on things.

Although the sprint takes place at PyCon you don’t have to be attending the conference to join us. Participation is free and open to anyone.

What Happens at the Open Government Hackathon?

The nature of the sprint will be fairly freeform, two Sunlight Labs members will be on hand guiding users that want to contribute to opening up the government. Users can come to the sprint without any background and we would help coordinate them and place them on a project where there skills would be useful (there is always a ton of scraping that needs to be done, building mini-web apps to showcase gov’t data, etc.)

Most likely we’ll spend the first session on Sunday talking about some project ideas and then interested parties will break off into groups to work on their projects. Sunlight Labs developers will be available in person and online to provide guidance and share expertise.

For ideas see the Big Issues and Project Ideas sections of the Sunlight Labs Wiki (and feel free to contribute your own)

Also, the Apps for America deadline is on March 31st, so it isn’t too late to work on that last minute contest entry and win $100 to $15,000 dollars.

I’m Sold, When/Where Is It?

There will be an introductory session at 4pm on Sunday March 29th where we’ll get oriented and start working on some ideas. The sprint itself will take place March 30th and 31st (with potential to go longer depending on turnout/interest).

The sprint will be taking place at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare hotel.

If you are interested in attending please either contact James (jturk@sunlightfoundation.com) or add your name to the PyCon wiki page.