Yearly Archives: 2012

Saturday night – Vermont Open Data Hackathon

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Very cool 24 hours. At 6:30 yesterday evening several of us kicked off the Vermont Open Data Hackathon. By buddy Tim and MWG owners the Tarrant brothers generously offered the use of their beautiful work space in the Champlain Mill for 24 hours of hard-core hacking on the topic of Open Data. The idea was to build some killer apps for the state of Vermont. We had about 114 folks sing up in 32 teams. Some worked alone, some in teams with as many as 5 folks.. Some were seasoned pros, others were college students.. we even had one 19 year old guy working on his own. In order to spur innovation, there were few rules. The only requirement was that it made use of one or more sources of open data and that it made Vermont a more livable place.

The very cool thing about this hackathon was that it aligned with (and in some ways sprung from) a project I’m doing at work on Open Data..  I was one of the panel of judges for the event.. and felt honored to have been asked.   At 6:30 Tim and I gave a short intro to the challenge and the rules for judging.. then they were off !. It was so inspiring to see all these folks coding for 24 hours in order to give back to our state..

 

GO !!!!



By 6 pm there was already pizza that had been donated..

Of course, there was a generous supply of redbull..  a necessary programming tool


I stayed only until 12:30 last night.. I wasn’t competing, so I got the chance to sleep !  Things got pretty weird as the night went on

Hey Andrea !!


junk food wrappers started to show up everywhere !. A sign of good, hard thinking !


at 12:30 there was a break for ice cream and burritos..   again.. all donate.. by Ben and jerry’s and bullacos

I came back in around 2 this afternoon .. folks were still hard at it.. they looked sleepy, but happy !


It was very cool looking out unto the winoski that was swollen from all  of last nights rain .

then it was over.. and time for the judging to begin.. All the teams lined up.. all 32 of them.. each had to make a 3 minute intro talk./demo . that’s not much time !

the suspense was great !

here’s our team of crack judges ,.

here goes one of the first talks.. this is my buddy Sam S. from Lab-B.

we even had one group do hardware ..   this is a traffic sensor


it was hard choosing from all the projects.. in the end we gave out 3 honorable mentions..

then the best university project..

then 3rd place..   an app for helping choose the best place to live in the state based on a a variety of open data sources.

then 2nd  place. a tool for comparing VT towns based on a set of metrics

finally, first place… a great app for visualizing a time line of the lifetime of commercial enterprises over the year..  that used local historical business records and map data


then it was time for folks to pack up.. they were a tired bunch !

speakign of tired, I can’t keep my eyes open..

Thanks to all th organizers, contestants, and judges for making this open data hackathon such a big success.
this is the start of something very good for the state of vermont.. !
more tomorrow about the land trust dinner this evening..
nite all, note sam
-me
Thanks

Friday night – fell

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(sorry folks.. my blog post got ‘eaten’ three times last night… here’s what I was trying to say)

Been at the Vermont Open Data Hackathon all evening which was such a great scene.. back there tomorrow… I’ll describe it for you then !.

 

Here was the other big news for the day.. remember that beaver-eaten tree that Diane showed me on Thursday ? ..


Well.. This (Friday) morning, Diane called me outside…to see what had happened in the night.. Pretty cool, no ?

 



Too late to type – ipad lost my post 3 times.. arggg..
Nite all, nite sam
-me

Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thursday night – timber

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Long hard day of work.. was just wrapping up when Diane called me outside.. she wanted me to see something.. .. but she wanted it to be a surprise.. She walked us (dogs too) across into the field across the street to where the field hist the river.. This is what she wanted to show me.. .. she wanted to make sure I saw it .. because one more night of gnawing and this might topple over. We’ve had beavers here for years.. but I don’t ever recall seeing them this close to finishing off such big tree. The chewing was fresh today.. it’s so amazing to watch this happen.. even more amazing to wonder what they will do when they bring down a tree that weighs several tons. How do they do it without talking.. how do they do it without getting smooshed ?

the area is covered with fresh stumps.. they must be reading their den for winter.

it was nice being outside.. I hadn’t been out since my run early this am.. there are still a few leaves turning up on the hill.. the house looked cool in front of them.

ok.. gotta go do some recreational programming to relax..

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Wednesday night – make my day

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Very good day, I had a pretty full day work wise, but also made time to go to a kick off ceremony for the Vermont Open Data Hackathon that my friend Tim at My Web Grocer  is leading this weekend. Governor Shumlin kicked it off for us. it made me feel really good to hear our state’s Gov talking about the high tech job growth in Vermont and saying the words ‘open data hackathon’ .. In a very strange way .. this all grew out of something I’m doing as part of my day job at work..  The  idea is that teams will spend 24 hours creating apps for the state of Vermont from the states open data resources..

 

Anyway.. the real fun starts on Friday night .. 24 hours of open data hacking fun.. I’ll keep you posted from then

 

Then .. back to work.. at 7 i was back on stage curating the High Voltage meetup for the Vermont Makers .

I had coordinated a bunch of High voltage hobbyists to come show a crowd of about 70 folks the ins and outs of the high voltage hobby ..It a great hobby.. it extends from simple experiments of rubbing your feet on the carpet to huge deadly sparks.. whats not to like in that. Makers Scott, Chuck, Dave H, Richard, Dave H (the Uvm) one , Erc and myself did a sequence of experiments from friction machines, to influence machines, induction machines and pulsed power.. lots of sparks a few shocks,, a and really good fun.


the finale was David H’s can crusher.. sounded like a rifle shot.. and here’s the poor can that was the target

I just love this whole maker mindset that would have me at a hackathon kickoff at lunch and a maker meeting at night.. this is the world I want to be in !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me