Open Data Day Hackathon Results

This weekend approximately 30 people - students, staff, and faculty of the University of Guelph, and members from the Guelph community - gathered in the Science Complex Atrium to take part in the first Open Data Day Hackathon.

Sponsored by the City of Guelph, the University of Guelph, and the College of Physical and Engineering Sciences, teams of coders and non-coders came together with a goal of developing tools that used, processed, analyzed, or helped further expand the City's open data warehouse.

Beginning on Saturday morning, participants worked for 24 hours to develop new tools, mobile apps, and games. Teams then presented their work to a panel of judges: Brydon Gilliss of Threefortynine, The City of Guelph's Mayor Karen Farbridge, Dr. Rozita Dara of the Dr. Rozita Dara of the School of Computer Science, and Dr. Jamie Doran of Innovation Guelph.

After much deliberation, the judges selected their top three teams based on functionality, intuitiveness, and impact.

In third place: Electric Sheep (School of Computer Science grad student Jason Ernst and Carlos Saavedra) with their app myCity. The app connects people to the resources around town in a gamified way.

In second place: Greg Klotz from the School of Computer Science with Contacts @ Guelph; a responsive website that allows citizens to easily find City of Guelph employees.

In first place: George Mavroidis - a second year student in Software Engineering from the School of Computer Science. George has developed Guelph Transit - a mobile app that connects citizens with the transit schedule in a user friendly way - even while offline.

Prizes of $1000, $1500, and $2500 were awarded to the winners. Congratulations to all of the winners and to all of the participants.

We're looking forward to the next hackathon. Stay tuned for details.