GovHack Unleashed Adelaide

GovHack

GovHack Open Data Competition

UPDATED (18/08/14): We won again! 'What Grows Here?' also wins 'South Australia Premier's Award' and 'Building on Science, Research & Environmental Data Award' at the Unleashed Adelaide Awards. Read our new blog post!

UPDATED (12/08/14): We won! Our 'What Grows Here?' project was awarded the 'National People's Choice Award' (voted by the public) at the 2014 GovHack Red Carpet Awards. Our project was also featured in The Guardian and mentioned in The Australian.  Congratulations to the whole team!

What took place

On the weekend of 11-13th July 2014, we took part in the second annual, GovHack open data competition, right here in Adelaide. In a single weekend, our GovHack team managed to create a mobile application that helps find what plants are suitable for planting in your current location.

What is GovHack Unleashed Adelaide?

GovHack is a national competition for improving access to government data. The idea is that the government makes its data available to teams of developers (hackers), and over a weekend the teams design and build cool software applications that use the data in clever ways. GovHack ran simultaneously in 11 different locations across Australia and we took part in Adelaide, South Australia (known as Unleashed Adelaide). Our hugely diverse team (Nature Ninjas), comprised of developers, designers, social gurus, marketers and teachers.

What we did…

At the end of a very long weekend, we developed a mobile application that helps you find the plants best suited to your area,- we called it 'What Grows Here?'. We also developed the start of a Learning Hub, that makes use of the data used in 'What Grows Here?' and shows how the same data can be used in a totally different way - in this case, teaching children about plants and birds in their current location. Overall, it was fantastic weekend, and the whole team are hoping to further develop the application and learning hub in the future! Get in touch if you have any questions or if you’d like to know more about the 'What Grows Here?' app.

ARTICLE TAGS: GOVHACK UNLEASHED ADELAIDE | WHAT GROWS HERE | NATURE NINJAS | GOVHACK | KOOLTH | GOVHACK AWARD WINNERS | NATIONAL PEOPLES CHOICE AWARD | SOUTH AUSTRALIA