Hack the City - with the Open Data Institute Challenge Series

Hack the City is about using open data for a better urban and civic experience.

It's a hands-on event to use public data to test and prototype ideas, apps and products that can reveal something different about your city, or help people find out and engage more easily with the events, incidents and decisions that affects them.

There'll be a room full of smart folk to collaborate on ideas with and plenty of food to keep you going, whether you want to prototype a data-driven startup concept, knock together an urban or civic hack or simply experiment with the data.

Who Can Hack?

All citizens are welcome. You don't need software development skills, but they are always helpful. The best hacks come from teams that combine technical and design talent, with a canny understanding of how users use digital and citizens could engage with their city. Some entrepreneurial hustle goes a long way too.

Where and When?

We're based at the Showroom Cinema in Sheffield.

On Fri 5 Sep, there'll be a pre-Hack social from 7pm to meet the other hackers, share ideas and find

On Sat 6 Sep it's the main Hack - we gather from 9am with insights into the data sets, pitching and voting on ideas, and forming teams before settling into the Hack. There's food and refreshments throughout the day, culminating in a show'n'tell of what's been done and awards from 8pm, followed by networking drinks from 9pm.

On Sun 7 Sep it's the after-Hack. From 10am - 5pm there's more time to build on your hacks, try out alternative scenarios and to come back to it with fresh eyes - or even try out a new one. We'll be supporting the Most Viable Product hack to go forward to the Open Data Institute Challenge Series, with a chance of winning £50k funding, office space and mentoring, as well as helping other teams to test business models for their product hacks.

We'll have prizes for

• Most Ingenious Data Hack - the most cunning, penny-dropping, hack idea of the weekend.
• Most Viable Product - the prototype with the best potential to be a real, financially sustainable product.
• Best Core Contribution - don't want to build a product, but want to help make better data sets? Invaluable.
• Best Mobile Experience - not just a mobile app, but something that is conceived and built, from ground up, to be used in the mobile context.
• Most Elegant Design - seamless integration between form and function, eliminating the friction between the data and its user

On Sunday, there's a special Second Day Sprint Award for the best new or most improved hack.

Hack the City is delivered in partnership with Open Data Sheffield, Startup Club Sheffield, the Open Data Institute and Nesta.

You can take part just for the weekend, but we're also interested in helping teams test out and shape ideas to apply for the Open Data Institute Challenge Series.

This is a programme of competitions aimed to both stimulate projects and help startup enterprises using open data. On offer are three prizes worth £5k and an ultimate prize of up to £50k, along with an opportunity to enter their startup programme.

Simon Whitehouse (@siwhitehouse) is Series Lead for the first of these competitions, which is focussing on Crime and Justice. He will be on hand throughout the weekend to give more information about the Crime and Justice series, the forthcoming Crime & Justice Innovation Weekend, the overall Challenge Series and other opportunities offered by the ODI.