First Rockford meeting of Illinois Open Technology Challenge

Online Staff Report

The first Rockford meeting of the Illinois Open Technology Challenge will be held from 6-8:30 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 17, at Northern Illinois University-Rockford, Classroom 101, 8500 E. State St., Rockford.

The Illinois Open Technology Challenge is a multi-month initiative aimed to make Illinois’ open data platform, Data.Illinois.Gov, available statewide, and host government trainings, community meetings and hackathons that will bring together developers in technology with civic-minded individuals and organizations. The goal is to help develop a real community where we will see sustainable civic results and developers will prosper.

Through the generous support of the State of Illinois, Illinois Science & Technology Coalition, The Chicago Community Trust, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Motorola Mobility Foundation, and Google, at least $75,000 in total prize money will be awarded to any individual, or team of individuals, for developing innovative software applications that utilize open government data to best address the challenges in one of our communities: Belleville, Champaign, Rockford and South Suburbs.

The broad criterion is as follows:

1. Use at least one dataset from www.dataillinois.gov, www.metrochigagodata.org or www.ssatlas.org

2. Use and/or publish as much open source code as possible

3. Attempt to solve a community problem.

The City of Rockford has also announced the launch of its interactive map gallery on the city’s website, http://rockfordil.gov/. The launch includes six different maps in the gallery: Aldermanic wards, garbage route pickup zones, capital improvement projects, zoning districts, watershed map, and neighborhood groups and associations.

RSVP to http://www.meetup.com/Illinois-Open-Technology/events/95912192/.

Posted Jan. 16, 2013