Hack Winchester!

In just under a month’s time – on Saturday 8th September 2018 – Winchester City Council and the University of Winchester are holding Hack Winchester!

It is a hack event, so the emphasis is on ‘doing’ rather than talking.

You are invited!

It doesn’t matter if you don’t have strong data or technical skills – hacks work best when there’s a wide variety of people involved, and we are also looking for ‘ideas people’, project managers, business owners, entrepreneurs, students, policy makers – in fact, anyone who is interested in helping to make the District of Winchester a better place for business.

Creative problem-solving at a Hackathon

Overarching theme

How can technology and data be used to help tackle issues affecting people and businesses in Winchester?

The overarching theme is pretty broad, and there are three topics Winchester City Council would like to explore in more detail. These were suggested by attendees at the Winchester Unconference, which was held in May 2018.

The unconference was attended by over 100 people from businesses right across the District, and they voted on those topics they most wanted to see taken forward at a hack event. The top three were:

  • Supporting local businesses
  • Attracting and retaining young people
  • Co-working spaces

More to come

We’ll be sharing more detail about the day with you soon. Also, over the next few weeks, we’ll identify a bunch of data sets which we think you might find useful, and we’ll be seeking ideas.

Some hack ideas

A few ideas have been suggested so far – here are some of them:

  • Local music scene – gigs, venues, and dates (what bands are playing in venues serving decent food / drink, and with good public transport)
  • Business networking tool (connecting individual businesses with each other)
  • Business Directory (matching suppliers and potential customers?)
  • Map existing co-working spaces and show available resources, contact info etc (also identify gaps, where there AREN’T any co-working spaces)
  • Exploring Winchester City Council’s business rates data – do any of the currently vacant premises have potential to become future co-working spaces?

Getting together

We will also be arranging an informal drink and a chat about the hack at a local hostelry – we will share details about that shortly here, and on Twitter.

 

Picture credit

Hackathon by Andrew Eland on Flickr https://flic.kr/p/38aDyb