SpotCrime Supplies Crime Data for Hackathons Nationwide

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As coding and developing becomes more and more popular, hacakthons are becoming an innovative way to create solutions to every day problems. A hackathon (a mix of the words 'hack' and 'marathon') is when programmers and software developers gather together to collaboratively code over a very short period of time, typically a quick as a day or as long as a week. The main goal of a hackathon is to create usable software, apps, and sometimes hardware

 In 2011, US Congress hosted it's first hackathon on December 7 at the Capitol Visitors Center. The event showed how political leadership agrees on the importance and power of technology when mixed with open data. Most of the time, this results in cool and useful apps and resources for residents. These civic hackathons are becoming more popular, popping up all over the US and happening more and more often. Cities are beginning to host their very own hacakthons where local residents use public city data to solve issues for residents.

SpotCrime is providing crime data as far back as 2007 available for download to any hackathon. We've been contacted by numerous hackathon participants nationwide and have been providing them with crime data.

We're hoping programmers and developers will use the data to create something interesting for residents to become better informed about crime in their area. Or perhaps they'll create something that helps predict crime. Or maybe something that shows what helps deter crime. Or maybe even create a bigger, better, and cooler version of SpotCrime! Either way, we hope the data will foster innovation within communities and prove how opening up crime data is very valuable. 

These kinds of events help to open up public data and make data easily available to residents. Whether it be transit data or crime data - it's another way to foster trust between the public and government. Participating in a hackathon and interested in using public crime data? Contact us and we'll get you set up to download the data - for free.


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