That’s right. We all made it out alive. The Hack4Reno Hackathon was an amazing success. I don’t think there was a single person that left that event unchanged – I know I went back to work thinking “Hrm, I wonder what I could hack together in a weekend?” and I immediately made huge changes to long-stagnant code in the spirit of “clever playfulness”.

Now that we’ve all (mostly) recovered from a crazy couple of months we’re putting together the final results as well as some post-hackathon events/announcements.

Stay tuned hackers!

Not long now before we all spend more than twenty four hours hacking our way to a finished (Come on, you can do it!) project for Hack4Reno. Our last couple of meetups have seen us talking about ideas. For those of you that haven’t been able to come out I have a little video wherein I give away a FREE IDEA!

We’ve got a wiki page with some more ideas to get you started and you can always beg and steal at our mixer on Friday, Oct 14th.

Don’t panic.

What should I build?

I’m guessing that, unless you spend too much time thinking of such things like I do, the words above may have escaped your lips recently. Or one of the many variants: “I still don’t know what to build”, “I can’t decide what I’m going to hack on” — you get the picture. I heard a lot of these at the last meetup. Don’t worry. That’s perfectly normal. Why not try a few mental exercises to get the juices flowing?

• Ask It – Start asking your friends, family and coworkers what they would like to know about the city. You could even invite them to watch you hack it up!
• Think About It – Think back over the last month or two. Is there anything you wanted to know about the city? Any information you needed and couldn’t find?
• Say It – Use your smart phone to record a voice memo as you drive to work. Look around as you’re driving and mention things that irritate you. Might some agency in the city, county, or state have some information about that? I’m not sure anyone can help you with the other drivers though
• Time It – Make an idea appointment. Set an alarm for the same time every day (or multiple times each day) and force yourself to brainstorm everything you can think of for 15 minutes. Trust me, it gets easier each time you do it.
• Catch It – Put an empty scratch pad in front of you for the next few days. Every time you think of something (Read: anything) — Write. It. Down.
• Social It – Post your need on our facebook wall or Tweet it to us. We’ll help you get some feedback.
• Forget It – My personal favorite. Try to forget about it – push it from your mind – then perform some mundane task. (Shower, dishes, cleaning, yard work) and before you know it, Idea Time®!

If all else fails we’ll be putting together a list of the surplus ideas in the next day or two. (Hey, some people have more than they need!) Until then, keep in mind that there is more to your decision than “what to build” you need to consider whether you can actually get your idea to a workable state in 24 hours. This could be the most challenging aspect of a hackathon. Here’s Colin talking about this very thing:

HACK4RENO – Colin Loretz gives a few examples. from The Brocraft on Vimeo.

Thanks Colin.

Wait, you have registered for our little hackathon haven’t you? Well done.

Today we’re having a meetup at Reno City Hall to begin the conversation with our local government about openness, transparency, collaboration and participation. If you haven’t already registered, please go do that now.

Back already? We thought you might want to learn more about this “open government” thing. If you feel like reading this morning, Tim O’Reilly has been writing about Gov 2.0 for quite a while, the City of Chicago has been doing massive amounts of work to get their data out in the open, and data.gov shows what this movement looks like at the national level.

Watching any of the videos from the 2010 Gov 2.0 Expo will help you gain a better understanding of what we are trying to do with Hack4Reno. Here are a couple of selections to get you started:

Tim O’Reilly talks about Government as a Platform – a key component to taking this effort to the next level.

A short video of Daniel O’Neil from EveryBlock with some case studies of Open Government and open data.

Clay Johnson with the Sunlight Foundation shows some great examples from their contest winners.

Come down to City Hall at noon today and join us for the beginnings of this conversation and don’t forget our regular meetup tonight from 5:30PM to ? at the Reno Collective.

Just over two weeks left until the Hack4Reno hackathon kicks off downtown and we thought you might be wondering what to expect. Things like: what should I bring? what is going to happen there? where am I going to sleep? We put together a little video with the help of our friends at The Brocraft.

Got more questions?

Read more about Hack4Reno. Find out what you should do now. And, of course, register!

To answer the question of “What is Hack4Reno?” we decided to put together a little video.

Hack4Reno is primarily a 24-hour hackathon where teams build apps that somehow benefit the local community. This means creating apps for the web and/or other platforms that aggregate, collect or share information about the area. Teams are not required to use only city data – any and all data sources are encouraged but a focus on Reno makes it much more challenging. These apps don’t have to be boring and serious either. Have fun with it. Maybe someone really wants to know where the closest food truck is.

The hackathon starts at noon on October 15th and the hacking continues until noon on October 16th when we break for lunch and allow the teams to prepare presentations. At 1:30PM the teams present what they’ve built and compete for prizes, recognition, and bragging rights.

Last Friday (16 September, 2011), Brandon Rittiman was kind enough to have us on Beyond the Headlines at KUNR. We spoke with him during the later part of the show about hacking, Hack4Reno, Open Government and how geeks need more sun.

Did you miss the broadcast? Well, the Internet is here to save the day. You can listen to the 12 minutes and 14 seconds in question from the comfort of your own browser.

Hack4Reno on KUNR Sep 16 2011 by elskwid - The full broadcast can be found on the KUNR site.