Join National Day of Civic Hacking!

Calling hackers from far and wide! National Day of Civic Hacking is taking place in cities across the nation this weekend (June 1-2). “The event will bring together citizens, software developers, and entrepreneurs from all over the country to collaboratively create, build, and invent new solutions using publicly-released data, code and technology to solve challenges relevant to our neighborhoods, our cities, our states and our country,” reads the website. Learn about all of  the nation-wide hacking opportunities here. Check out some exciting food tech-related challenges and events below:

Title: Backyard Poultry Farmer
Description: Create a Backyard Poultry Farmer app with the objective of getting individuals and households back into agriculture through backyard chickens
Contributed By:  U.S. Department of Agriculture – USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)

Title: Farmers Market Directory
Description: Creation of mobile applications to enhance the Farmers Market experience and make trips easier by using USDA’s Farmers Market Directory
Contributed By: U.S. Department of Agriculture – USDA

Title: Improve Healthcare
Description: HHS proposes 5 diverse projects aimed at improving healthcare: 1) build a common directory of community resources, 2) visualize/explore hospital charges data, 3) create downloadable healthdata.gov catalogue, 4) facilitate home visits that promote healthy families 5) secure survey collection
 Contributed By: Department of Health and Human Services – HHS

Title: EPA Safe Drinking Water App Challenge
Description: Develop an application that helps citizens locate their drinking water system, discover any historical or pending violations, and understand any potential health effects associated with potential violations.
Contributed By: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – EPA

Title: The Hack For Food
Description: Code for Asheville is planning a food hackaton in conjunction with national partners and the Buncombe County Food Policy Council. Members of the tech community and the general community will come together to “hack” the issue of food availability and security.

Title: CityCamp Palo Alto
Description: A free and fun family event with a focus on hands-on activities such as a hackathon and makerspaces; software engineers, makers, artists, speakers, community members, visitors, and City officials will gather to explore a variety of ways to build innovative solutions to support the future of Palo Alto.

Title: ATX Hackathon for Change 2013
Description: The Food Lab is participating in the ATX Hackathon for Change and will be leading a Mapathon as one part of the weekend’s events. By creating a highly granular map of the Austin area that includes both mobile datasets (i.e. food distribution trucks) and fixed data points (i.e. restaurants), the Mapathon will be both innovative and a civic service.

Title: National Day of Civic Hacking- Burlington, Vermont
Description: A group of Vermonters from various professional backgrounds dedicated to the common goal of using technology to solve public problems has come together to hack solutions for “healthy communities.” Challenges presented will help solve problems in the following areas: Arts, Culture and Music, Economic Development, Food Systems, Education & Workforce Technologies, Healthcare Technologies, Clean Energy and Transportation and Emergency Preparedness & Public Health.

Title: Hack for Change- Montgomery County, MD
Description: The Montgomery County event will bring together techies, entrepreneurs, do-gooders, activists and others from across the region to collaborate and envision tools using publicly-released data. County leaders will pitch a variety of ideas to participants for their consideration. Topics may include: water quality apps, food recovery tools, transit data visualizations, and more.