This month we are seeing something we have never seen before. A focused and intentional collaboration of government with the general community to mashup government data for the benefit of everyone. Mashup Australia is an initiative by the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce wherein:
- a series of useful data sets have been made openly available under Creative Commons licences,
- a series of events are running for people to collaboratively mashup the datasets into useful online incarnations, and
- there are prizes for fantastic mashups, and entries close 4pm November 13th.
There is a big event on this Friday and Saturday called govhack at ANU here in Canberra, and I’ll be going along on Saturday to see how people are going!
There are also two other mashup events coming up soon – click through for full details:
- Google MashupAustralia Hack Night #2 – 6-9PM Wednesday October 28, Sydney
- OpenAustralia Hackfest – The MashupAustralia Edition – 11AM-8PM Saturday November 7 & 8, Sydney
I look forward to seeing all the amazing ideas people have for the datasets. I’m particularly keen to ensure the case for open data continues to be strongly made following the events, including the use of open standards, permissive copyright and open APIs to be truly useful. I look forward to talking to the participants, and seeing their creative ideas in practise.
So get your skates on, register for an event, submit your competition entries and help Mashup Australia!
