Open Food Hackathon at The Treehouse December 3rd
Open Data Day Hackathon is happening world-wide on Saturday December 3rd, 2011. It’s an international movement to encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments.
As there are multiple Hackathon events taking place in Vancouver on the same day we’ve decided to merge events in one location. The Treehouse will also be playing host to the VanHackspace open data hack, and all those interested in taking part.
Join Us to Help Build Open Food Data
Foodtree will be doing our part for open data by hosting an Open Food Hack Day at the Treehouse. Whether you’re a developer, designer, data nerd, or simply someone who cares about food, join us to help hack together an open standard for food information.
The aim is to aggregate datasets into a central database and to build a simple API available to everyone in the world. If time allows by the end of the day we’d like to hack together a demo app to demonstrate the importance of building such an API.
The emphasis will be on a programming interface that works well for real foods (like fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, dairy) and include agricultural beverages like coffee, tea, wine, and beer.
Why Food?
Open Food is a collaborative project initiated by the five speakers taking part in the panel discussion, Better Food Through Open Data Standards at SXSW in 2012. Collectively they are a group of leading food, data and technology doers who will share this initial framework for an open standard for reporting, recording and sharing food information.
There is an explosion in the number of services created to help people make better choices about how we produce, consume, and interact with food. Challenges related to the accuracy and completeness of data hamper the rate of innovation.
As a group we’ve collected a broad array of datasets to inform creating an open API that serves as Version One for accessing an open data standard (and data store) for food information.
Why Now?
We’re at the front end of a technological revolution in food like none before it. As we prepare for that movement it is already apparent that open work on standards is going to be crucial for new technologies to reach wider markets and to effectively compete against the status quo.
Rather than building informational silos, let’s work together to federate and interchange food data. Your collaborative contributions will be documented and you’ll be able to continue working with the standard and API through a central Github repo.
Can’t Make It?
Please help us spread the word, and feel free to drop by during the day to pitch in an idea or two. We’ll have some snacks and beverages and plenty of room! If there’s interest we can facilitate remote participation as well.
Help us spread the word by sharing this post or the ticketing page among your hacker food loving friends.
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Click here to tweet the ticketing page.
Location:
The Treehouse
124 E. Pender #201
Vancouver, BC V6A1T3
