Archive for October, 2010

SOS – Hackers urgently needed for trans-global ‘Hackathon’ – Birmingham in collaboration with Edmonton (Canada) and Seoul (Korea)!!

When? Wednesday 20th October 2010 – 14:00 to Thursday 21st

October 14:00.  We know this announcement comes at short notice but you don’t get notice in a real emergency!

Where? Birmingham Science Park Aston Faraday Wharf, Holt Street. 

What will our hackathon be like?  It will be slightly different from most hackathons. As we work on our project, we will be sharing what we’re working on with Edmonton [Canada] and Seoul [Korea] as we ‘follow the sun’. 

We’re going to spend 24 hours trying to create the blueprint for an app design that can be used in cities all over the world. This will be an application that will help families prepare during a disaster and will list emergency muster points, emergency info, alerts during disasters, and what to do. It will cater for different scenarios: although floods or a Buncefield type explosion are both emergency situations, you don’t handle them the same way. The aim of this app  is to keep people safe, and we hope to come up with a guideline for how it should look – so that app designers around the world can pick up the guideline and run with it.

For more information and to book a place, please click here. 

20 – 21st October 2010
The International Convention Centre, Birmingham
www.beyond-2010.com

The need for public service providers to deliver ‘more for less’ has never been greater.

Digital technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to radically re-shape and transform the way public services are delivered.

Beyond 2010 is a major two day international conference bringing together

the digital and mobile technologies that are already transforming the delivery of public services around the world and the people who are making it happen to give you real life examples of best practice. It provides the chance to benchmark your progress and tap into a network of joined up digital thinking that will help you find effective solutions to the challenge of delivering more efficient and sustainable public services for less that will also be critical in driving economic growth.

Please click here to view the event programme.

For more information visit www.beyond-2010.com

Launch 48

The aim of Launch48 is to bring together participants from different backgrounds and levels of experience in the web industry to think/plan/develop and launch one or multiple web apps in one weekend. It’s a frantic, energy fuelled, entrepreneurial event designed to engage all participants while offering the opportunity to learn and meet new people.

Launch 48 Birmingham will run between 12th and 14th of November 2010, at Birmingham Science Park Aston.

Launch48 Mini-Conference Birmingham runs from:

1 pm to 5 pm Friday the 12th of November, 2010

6 pm to 10 pm Friday the 12th of November, 2010
9 am to 9 pm Saturday the 13th of November, 2010
9 am to 9 pm Sunday the 14th of November, 2010

For more information, please click here.

Digital Birmingham are really pleased to have been chosen as one of the winners of the Nesta, Make It Local

competition.  Following the event that we held in Faraday Wharf back in the Summer there were a number of bids made by local councils with digital Small/Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). Afterwards we were approached by Mudlark who had the idea of creating a Birmingham Civic Dashboard.

Make It Local

The application we have specified together will take a daily report of those contacts from the general public that request a service from the city. From that a “heatmap” of the city will be shown on a website. This will allow people to look at the issues raised in their area and also see how efficiently they are resolved by the city. It will also show people just some of the many services provided by the city council. This will build up over time to provide an historic record for citizens.

More – Make It Local – The Birmingham Civic Dashboard

6 October 2010 – Rich Mix, London E1

See IT in action demonstrates how councils and partners can use technology to transform the delivery of public services, improve outcomes, and help achieve more for less.

This is a free event, on Wednesday 6 October

2010, supported by Communities and Local Government, local authorities and civil society partners.

It is a must-attend day for all those who commission or manage local public services, who are looking to make their work more efficient, cheaper, and targeted at supporting those most in need. It is your opportunity to ensure you are ready, well informed and have the contacts necessary to meet the challenges facing those delivering today’s public services.

For more information and to register, please click here.