Hacking Brno for a good cause
Brno was recently the centre of the biggest ever hackathon with open data in the Czech Republic — BrnoHacks.
The purpose was to show the benefits of open data and encourage cities like Brno to publish theirs.
More than fifty programmers, innovators, data analysts, and urbanists met to create solutions to address the problems of living in Brno.
The hackathon ran from From 26–28 May at the South Moravian Innovation Centre (JIC) and was organised by the Otakar Motejl Fund.
Seven teams based their projects on data provided by the city of Brno, O2, and Kiwi.com.
BrnoBot — first place
BrnoBot won first place with their prototype of a Messenger chatbot.
Integrating multiple datasources, the chatbot helps people navigate the city while providing useful info at the same time.
This concept shows how cities can communicate in a unique, modern way. The bot also displayed an excellent sense of humour with its vast knowledge of Chuck Norris jokes.
Team members: Albert Uchytil, Jakub Kulich, Peter Tobiáš, Peter Malina, and Vojtěch Mašek.
Who 8 my taxes — second place
The second best team, Who 8 my taxes, dedicated its time to enriching Brno’s budget data by adding demographic data from the last census, and the political affiliation of municipality representatives. This was all made visually attractive with interactive graphs illustrating the redistribution of money, and the utilisation and efficiency of the city’s departments and municipalities.
Team members: Lenka Čvančarová, Michaela Glossová, Jan Krupička, Eduard Trott, and Michael Skvrňák.
Liberty-open — third place
Liberty-open described the relationship between demographics, commuter traffic, and the use of public spaces. The patterns revealed here may be essential to the city’s planners.
Team members: Pavel Procházka, Eva Horáková, Vilém Řezníček
