Hackathon - Why What Wow ?

It was Friday, 7th of September 2018, there were close to 200+ participants, visitors, mentors, problem solvers thronging into Telstra Lab's venue at Exhibition street, Melbourne for #GovHack2018. It was no ordinary hackathon, it was GovHack which is an annual Open Data competition held across Australia. In 46 hours teams created a project page, proof of concept and a video that tells the story of how government data can be reused.

Why ?

Why hackathon? Why disrupting a good sunny weekend to work on someone else's problem statement (in this case Government's )? 

Well well! Govt is for the people, by the people and most important of all - "Of the People".

We form a nation, nations form a continent and continents form the world and it is our utmost responsibility to make our planet better and smarter. So hackathon solves the problem of resolving multiple other problems in just 46 hours. Nothing can be better if like-minded people gather together and select bunch of problem statements to solve. 

What ?

We were given close to 104 problem statements from National, state and bounty and we had to enter minimum of 1 to 5 problem statements. All solutions to the problem need to have a minimum of 1 data set to be used provided by the various departments of Australia. How open data is powerful can only be seen in this kind of hackathon. The scale of participants were from Jr Schools, Uni Students, Start-up-CEOs, Developers, UX designers, Data Scientists ...... and the list doesn't end there. It was a serendipitous moment to have so many intellects in one place.

Wow?

After spending 2 and half evenings together, you feel the most usual manifestation of ecstasy, of the nature of self-hypnotism.

I was perplexed with ideas pouring out of each one us in the team. White boarding, Idea scrapping, rebuilding from scratch, taking help from mentors, and then coming to a common conclusion. In 46 hours you will be super-confident that you can build something from the scratch and think on the edge.

What did we solve ?

My Victoria: Supporting small business making big decisions

Jurisdiction: Victoria

Where are the best places for certain business types to be based?

Where you choose to open a business plays a big role in whether you succeed or fail in small business. Many business owners make these decisions based on gut-feel or by doing extensive desk-research.

Data sources and tools: My Victoria is a new open data platform that provides small businesses mapping and data services at the suburb and LGA level. The My Victoria API provides data including population, income, industry, buildings, transport, schools and hospitals.

Using any dataset on data.vic and the My Vic platform show us how certain businesses might be best placed or revitalise certain suburbs? Are there certain trends in areas that allow us to see what new types of businesses Victorians might start?

Our Solution - Where Can ?

Project Description - Provide a free market research tool for SME's on public data sets

- DATA Story -

A SME wants to open a new gym in North Melbourne, does not have the funds to do a full market research.

WhereCan? can help the entrepreneur with a quick analysis of public data to help make data driven decisions on key aspects like the business-location-fit, competitors and potential partnerships in the area

Solution - Where can I best locate my new business? How much rent will I be paying? Will I have any competitors? WhereCan maps out the business climate of the past, now and future, so that you can find a great location.

All you need to give us is a suburb and a business type, in return we'll give you a score indicating how likely your business is to succeed based upon your demographic targets, likely expenses and existing competition.

We measure average tax, rent, wages and income by location and industry sector. We also look into foot traffic and nearby construction to measure how often customers are likely to come by.

All of this can be filtered by a target demographic differentiated by sex, age, cultural background, and marital status.

DEMO: https://halid.outsystemscloud.com/PreviewInDevices/?DeviceName=Smartphone&URL=/WhereCan/Home.aspx?_ts=636721046174549851