The UK Data Service and Digital Innovation are running an intense all-day hackathon on Saturday 24 September at The Shed at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU).



The UK Data Service Open Data Dive aims to bring together coders, data enthusiasts, graphic designers, project managers and pizza lovers into the same room to hunt down, crunch and beautify open social and economic data.

The Open Data Dive is free to attend, open to everyone and we'll lay on free lunch and drinks all day.

Newcomers are welcome and there will be data specialists and programmers from the UK Data Service on hand to provide support and help. During the day, short parallel workshops will run on finding and understanding data, using APIs and big data.

There’ll be prizes for the best projects, the most innovative project, the most useful project, the most fun project – and many more! Tell us about your idea for a project on the registration form or bring it with you on the day. There will be a chance to pitch your project and build a team at the start of the dive.

Follow the event on Twitter: #UKDSDataDive | #ODDHack | @UKDataService | @DiginnMMU | #MMUShed



Projects and data

All projects must use open social and economic data about people, places and society. Read more about the open data made available through the UK Data Service.

BYO project - we’d love you to bring your own ideas for projects!

Here are some ideas:



Do you have a favourite open dataset? Mash it in with one ours to create something new and amazing. Join datasets by time, join by geography. Do the daily commutes in the census match with bus routes? Do political upheavals impact patterns of global trade?



Feeling creative? Design a 3D visualisation of the data and the guys at 3D Print Services at MMU will print out the best idea!

Or how about data as music?

Dig into the data with exploratory data analysis and visualisations to find new features and patterns

Design an API for data access or add widget to one of ours!

Create a new feature for the UK Data Service to make the data easier to find and use

Invent a puzzle or game to distract us all at work

Format of the day

10-10.30am: arrival, coffee, danishes,

10.30-11am: welcome talk, 1 minute talks: participants who are bringing ideas for team projects explain their idea - people pick which project teams to join or work on their own

11am: hacking begins!

1pm Lunch arrives, hacking continues…

4pm: final sprint

4.30pm: Lightening talks – what each team has done in 2 mins

5pm: Prizes! Drinks!

6pm: Close