City leaders are urging Houston's civic-minded tech whizzes to gather for a 24-hour "hackathon" this month, hoping that software developers, web designers and data analysts can produce solutions to city problems and useful tools for residents.

The Open Innovation Hackathon, to kick off May 17, coincides with the city's growing "open data" initiative, which will see information from various departments dumped into an online portal, available to citizens and coders alike.

"The goal is to engage the tech community, solve problems and help build the overall technology infrastructure in the city of Houston," Mayor Annise Parker said Wednesday. "It's designed to be an intriguing and challenging experience for those who participate in the hack, but it's to have real deliverables to the city afterward. We have great hopes, considering how tech-savvy the greater Houston area is, that we're going to get some really intriguing proposals and new applications."

Parker said whether city resources are invested in promising projects initiated at the event will by determined on a case-by-case basis.

Councilman Ed Gonzalez, the council's most avid Twitter user and a key force behind the hackathon, said more technology events are planned in the coming months. Gonzalez said Houston does not get the credit it deserves as a technology hub and that city government embracing these types of events raises the industry's profile.

"Why not create the next Google or Foursquare or the next hot app? Why does it have to come from Silicon Valley or some of these other places? We have everything in place here," said Gonzalez, who could not keep the grin off his face during Wednesday's news conference. "There's a lot of creative energy here. All these are steps moving in that direction, by municipal government lending its support of this hackathon, by sharing its data."

City leaders urge those interested in participating to register at houston hackathon.com, where 25 potential projects also are listed. Among them are a web site showing restaurant inspection scores, an app mapping city bike trails, bike lanes and dashboards that could measure the efficiency of city departments.

Jeff Reichman, a principal at consulting firm January Advisors and local chair of Startup America, said Houston's startup industry has gained momentum in the last two years. He said if he can find some coding time at the event, he would like to tackle a project to make it easier for businesses to work with City Hall. A similar application at the federal level goes by RFP EZ.

'Hackathon mentality'

"Developers, software developers especially, are drawn to challenges, and if they can work on challenges that have a big impact, that's a good use of time," he said. "The city just wants to encourage that hackathon mentality that happens naturally."

James Wroblewski, of Code for Houston and Hack Houston, said civic engagement in the tech community has mushroomed recently, pointing to a local hackathon on health care in March, and another civic hacking event planned for June.

"There's certainly been a very large movement throughout the country to utilize more national, state and local data in order to make the community stronger and allow them to have more access to things they might need or information they might not previously have had access to," Wroblewski said. "There's a little bit more enthusiasm when you can get together people who are not only passionate about technology and innovation but also see a chance to do some good."

Gonzalez said a focus for him in these events will be exposing students to science, engineering, technology and math fields, pointing to a Brookings Institute study saying Houston has a glut of these jobs but doesn't produce enough local graduates to fill them.

As for the hackathon, Gonzalez said he hopes someone will compare upkeep costs for police cars to data on street conditions near police stations. It may turn out, he said, that the cost to pave torn up streets near police stations could be offset by savings in car repairs and tire replacements.

"It's city government making a call to say, 'come help us help us solve these problems,' " he said. "Let's be a convener, let's bring people together and let the magic happen. We already know great things are happening."