Two big problems Hack Baltimore tackled at Hack for Change

Coders at this year’s Hack Baltimore were faced with two new challenges.
One, create a platform to eliminate veterans unemployment. Two, create a tool to compare neighborhoods on the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA) website.
The annual event, was held Saturday at the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore. Six groups spent the day brainstorming and implementing hacking solutions to civic issues. The event was part of the National Day of Civic Hacking.
There were no prizes this year. Rather, Hack Baltimore cofounder Sharon Paley said, the group would “spotlight” projects from the six groups. We’re doing the same. Here they are:

• A project comparing vacancy rates and other stats among Baltimore neighborhoods. The project was spearheaded by hackers including Baltimore Vacants hacker and former Advertising.com developer Shea Frederick and BNIA research associate David Epstein.
• An employment-seeking app for veterans created by a group of StateStat employees.
• A platform that would allow users to see maps of Baltimore based on BNIA indicators. The maps visualize statistics, including ethnicity data or the percentage of people employed in the arts, for instance.)

Watch the group presentations from the end of the hackathon:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_kf95gRpNE]