Free Enterprise Hackathon delivered these 8 new tools for digital storytelling

Eight sleepy-eyed teams of business developers, coders and designers took the stage at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Sunday to present their work in the Free Enterprise Hackathon. From job-hunting platforms to job-growth maps, all the tools unveiled were created to help tell the story of America’s small businesses.
Free Enterprise, a web magazine produced by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is always looking to highlight the power of American businesses through stories. They recently realized, however, that their method of doing this has been rather linear — find a story, write a post, publish it on the website.
“We were trying to innovate in our storytelling methods, but couldn’t figure out what to do,” Free Enterprise Editor-in-Chief Margaret Shepard told Technical.ly.
So they decided to bring in a little outside expertise.
Free Enterprise partnered with hackathon organizer AngelHack and HP Haven OnDemand to produce the hackathon. Each team was tasked with using at least one data set from a list that ranged from Business Dynamic Statistics from the Census Bureau to GDP Growth Data from Quandl. The resulting tools were judged by a panel that included Shepard as well as Nick Meads from Google’s D.C. office, James Sneeringer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Brittany Heyd, managing director at 1776.
Here are the tools that made their debut during the pitch portion of the hackathon:

• Get Map: Get Map collects the GDP, unemployment data, job growth data, VC funding information and more for each state and uses a proprietary algorithm to create an overall score for the state that shows the economic impact of small and midsize businesses. The tool shows this score, and its breakdown, with a map and attractive infographics. The Get Map team was ultimately victorious in the Free Enterprise Hackathon.
• Job Hunt: The runner-up was a project that’s been kicking around in the heads of its developers for the past three years. Job Hunt uses Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as data from the U.S. Census and Monster.com to show trends in the kinds of jobs businesses are currently hiring for. The tool is envisioned as a way to give the government very specific information on employment. Another use case lies in giving job seekers, and students, information on what industries are hiring and what skill sets are particularly sought after. Job Hunt was also selected as HP’s winner for the event.

• Equilibrium Point: Equilibrium Point is a tool that allows potential business owners to find the best location in the U.S. to open their business based upon current trends of small business success or failure.
• ComSight: ComSight is a tool that delivers information on which businesses are creating jobs and where in the country they are doing so.
• Iron Hack: The Iron Hack team created a tool to map unemployment over time, as well as scrape news articles for relative happiness trends across the U.S.
• Business Zones: Business Zones is another so-called “geoeconomic assessment” tool — essentially a tool that uses Census data, Yelp data, relative rent prices and more to identify optimal locations for opening a business.
• Geo-Nimbus: Geo-Nimbus uses maps and infographics to deliver a rating to each state for how well various industries are welcomed in that state.
• Project Show Me: Project Show Me is different from the rest — rather than visualizing existing data, Project Show Me aims to connect business owners and job seekers with industry- and location-specific information and resources. If you’re looking to start a fishery in Wyoming, for example, who better to learn from and connect with than individuals already working in agriculture in the region?