GBTC Groundwork hackathon rescheduled for September, after UnWIREd

The Greater Baltimore Technology Council announced last week that its Groundwork data hackathon has been rescheduled until sometime “likely in late September.”
As Sharon Paley wrote on the GBTC website:

Some very nice people (of the state and federal variety) with access to extremely important (but not yet open) data, heard about Groundwork and proposed that they give the Baltimore tech community first crack at data which has never before seen the light of day. They also offered to bring in some key influencers who can help us usefully mine the data sets. [more]

This means that Groundwork will now take place after the GBTC’s UnWIREd event, taking place late this month on Johns Hopkins University‘s campus.

Click here to register for UnWIREd on August 24-25.
The UnWIREd event will convene local educators, officials, policy makers and creative-class types to tackle two main questions, according to GBTC: “How can we use new technologies to empower business, social service providers, neighborhood residents, and policy makers?  How can networked citizens join together to improve our city and our region?”
“What we’ve come to understand is it’s not the data [from Groundwork] that’s going to drive UnWIREd,” says GBTC’s Jason Hardebeck. “It’s UnWIREd that’s going to drive the data. Groundwork makes more sense after doing UnWIREd because now we can provide focus to what specifically we’re looking for [in the data] to support ideas and projects that come out of UnWIREd.”
Groundwork will be a chance for hackers, developers, data analysts ”to conduct research and analysis to gain a better understanding of Baltimore’s true resources and greatest opportunities to improve the lives of citizens and the way they are served,” according to GBTC.
Hardebeck says a useful analogy for Groundwork is that of Lewis and Clark, who had “the canoes and the provisions, but they need Sacagawea to interpret the local flora and fauna.”
“By bringing the technologists and creatives together with the people who can make sense of the data,” says Hardebeck, “[we’ll] provide some insight as to why something may or may not be.”