myPhillyRising App: City asks local devs to create civic app for Google Places API Developer Challenge

The city has teamed up with Google on its Google Places API Developer Challenge and is now issuing an open call to the local civic hacking community: Use the Google Places API and city data to make a killer civic engagement app.

Named for the city’s community initiative PhillyRising, the app should inform Philadelphians about local resources and encourage them to get involved in their community, according to a post by Chief Data Officer Mark Headd on GitHub.  Headd has posted a long list of app ideas to get hackers started — find them here.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that the three grand prize winning teams of the challenge will get flown out to Google’s I/O Conference to showcase their apps. Chief Innovation Officer Adel Ebeid and Headd are also both judges for the contest. Headd was chosen as a judge before he was named to his current position of Chief Data Officer. [Updated, see below]

Find out more about the Google Places API Developer challenge here. Submissions are due Oct. 31.

Northern Liberties hackerspace Devnuts will hold a series of “hack nights” for this specific project every Tuesday this month starting at 5:00 p.m., Headd told Technically Philly.

The city hopes the successful app will be able to scale to other cities, according to Headd’s announcement on Code For America’s blog. In that regard, it might be helpful to look to Textizen, the civic tool built by Philly’s Code for America fellows that has expanded to two other cities since its Philly launch.

Below, check out city Managing Director Rich Negrin‘s open call to the developer community.

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Updated 10/12/12 to add that Mark Headd and Adel Ebeid are both judges for the contest.