Data Crossfader – Data Visualisation tool wins first prize

On Saturday 17 November, 16 teams, including five teams of under 21 year olds took part in Manchester’s first Hackathon – a day of coding, hacking and software development – organised by FutureEverything, Open Data Manchester and Manchester City Council. Utilising the open data sets made available by Manchester City Council and public sector partners, participants were invited to hack, code, programme and experiment with the city’s open data to build groundbreaking new applications and develop digital services for the future.

The grand prize of £4600 was won by Data Crossfader, created by James Rutherford and Ashley Herriott, a visualisation tool that plots information on a map of Manchester to allow people to compare important sets of data. For example, using postcode details it shows the locations of road traffic incidents on a map, and then adds where speed cameras are, so if there is a particular area where accidents happen which are not covered by a camera, it easily shows that on a map.

Dave Carter, one of the judges and head of Manchester Digital Development Agency (MDDA) said: “We chose Data Crossfader because it has incredible potential to simply illustrate data on a map which allows comparisons to be made to show where action needs to be taken…”

The response has been huge, and we were delighted have The Guardian come down and cover the event – you can read the article and listen to interviews here. BBC Click were also present on the day, and a feature on the Hackathon is due to be broadcast soon. BBC Radio Manchester (2h41m) and the Manchester Evening News also praised the event.

The winners

Congratulations to overall winners and Data Crossfader creators James Rutherford & Ashley Herriott. Read James’ blog here.
Other winners include: Bilawal Hameed (Under 21s) for Bus Tracker, Matt Schofield (Best Locative Application) for Taxi Rank Finder, John Rees (Best Visualisation & Developers Prize) for SatLav and Slawomir Wdowka & Imran Younis (Best Solution for an Identified Problem) for Manchester Voice.

Councillor Nigel Murphy, Manchester City Council’s lead member for Digital Manchester and Executive Member for Environment, said: “This Hackathon event is just the first part of an ongoing challenge to ensure that Manchester is in the front rank of open data-friendly cities. Manchester City Council is committed to being an open and transparent council but this event is not just about us but also our public sector partners who are also embracing open data. Together with partner agencies, we’ve been showcasing more than 120 different datasets. 

It’s vital that this is not just a one-off event but an ongoing engagement with the developer community to ensure that we build upon what’s been achieved. More and bigger events are planned in 2013.”

The Manchester Hackathon was an intense, productive and exciting collaboration between the brightest minds in software development and data processing.

The prizes were selected by a panel of experts, including Dave Carter (MDDA), Sanjeev Shewhorak (magneticNorth) and Andrew Mackenzie (Open Data Users Group).

The Manchester Hackathon was partially funded under the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme by the European Community.