LOCAL winners of the national GovHack Open Data competition have been announced at an awards evening at the Mount Gambier Library.
The annual competition aims to unleash potential new entrepreneurs and ran across Australia and New Zealand simultaneously over one weekend in July.
In 46 hours of competition time, competitors were required to come up with a concept to make open data accessible to the public.
Teams worked together to develop their ideas and compete in the youth or adult node.
Participants created a three minute video to promote their efforts.
Mount Gambier Library youth services coordinator Terasa Nearmy said the GovHack selection panel was made up of local professionals in a variety of fields.
“The selection panel judged the 12 local projects based on originality, purpose, use of data, quality and design and relevance to the community,” Ms Nearmy said.
“Comments from the judges clearly demonstrated this was the highest quality of concepts received so far and they were overwhelmingly impressed with the effort made by all competitors.”
Youth Node Best in Venue Mount Gambier was awarded to team 56K for their project Reefdom.
“This group of young people are upcoming entrepreneurs and the judges felt they will achieve great things in the future,” Ms Nearmy said.
“They showed professionalism and excellent time management throughout the competing weekend.”
Adult Node Best in Venue Mount Gambier was awarded to team Teen Fiction for the project Explor’d.
“This group of young professionals showed maturity in their project and it is clear they are in touch with their community, really looking at what’s important, appealing and worth showcasing,” Ms Nearmy said.
“They captured the judge’s attention with a well-paced, professional presentation.”
The winning teams were presented with certificates and vouchers valued at $1000 from Harvey Norman and Green Triangle Electronics.
On competition day, the Spirit of GovHack Youth Node was awarded to Braydon Eberhard from Grant High School.
He was also named the overall Mount Gambier GovHack Spirit winner and will go on to represent Mount Gambier at the prestigious state awards, with all expenses covered and a chance for further prizes to be awarded.
The Spirit of GovHack Adult Node was awarded to Anthony Hooper.
The state awards will be announced on September 28 and the GovHack 2017 International Red Carpet Awards night will be held in Brisbane on October 14.
All 12 Mount Gambier projects are live for the public to view on the GovHack website under Hackerspace.
