Hackathons have been organized in Sofia and generally through Bulgaria for the past several years but as far as I know they were mostly underground events. There are two upcoming events which are somewhat different.
"Record Voting" Hackathon
Organized by INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ENVIRONMENT DEVELOPMENT this hackathon is the first I know of, which will focus on government provided data. The objective is to process data (sample) from the 2011 elections and find persons who were able to vote in the last minute, between 20:00-21:00 hours thus changing the election results by 20% in their voting section.
The event starts at 09:29 on 30th Mar 2013 @ betahaus Sofia. More info in Bulgarian here and here.
I'd love to attend but will be visiting a conference about mobile devices in another town at the same time :(. If you do attend, let me know how fun it was.
Dare to read more on the topic about open government? I recommend starting with
Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice by
Daniel Lathrop and Laurel Ruma (
Amazon
HackFMI
FMI stands for Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at the Sofia University (not where I graduated). It's one of the best, arguably the best, places to study for an IT career. Like most other universities in Bulgaria its administration and processes suck big time!
HackFMI is the first ever hackathon which will focus on students improving faculty/university systems and processes. This is HUGE! As far as I know it is also the first hackathon which is supported by academia.
I have already volunteered to be a mentor at HackFMI. I am looking forward to this. It will be fun. See you there!
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