It seems that competitions and meetups for hacking data are all over the place. Coding challenges have been around for a long time. Recently, it appears that data is being thrown into the mix. I think the idea is great. Instead of just hacking some app, why not hack with some data that might help people?

GitHub just concluded with the GitHub Data Challenge. Also, the World’s first ever global data science hackathon occurred last month. The Silicon Prairie has even hosted a couple data-centric hackathons. The Omaha World Herald newspaper organized Hack Omaha to turn government data into something useful. Open Iowa also did a very similar thing for developers, designer, and data-junkies in the Des Moines area. I did not personally attend either of these events, but I was surprised to see these similar types of events occurring in the midwest.

DataKind is busy organizing data dives all over the country, and Kaggle is currently organizing data science competitions for anyone regardless of location. By the way, Kaggle has become one of my favorite sites, and I will be blogging soon about how to quickly get involved.

Anyhow, it appears hackathons with data are here to stay. What data hackathons or competitions do you know about? Are you planning to attend?