Hello all! I hope everyone had a restful, refreshing, and most enjoyable end to 2023. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been diving headlong into 2024 with a whole lot of joy and gratitude, and it’s filled me with a great desire to give back to the world and help fix things for others.
It’s still pretty early in the year for hackathons, and here in New York we’re about to get a bunch more snow on the ground - but there are some things going on for any intrepid Winter hackers!
First: an announcement from NASA’s Space Apps Challenge:
NASA Announces 2023 Global Finalists
The 2023 NASA International Space Apps Challenge once again broke records and maintained its title as “world’s biggest hackathon”. NASA’s world-class scientific and technical organization may be responsible for the most impactful “hackathon for good” program in history. The statistics from last year’s event are simply staggering:
It’s truly incredible to see how much Space Apps has grown in just over a decade, from a mere two dozen local event sites in 2012. Stay tuned to NASA’s Space Apps Challenge web site and their social media channels as they will be announcing the Global Winners some time this month from the selected 40 Global Finalists.
20-Jan: NYC Housing Data Coalition Hackathon
The NYC Housing Data Coalition (HDC) is a group of individuals and organizations who collaborate on their use of public data to further housing justice in New York City. In the face of the real estate industry’s escalating exploitation of housing data to drive speculation and displacement, HDC seeks to make public data more accessible and actionable for housing justice groups. Through a structure of working groups and monthly meetings, HDC provides opportunities for members to connect, learn, and give mutual support to a variety of projects involving housing data.
Admission to the NYC HDC hackathon is free, you can sign up on their Eventbrite registration page. You can find additional contact info and event information on that page, and if you check the HDC web site link above you can check out some of the prior projects created by HDC members.
29-Jan: MIT Reality Hack Public Expo
While the deadline to register for hacking at this event passed some time back, the MIT XR Hackathon is still seeking mentors, judges, and event volunteers. While this isn’t strictly an event geared towards social good, attending the public expo to see some implementations of XR related technology and network with people could still be fun!
You can register for free for the public expo on their Eventbrite page, and you can click on the web site link above to contact the organizers about volunteering your time to help with the event.
Drop Me A Line!
If you know of any social good related hackathons coming up in the next few weeks, please reply back and we’ll see about sending the info out to the list. Ciao!