All of the data is non-personal – it doesn’t have any personal details of people, there are no personal risks to this release.

Individuals or businesses can create new software tools – we want people to build applications that create economic value – go and create an economy around this.

Andrew Stott, the Director of Digital Engagement for the UK Government has a blog where updates and progress will be posted. On launch date here is what he wrote.

There are 100’s of great journalists and bloggers worldwide that have written eloquently with objective opinion about the site and what they hope will happen in the future, which with the help of Paul Jenkins in COI who supports the site  a flavour is captured here at launch.

data gov uk launch blog posts

During this evenings bout of displacement activity when I should have been: buying bathroom lights, writing a production schedule, phoning my best friend in Egypt, I was worthly clearing out my inbox from last weeks holiday when a friend sent me a new site to join that he recommended.

Not another network I thought. Not another thing I need to update. I’m really busy right now. What is this anyway? Oh! How did they do that? Why did they do that??

Have a quick peek at www.stumbleupon.com

London, 23 August 2009. On Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 August, 50 young developers aged 15-18 years old gathered at the Young Rewired State event hosted by Google at their London Victoria offices.

Building on the success of the National Hack the Government day on 7 March, where around 80 developers created over 30 working projects from public sector data sets, Young Rewired State was created to give 50 young developers the chance to build and create useful applications with previously released and cleared government data.

The organisers James Darling, Richard Pope and Emma Mulqueeny, co-founders of Rewired State, sought to encourage young people to engage with each other for peer to peer support; highlight to government the need for good programming skills in many languages; and showcase the young talent in the largest event of its kind.

The event was opened by Emma Mulqueeny and technology journalist Milo Yiannopoulos on Saturday 22 August setting the aims and objectives of the two days. The 50 young developers self organised: continuing work they had started the previous week on rewiredstate irc, or grouping themselves around topics that most concerned them and so the application solutions began.

After rapid assimilation of the Rewired State data wiki (one of the largest collections of UK public sector information) to inspire, the hacking began. Young developers started creating designs and working prototypes of their ideas, with the mentors providing a guiding hand.

The following day the groups returned to finish their project and to present to government officials, invited media and the luminaries in the judging panel.

The winners were:

Most likely to be bought by Google: TFHell

“Wish I’d thought of that!”: Work For Peanuts

Most likely to antagonise the CIO council: How’s my Train?

Best in Show: School Routr 2.0 Beta

Special mentions: Theory Test, Blogotics, Unicloud, Blab to Betty

James Darling said: ’The day highlighted better processes, applications and ways of working for better use of public data as well as to expose government officials to the concept of allowing great creative minds to play with the data to provide interesting and creative solutions.’

Emma Mulqueeny explained: ‘We strongly believe that this successful event format could be invaluable to young developers who will not yet have established the professional networks to help guide and showcase their current interest in developing.’

Ben Hammersley said: ‘I found the standard of the work produced by 15-18 year olds in many cases infinitely superior to that produced by government professionals.’

Luc Delaney, UK Policy Associate from Google said: “developers are the people who stimulate innovation on the web; coming up with new and better ways to make data useful and creating solutions that have the potential to benefit all of us. We’re delighted to be hosting these creative young minds at the Google offices and look forward to seeing what they come up with.”

Notes to Editors

Rewired State is a free, invitation-only event to demonstrate the creative use of public data by great technical minds. Created by James Darling, Emma Mulqueeny and Richard Pope.

Judging Panel

Mark O’Neill                   Chief Information Officer, Department Culture, Media and Sport

Ben Hammersley           Associate Editor of Wired UK

Craig Elder                     Communities Manager for the Conservative Party

Helen Milner                   Chief Information Officer of UK Online centres

JP Rangaswami             MD of Design at BT

Diana Johnson               MP Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools

Mike Hoban                    Directgov

Dan Heaf                        Channel 4

Rewired State was created as a non-profit organisation to ‘code a better country’ by using and liberating public sector data. By combining the power of the talented IT communities and Government, we hope to showcase the power of raw public sector data and the high quality projects, utilities and tools that can be easily, cheaply and swiftly developed in a safe environment with government data by the best of British talent.

NB: any data used was non-personal.

For any post-event press enquiries please contact emma@rewiredstate.org

SPONSORS

4iP

4iP is a major initiative from Channel 4 that aims to re-invent public service media for the digital age.  Working with emerging digital talent across the UK, 4iP is supporting great ideas for websites, games and mobile services which will help people improve their lives. Just like Rewired State, 4iP is committed to finding and supporting the best new digital media talent.

Directgov

Mike Hoban, Director of Communications and Engagement said: “Directgov is pleased to be involved in Young Rewired State. We are continuously exploring how new and existing data and software can be used to make information available to the widest possible audience, in the most effective formats.”

Department of Culture, Media and Sport

DCMS are sponsoring the event on behalf of the Government CIO Council which brings together all the CIOs from all central government departments with representatives from Local Government, defence and criminal justice. DCMS sectors are some of the most exciting and visionary creators and users of information and content and initiatives like Young Rewired State help connect young people with these sectors so helping to build the future economy and bring talented individuals together.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) is building a dynamic and competitive UK economy by creating the conditions for business success; promoting innovation, enterprise and science; and giving everyone the skills and opportunities to succeed. To achieve this we will foster world-class universities and promote an open global economy. Young Rewired State celebrates the next generation of British digital talent, and we are delighted to help support the event.

Statement from the office of Diana Johnson MP

We are supporting this event as it supports two of our strategic objectives. The DCSF Digital Communications Strategy outlines the need to “make our data more accessible and bring it together”. Secondly, within the Communications Directorate Improvement Priority 1.2 of the Departmental Action Plan, to “Develop and exploit modern communications channels to increase the reach and impact of our communications”.

The Dextrous Web

We were delighted to sponsor the inaugural Young Rewired State. It’s great to see the next generation of civic hackers doing their thing. We’re all about improving public service on the web so we can’t wait to see what comes out of it.

See also The Press Association Press Release here

The full story on Emma Mulqueeny’s blog

What the BBC said here

Search on Flickr under youngrewiredstate or young rewired state for the photography

Thanks Benjamin

More details of today’s speakers here

The audience made up largely of entrepreneurs and SME’s, I chose Community Building – free and cost effective tips to help deliver your business objectives by building a community.

Here’s the slides with notes: Community Building V02

This month Rewired State are gathering the best of british young developers to play with government data and create applications on the largest hack day of its kind.

Rewired State was created to help government officials experience the projects, utilities and tools that can be easily and swiftly developed in a safe environment with government data by the best of British talent.

Rewired State is a not for profit organisation who work with the community for the benefit of ‘coding a better country’.

On 22 and 23 August in Google’s shiny new offices in London Victoria we will gather 50 young developers (15-18 year olds) to gather with developer mentors to create applications from cleared non-personal data sets.

For all further information please go the website www.rewiredstate.org/young

What?! I hear you cry, what about the security of our information? Well, read on..

Over 80 benevolent hackers* gathered to play at The Guardian’s media suite with public sector data for one day only to see what useful, interesting and downright provactive services and sites they could create.

At the end of the day 29 complete hacks were presented in two minute pitches to all geeks present, Press, government and Guardian team. The quality, completeness, speed and usefulness of their hacks was astounding. View the individual projects here and the pitch footage here.

What I found most interesting was Government, Guardian and 4iP commitment to offering funding, development platforms and commitment to making this an annual event, after all the purpose of the day was to demostate what could be done in the day by creative minds having access to the data and hoping government would take notice.

See www.emmamulqueeny.com for more details.

*Hackers in this context means friendly developers

In these times of financial doom and gloom, with darker evenings creeping in, sneak in the odd simple pleasure, it’s surprising how good it can make you feel.

I was made to stay in bed on Sunday morning, with a cup of tea and the papers, just heaven, a real luxury with a young baby, and very welcome as I had got in at 4.30am and was hungover.

Every time I go home to Devon, I pass the red cliffs at Exeter and it makes me grin to know I’m on my way home. I get great pleasure from watching moving water, driving through Dartmoor or seeing great splashes of green. Two years ago I bumped blindly into a passerby making my way to work, distracted by catching snowflakes on my tongue, it made us both howl.

So the question this week is: What are your simple pleasures?

As an interactive event producer and sometimes coach I am quietly confident that only when we are pushed out of our comfort zone can real change happen. Only when we take a risk and succeed do we vibrate with a sense of achievement. (Oh yes there are other ways to make us pulse, but not quite in the same sense, wouldn’t you agree?)

How often, in our busy lives do we proactively take risks, or even invite a little more randomness into our lives? It doesn’t have to be life-threatening. It can even be as simple as taking a new route home or looking at a situation through another perspective. We are not talking Dice-Living a la Luke Rhinehart here, although the Dice Man does have his merits.

Paula Reid, one of life’s true adventurers inspires me on a number of levels, check her out in Honouring. Celebrating after a successful event and several beers, Paula introduced me to AQA (Any Question Answered) a text service that eloquently answers your random questions. We asked AQA for a dare that I had to perform and we were in the middle of the bars in Canary Wharf on a busy summer weekday evening. AQA challenged me to ask the next person of the opposite sex if they’d like to marry me (Fine. I stand up on stage for a living, this isn’t really going to phase me). However, if they said yes, I had to jump for joy (OK). If they said no I had to roll on the ground……(oh dear).  My team made me ask 5 people.

The question this week therefore is:   What was the last random thing you did?

Do you ever stop and think about your brand? What do you stand for? Maybe you’ve had some coaching, maybe you know what your values are. Maybe your brand is you and what you do. For the rest of us, do we ever draw breath long enough to think about ourselves?

What do you stand for? What excites you? If you had to call it, right now, what would it be?

Nothing rocks my world more than making people feel a little differently about themselves. So the name above my station would be ‘Contagious Stimulation’

What’s yours??