Thanks to our great sponsors we will be able to feed everyone coming to hack this weekend. One of them, Azavea, had this to say about Hack for Western Mass.

I’m excited that Azavea is a sponsor of Hack for Western Mass! Our company focuses on building advanced geospatial analysis (GIS) web and mobile applications to promote more vibrant and sustainable communities, so the civic hacking community is a natural fit for us. Maps and geography are a huge part of visualizing and interacting with civic data, and supporting civic hackathons is a great way for us to contribute to our community.

From the impressive challenges your organizers and partners have generated to your ever-rising registration count, Hack for Western Mass has the seeds of a fun and truly impactful event. I’m jealous I won’t be able to be there! However, I’ll be with you in solidarity at our own National Day of Civic Hacking event in Philadelphia this same weekend.

But most importantly, I’m from Central Massachusetts! I only discovered the civic hacking scene once I got to Philadelphia, but I spent my formative years in Uxbridge, a small town in southern Worcester County. I’m glad to see a civic hackathon focused on a rural area. Civic hackathons often focus on large cities, but rural regions have their own set of civic challenges. The national civic hacking community needs your perspective. I’m excited to see what your teams come up with for the Pioneer Valley this weekend!

To help you in your efforts, Azavea is offering teams at Hack for Western Mass (and all other National Day of Civic Hacking locations) 10,000 free credits for 6 months to our Cicero API. You can use Cicero to match street addresses to legislative districts in the US Congress and Massachusetts legislature and obtain contact information for elected officials. Cicero also matches addresses to watersheds, school districts, US Census geographies, and more. Simply sign up for a free account here and email me ([email protected]) at any time during the weekend with your Cicero Username and the subject line “Hack for Western Mass – Cicero” so I can set you up with the free credits.

Also, I noticed the awesome Northampton Tree Canopy challenge Lilly Lombard contributed. OpenTreeMap, Azavea’s open source project for collaborative urban forestry inventory, could be well suited to this challenge. I’ll also be on the #opentreemap freenode.net IRC channel all weekend to answer your questions.