Click Predict Fix - Data science for social good

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** LATE BREAKING NEWS **

Clearly, there is no greater motivator for winning a hackathon than making the world better. Democracies are all about citizens participating in the management of government and this contest empowers just that.

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But now we are adding an economic reward as well. David Eaves has graciously offered to personally reward hackathon winners a prize of $2,500. And seeclickfix.com has also chimed in with additional prize money of $2,500, making a total of $5,000 prize funding, where $500 will be awarded for the 24-hour hackathon and the next $4,500 will be awarded for the longer, 2-month hackathon.

Rarely does the opportunity come around where three wonderful things come together: (1) intelligence; (2) social good; (3) financial rewards.

We’ve organized an amazing group of individuals to help deliver a one-of-a-kind event. In partnership with Kaggle, SeeClickFix, and the Tow School of Journalism - we will host a 24-hour hackathon that will allow you to make a difference in this world.

We are organizing not one but TWO contests for this exciting competition.

Two Month competition:

Starting on X there will be a two month competition open to all Kaggle users. Come See, Fix and Predict by working with actual city data about real problems.

24-hour hackathon:

On the evening of September 27 to the evening of September 28, we will all convene at Microsoft San Francisco, in the heart of the shopping district. At that place and time we will release the competition details.

Just to re-cap. There will be two distinct-but-similar competitions -- a quick 24-hour competition, followed by a longer two-month effort.

The premise of the event is simple:

311 is a mechanism by which citizens can express their desire to solve a problem the city or government by texting in with their mobile device a description of what needs to be done, fixed, or changed. In effect, this provides a high degree of transparency between government and its constituents. Once an issue has been established, citizens can vote and make comments on the issue so that government officials have some degree of awareness about what is the most important issue to address.

The purpose of the competition is to be able to quantify and predict how people will react to a specific issue. What makes an issue urgent? What do citizens really care about? How much does location matter? Being able to predict what the most pressing 311 topics are will allow governments to focus their efforts on fixing the most important problems. The data set that will be provided for the competitions contains several hundred thousand 311 issues from four cities.

Participants in this competition can sleep well at night knowing they are making the world a better place to live. The competition winners can sleep even better knowing that they will be rewarded for their efforts. On second thought, with the additional competition continuing after the hackathon, there isn't much time for anyone to be sleeping! Tell your friends, start preparing now, and be ready to make a real difference.

About Kaggle

Kaggle is the world's largest community of data scientists and the leading platform for predictive modeling competitions. Companies, governments and researchers present datasets and problems. The world’s best data scientists then compete to produce the best solutions. Kaggle has a proven track-record of solving real-world problems across a diverse array of industries, including life sciences, financial services, energy, information technology, and retail.

About SeeClickFix

For governments, SeeClickFix acts as a completely-customizable CRM that plugs into your existing request management tools. From types of service requests to managing different watch areas, SeeClickFix helps you better maintain and fulfill 311 requests in your city.

On the citizen side, SeeClickFix leverages crowdsourcing to help both maintain the flow of incoming requests but show the public how effective you can be. When anyone in the community can report or comment on any issue, the entire group has a better perspective on what's happening--and how to fix it effectively.

Put your intelligence and your desire to make the world a better place to work. And it won't hurt to get economically rewarded at the same time!

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Neo4J is sponsoring the event with 5 free event passes to this year's Graph Connect Conference and a special late night treat in the form of energy drinks to keep the code growing strong.

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