I made it up to Canberra for GovHack and had an incredibly inspiring time – we heard from Dr Nicholas Gruen (chair Gov Internet 2.0 task force) on the reasons Government were engaging in this area, we heard from John Allsopp (organiser) about the reasons for running the event and how he’d managed to pull it all together in just 3 weeks – seriously amazing.

I was lucky enough to be asked to deliver the keynote – I preached – I used the words piffle and tosh and I said something about this being an important inflection point in history, where we, the geeks, had for the first time the power to actually change the world – and that we can do it without throwing stools through starbucks windows (however tempting that may be). I talked about the fact the government were in the room with us giving us the data – that they were positively encouraging us to take it and use it to better inform the electorate – how bloody impressive is that? So we mustn’t sit here and play, we need to change the world.

They did it – the winners were an amazing gang who’d not met before the event but got together and built one of the most disruptive ideas I’ve ever seen… image a world in which you could easily see and understand the links between lobbying companies, companies bidding for work and government departments…. it would make government types squirm right? It did. Lobby Clue took the main prize – there were some really impressive builds from the rest of the group that you can see over on the wiki.

Move on a week and we’re back in Melbourne at the joint Lonely Planet / GovHack hack day – called MelHack. Phew…. first external hack day I’ve run since Over The Air in London a few months ago and I’d already forgotten how much work is involved in keeping a group of about 30 people fed, watered, inspired and cool in a building that’s air-con is playing up.

Melbourne is a cool town. It’s full of the types of people that like to go to interesting events like Trampoline. But this was the first external event I’d run here, and whilst in London I’m confident enough to stick my neck out and say we’ll comfortably get 400+ people to a hack day given the budget and space – I really wasn’t sure how it was going to fly here. We didn’t have a mass of space – we ran the event at the Lonely Planet HQ in footscray – and we certainly didn’t have a massive budget – so I concentrated on quality rather than size…. and boy did we get that. Over 50 people came through the door over the weekend and 12 ideas were presented by both staff and external devs. The quality of the people and ideas was massive.

The winners built a day trip generator using Lonely Planet POI (Point of Information) data. The application is live and working – but it does tend to struggle at the moment as it’s using the anon LP API access which is heavily throttled…. but when that’s fixed it’s stunning…. all the other ideas are listed over on the wiki – and are well worth a read and a play. The presentations are also worth a watch and they’re up on YouTube now.

I’ve been asked a lot here in Oz how you organise one of these events and if it’s only certain companies that can run them – not true. Hack Days are a lot of work, but easy enough if you think about the logistics in advance and you remember one thing above all others…. it’s all about the developers. Ross Hill took a short video interview with me talking about this very point – and if you’re interested in gettting your own hack day off the ground it might be worth a watch.

The Hack Day will run out of Lonely Planet’s HQ in Footscray, and GovHack will be bringing along all of it’s data, it’s knowledge, and will be running a series of workshops and classes on how to get into that data.

We’ll be announcing the schedule of talks soon, but at the moment it’s a combination of Lonely Planet’s APIs, Open Social, Gov data and some pure inspiration – if you’ve got a burning desire to talk about something that rocks, drop us a note and we’ll add you to the list…. We’ll also be keeping a few sessions free in a unconference style.

Saturday morning will be made up of talks, both inspiring and educational – but not necessarily at the same time. Then at 2pm we’ll start the 24 hour hack before presenting back to everyone on the Sunday afternoon – the big prize from Lonely Planet? Well you’ll have to come to find out but it takes 20 boxes to remove it all and you’ll not be able to carry it with you when you leave….

More news about something funky happening on Saturday night later this week… We’ll also be letting you know about the shuttle bus we’ll run from the CBD over to footscray on the mornings of the event.

So, before the places run out (there’s less than 15 left) – register now for the Melbourne Hack Day.

(in other news Lonely Planet are sending a team to the Canberra Hack Day this weekend (30th & 31st) – see you there)

Join the teams responsible for the development of lonelyplanet.com, the Lonely Planet mobile apps and the new Lonely Planet Open Social Platform for the very first Lonely Planet Hack Day.

Fresh on the heels of a massively successful mobile hack day in London (http://overtheair.org), and our own internal hack day (see the photos and the video) we invite you to come to the Lonely Planet headquarters based in Footscray in Melbourne to spend 48 hours playing with our new API, our new Open Social platform and our rather funky content, images and maps.

This is the first time Lonely Planet has run a Hack Day here in Australia, and we believe the developers of Australia can teach the rest of the world a trick or two.

The event starts at 10am Saturday morning with a series of talks from developers on Open Social (beginner and expert sessions) and our APIs, there’ll also be space for unconference style talks and once you’ve signed up we’ll send you details of the event wiki where you can book a slot and see what others are talking about.

Saturday at 1pm 24 hours of hacking starts – right through the night at our HQ with a few hours break for a mystery event at 7pm until 10pm before heading back and burning the midnight oil (note: you’re not allowed to burn oil at the LP HQ, I’ll get told off).

Sunday at 1pm the presentations start – you’ll get 90 seconds each to present to your peers and the winners have some pretty decent prizes – not to mention all the free beer, coke and pizza on hand through-out the event.

So sign up now – there’s limited spaces for this first event – so please only do take a place if you know you can come – if you sign up and then can’t come please do let us know – matthew.cashmore@lonleyplanet.com