City Hall opens doors to hackers and programmers for Govathon

• Max Blau
• More than 200 attendees packed City Hall to tackle such problems as parking, homelessness, and transparency

City Hall this past weekend played host to a group of code monkeys, gadget geeks, and tech junkies for Govathon, a first-of-its-kind, 24-hour effort aimed at bringing together government officials and programmers to solve Atlanta’s various ills with technology.

City officials and Startup Atlanta, an initiative focused on entrepreneurial growth, challenged computer programmers to find creative solutions to potholes, vacant properties, parking tickets, homelessness, government transparency, and other municipal woes. In addition to boosting an already-bustling startup community, officials hope they can use techies’ know-how to find new solutions to age-old problems. And, you know, modernize government.

“The goal is to bring democracy to the Internet,” said Dustin Goodman, a software engineer and Georgia Tech student. In an age where technology is more readily available, he said, such programs will make it easier for people to use their voice in government, “instead of just going to a city hall meeting.”

The event kicked off on Friday night as City Hall department heads and other participants pitched problems to the more than 200 attendees fueled by pizza, candy, sodas, and granola bars. After a brief meet-and-greet that paired problems with programmers and designers, the teams broke out into groups to solve the city’s problems. Less than 15 hours later, they pitched 18 presentations of possible fixes to a panel of judges that included city officials, nonprofit leaders, and tech executives. The jurors included Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall, Blake Patton of the Advanced Technology Development Center, Paul Judge of Barracuda Networks, Cinda Herndon-King of United Way Atlanta, and Michelle Morgan of The Hub.