Calling all hackers, coders and creative collaborators - Manchester needs you to shape the future of the digital city.

For the first time ever, the City of Manchester invites you to dig underneath its digital skin. FutureEverything, Open Data Manchester and Manchester City Council are looking for experts and innovators to hack, code, programme and experiment with the city's sets of open data to build new applications and develop future services.

Utilising the open data sets from DataGM made available by Manchester City Council and public sector partners, participants are welcome to produce anything they wish - develop applications to help people find their way around, stay safe, discover new experiences and everything and anything in between. All data is released under the Open Government Licence.

Taking place at MadLab in the heart of Manchester's Northern Quarter on Saturday 17th November, the Manchester Hackathon is set to be an intense, productive and exciting collaboration between the brightest minds in software development and data processing. Entries from both teams and individuals are welcome, and there are cash prizes to be won for the best product at the end of the session, including;

• Grand Prize - £4,600*
• Best Under 21's Creation - £600
• Best Visualisation - £600
• Best Locative Application - £600
• Developer's Prize - £600
• Best Solution for an Identified Problem - £600

The prizes will be selected by a panel of independent industry experts, including Dave Carter (MDDA), Lou Cordwell (magneticNorth) and Andrew MacKenzie (Open Mercia).

The Hackathon takes place on Saturday 17th November 9am - 7pm at MadLab (36 - 40 Edge St, Northern Qtr, Manchester M4 1HN), with a warmup and networking session beforehand at MDDA (Lower Ground Floor, 117-119 Portland St, Manchester, M1 6ED) on Friday 16th November 6.30 - 8.30pm.

The event is completely free to enter and open to all.

www.futureeverything.org | www.opendatamanchester.org.uk | @FuturEverything | #futr |

FutureEverything was founded in 1995, it is Manchester's award winning internationally respected festival of ideas and digital invention. It is hailed by The Guardian as one of top ten ideas festivals in the world (February 2012).

FutureEverything brings the future to Manchester with inspiring live experiences and industry events, engaging a wide audience and affiliating its partners with the very best in digital innovation. For almost twenty years FutureEverything has been at the heart of the digital debate, inspiring thinkers, city makers, developers, coders, artists and musicians to experiment and collaborate. 

The next FutureEverything festival will be Thursday 21 - Sunday 24 March 2013.

The Manchester Hackathon is partially funded under the ICT Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme by the European Community.