Local apps for communities at the Count’s Louse

Over at Connecting Bristol, a forthcoming event has been announced for the end of the month.

Entitled “Apps for Communities”, it will be held at the Council House, College Green, Bristol, BS1 5TR (map) on 28th and 29th January 2011. It is being jointly hosted by Bristol City Council, Local by Social and the Connecting Bristol team. And here’s the best bit: it’s free!

The event will explore how Apps and Widgets can be used to bring benefits to citizens, broadening social and economic inclusion and helping the whole community benefit from the power of open data. Council officers, councillors, social innovators, application developers, community developers and local residents from across Bristol and the South West are all welcome to attend.

Friday 28th will see presentations from many speakers, including:

• Emer Coleman, Director of Digital Projects at the Greater London Authority;
• Ingrid Koehler, Local Government Improvement and Development (LGID);
• Clare Reddington, Director of iShed;
• Carrie Bishop, FutureGov;
• Tim Davies, independent researcher and social entrepreneur in open data;
• Rich Watts, Director of Essex Coalition of Disabled People (ECDP) and proponent of transparency and open data in the voluntary and community sector.

There will be a welcome from Barbara Janke, the leader of Bristol City Council, and Connecting Bristol’s Stephen Hilton will chair the session.

Saturday’s session will run as a “Hackday” for developers, local people and other parties interested in working together to develop new apps for Bristol and the South West.

To find out more and to register for the event, please click here.

The event will be using the Twitter hashtags #apps4bristol and #localbysocialsw