The first-ever Startup Weekend GOV is taking place at Seattle City Hall on April 27-29th. Participants gather Friday evening to pitch ideas for Web and mobile apps that integrate open government data sets (http://data.seattle.gov, http://data.wa.gov and http://datakc.org), improve public safety and/or generally improve the lives of Washington residents. One Bus Away is a great example of such an application. Everyone breaks into teams and designers, programmers, and non-technical teammates work at City Hall throughout the weekend. On Sunday evening, every team demos their apps and a panel of judges provides feedback. Seattle Channel will be filming the event and government officials like WA CIO Bharat Shyam and Mayor Mike McGinn, in addition to the city IT department, will be on hand to answer questions and interact with teams.

Tickets are available at http://seattlegov.startupweekend.org. There is special student pricing. The ticket includes food, snacks, and drinks throughout the weekend in addition to event swag and unlimited coffee.

There is also a FREE event at Seattle City Hall this Thursday, April 19th at 6pm with presentations by Google and Socrata (which powers all the government data sets) on working with their respective APIs. Light refreshments will be served, and there will be time for mingling with some government officials and talking data sets afterwards. Register (free) at http://seattlegovswgtugbootcamp.eventbrite.com/.