Are you ready for International Open Data Hackathon Day on December 3?

This year it’s easier than ever to put your open-data efforts in the spotlight for all to see. BuzzData makes publishing and coordinating your hackathon projects a snap.

Here are 6 great reasons to use BuzzData to organize your HackFest 2011 projects:

1) BuzzData has an easy-to-use interface that non-coders can contribute to.

This is important for making HackFest as inclusive as possible, and engaging journalists, politicians and the general public. It’s all well and good to encourage everyone to participate, but if your Mom doesn’t know how to use ScraperWiki or read Python, chances are you’re going to have a hard time getting her interested in your open-data project unless we lower the tech barrier a bit.

BuzzData lets you publish data with plenty of room to explain its significance, where it came from, and what you plan to do with it in plain English. Anyone can add their $0.02 to your work and join in the discussion. People who might not necessarily know how to make an app with your data could still very easily look it over and come up with ideas on what to do with it next. 

2) BuzzData accepts ANY file type under 500MB.

That’s right - BuzzData lets you upload just about any file, as long as it’s under the file size limit. So bring your .pdfs, .docs and GIS data on board — it’s a one-stop drag & drop, easy enough for anyone to use.

3) BuzzData’s versioning tracks who did what to the data.

What better way to show the evolution of a data source from unusable .pdf to a nice clean dataset than by uploading the original source file and adding subsequent versions on top (no need for extra file names or cluttered FTP servers)?

This is also a great way to get a poorly formatted data source online and solicit help from people to clean it up. Just upload it to BD and share it with your community!

4) BuzzData lets you clone and link datasets.

If you see some data on BuzzData you’d like to work on yourself, clone it and build your own Hack Day project with it. By cloning the data, you preserve its connection to the original source, thus helping others keep track of how the data is evolving and where it originally came from.

You can also link unrelated datasets to each other so that others can keep track of which datasets you’re using for a single project.

5) BuzzData has a public API for developers.

For developers who want to pull and update data quickly, BuzzData also has a beta API on Github, which you can use as a no-muss, no-fuss data-storage target for your open-data apps. (BuzzData users can access their API keys under their Profile Settings.)

6) This year, BuzzData has a real-time updating public page for HackFest 2011!

We’ve created a HackFest 2011 (odhd) Topic page on BuzzData! Now when you publish ODHD-related datasets you plan to work during the event, you can tag it with the “HackFest 2011” topic and it will be added to this page, which you and your friends can follow to stay updated on the day’s developments.

Are you excited yet? We are! Get moving and get your HackFest 2011 data & projects on BuzzData!

Learn all about how to use BuzzData to put your data projects in the spotlight. 

And don’t forget to tag your data with the ‘Hackfest 2011’ topic on BuzzData so it gets added to our live HackFest 2011 activity feed and public page!

Have fun on Hack Day!

The BuzzData Team