Baltimore's Civic Hack Day tomorrow!

Open government! Open data!

These are the tech cries of the 21st century that geeks and even ordinary people are rallying around.

About 40 or so people are jamming into the Emerging Technology Center (and inside, Beehive Baltimore) in Canton tomorrow (Saturday Feb. 12) to create new websites based on the release of a trove of Baltimore City data.

A few weeks ago, Baltimore set up a website called Open Baltimore, a site that offers data and tools for creating Web applications. Data sets released include city property tax, crime, 311, parking citations, and many others. Some people have already been talking about the apps they wish to create with the data over at this discussion group.

Tickets to the free event have been sold out for a few days. But I'm pretty sure those who participate in the day -- and create a Web app based on city data -- will be willing to share their work online with everyone.

I will be there and I hope to do two things: 1) blog about some of the cool things people are working on, and 2) roll up my sleeves, fire up my laptop and maybe toss my two cents in on the creation of a cool app.

I'm excited! This could be the beginning of something awesome in the online civic life of our community.