SNCF Hackathon Transilien

SNCF, the French national rail company, ran an open data hackathon last weekend. I didn’t know about it in advance and anyway the schedule at the moment was such that there was no way I could have made it without a lot more notice but it struck me as interesting that they did it.

You can find the SNCF’s open data page here. Transport for London do something similar and I’ve seen some very interesting map projects come out of that. I’ve also plaintively wailed for similar access to Dublin Bus’s data.

There’s a lot of things different people can do with different data and they don’t always work for your company. I think it’s interesting to see the transport companies doing something, and some very interesting stuff has been done with available data in the aviation sector too (Flight Radar 24 is a key example).

However, I hadn’t come across a company actually running an open hackathon on their data so this weekend’s event in Paris – it focussed on transilien services which is commuter rail in the Ile de France area around Paris – was an interesting development. I’d keep an eye open for similar events and try to get there in the future if I can hang the small details together.