my name is mwd

Last weekend saw the latest Rewired State event, Rewired State: Carbon and Energy Hack Weekend. This two day event got together about 30 developers and designers to do what Rewired State events do best: take existing disconnected data sources and pull them together into something useful for the good of the general public. With people like the Cabinet Office, 10:10, and Carbon Culture providing lots of data, the weekend promised to have lots of opportunities for cool hacks and projects, and didn’t disappoint.

In total, there were over a dozen projects developed over the weekend – you can see some of them listed here. What was more impressive, as I watched the presentations at the end of the weekend was that there wasn’t a duffer in the lot. Particular highlights for me included: the Carbon Copies game that helped educate people about the typically very opaque subject of embedded Carbon costs; Social Meter, which let you compete with your friends in terms of reducing energy consumption; and the simple but beautiful Are We Saving Energy In The UK page.

For my part, I produced a couple of bits of work around the topic of public charging stations for electric vehicles. The main output was an iPhone app that takes in real-time information (where available) on public EV charging points and visualises them on a simple map, letting you see where your nearest charge point is when you’re out and about with your Brammo bike or Tesla Roadster.

You can specify a range that you think your particular vehicle will go, and it then plots the distance you can travel, which highlights some interesting coverage issues: if you have an electric motorbike (typical range about 50 odd miles) you’ll be able to get from Glasgow to Inverness, but not from Glasgow to Newcastle. Quite simple, but shows the power of a simple visualisation to demonstrate how lacking our EV infrastructure is currently.

You can read the full details of what I worked on over on the Rewired State project page.

At the end of the weekend the organisers award a small number of awards to the best projects in particular categories, and I was rather honoured that my little app was judged Best Visualisation project, particularly given the quality of the other projects people produced.

A huge thanks to the efforts of Sam Smith and Emma Mulqueeny for organising the event – the Rewired State guys do a fantastic job, and long may it continue.