Good evening everyone. It is an absolute pleasure to welcome all of you to the 2017 GovHack event! This is the first time that we are hosting this international event here in Wyndham. It is one of the biggest hackathons in the world and we are very thrilled about what is in store in the next 48 hours.

Firstly I wish to acknowledge the peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which Wyndham is being built. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present.

I’d also like to acknowledge My fellow councillors, Wyndham City CEO, Kelly Grigsby and all Wyndham City staffs here today.

Also, I’d like to welcome all the volunteers, mentors and all the participants here this evening.

GovHack is an annual international event that aims to encourage and celebrate our community’s technical skills and creativity by working together with the government to develop great outcomes and innovative ideas using the government open data.

As I have said, we are excited that Wyndham is one of the host cities for this year’s GovHack here in Victoria.

We have a breadth of skills and expertise here in Wyndham and GovHack presents an opportunity for the government to collaborate with smart and talented people to explore potential solutions to some of our city’s challenges and develop projects that can make a difference to the community.

Wyndham is a rapidly changing municipality. Our growing population, and the challenges that represent, means we need to be innovative and work collaboratively to come up with new solutions.

GovHack is one way we can continue to think outside the box and to strengthen our relationship with innovative thinkers and draw on their talent and knowledge to find ways of improving our services and develop initiatives that are valuable to our community members.

Wyndham City is proud to be a part of this global push towards innovation. Everyone in our community plays a vital role and this is a fantastic way to empower them.

Some of the award-winning projects developed by ‘hackers’ as part of last year’s event included a website that calculates and reduce your risks of being involved in a car crash or your home flooding or being broken into, a visualisation that can pick the best location for a new business and an augmented reality mobile app that helps people learn about nearby wildlife, parks and landmarks.

The possibilities of what the participants can produce at the end of this event are endless and we are really looking forward to seeing the results.

On behalf of Wyndham City, I’d like to thank everyone for joining this year’s GovHack and we wish you all the best. This is such a great opportunity for everyone and just being a participant of this event is already an achievement in itself. Good luck to all of you and enjoy the next 48 hours!