Editor’s note: Forward Triangle: Triangle Entrepreneurship Week concludes Friday with the NC DataPalooza today at Red Hat. Ian Henshaw, a participant on the winning team a year ago and a judge at today’s finals, discusses in a story posted first at ExitEvent why entrepreneurs should be interested in open data. Henshaw is managing partner of Technology Tank LLC, co-developer of Raleigh’s new parking app and an organizer of this year’s NC DataPalooza.

RALEIGH, N.C. – This Friday, the annual NC DataPalooza competition culminates with the crowning of the winner.

Actually, no crown is given, but this is the end of a huge effort and one team will win after six months of hard work. I hope that team will go on to create something great for the region.

To make that happen, there have been months of planning by the organizers—a data tiger team curating open data sets, an open data boot camp and an open data Startup Weekend—Health DataJam. The teams spent months honing their ideas for pitches to the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network and three winning teams spent one month in an accelerator with help from Blackstone’s business mentors and fellows.

I have a unique perspective on NC DataPalooza. Last year, I was a participant on the winning team, which has since developed a parking app for downtown Raleigh and raised a small amount of “seed funding” from the City of Raleigh. We continue to move forward. This year, I will judge the three finalist teams—LocalMedAdvisor, Freewheeling NC and Stone Soup — at Friday’s event.

By participating in NC DataPalooza, I was introduced to a truly large cross section of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Triangle—entrepreneurs, investors, academics, government workers and corporate players. I don’t think it’s possible to get this sort of exposure in six months through any other program.

From the first NC DataPalooza event—the DataJam—I was part of an impressive group of entrepreneurs, developers, designers, etc. who wanted to be a part of something bigger and help develop an idea that would make a civic impact using open data. I signed up for a few ideas, but one idea particularly struck me—how to solve the problem of finding parking spots downtown. It’s a problem I’ve heard many complain about, so it struck me as something that could be improved.

The full post can be read online at ExitEvent.

Note: ExitEvent is a partner of WRAL TechWire.