Just noticed an event on Saturday 13 November that is likely to be of interest to some Slugger readers and contributors. (I’ve no connection with Scraperwiki or 4iP!) Free ticket booking – for hacks and hackers – over at Eventbrite. To quote from their blurb …
What? Scraperwiki, the award-winning new screen scraper and data mining tool, funded by 4iP, is putting on a one day practical hack day* in Belfast at which web developers and designers will pair up with journalists and bloggers to produce a number of projects and stories based on public data. It’s all part of the ScraperWiki UK & Ireland Hacks and Hackers tour. We would like to thank our sponsors the School of Media, Film and Journalism at the University of Ulster and Guardian Open Platform for making the event possible.
*We’re still seeking sponsors to get involved. If you think your organisation might be interested please contact aine [at] scraperwiki.com. Or get in touch with any other questions!*
Who’s it for? We hope to attract ‘hacks’ and ‘hackers’ from all different types of backgrounds: people from big media organisations, as well as individual online publishers and freelancers.
What will I get out of it? The aim is to show journalists how to use programming and design techniques to create online news stories and features; and vice versa, to show programmers how to find, develop, and polish stories and features. To see what happened at our past events in Liverpool and Birmingham visit the ScraperWiki blog.
How much? NOTHING! It’s free, thanks to our sponsors.
What should I bring? We would encourage people to come along with ideas for local ‘datasets’ that are of interest. In addition we will create a list of suggested data sets at the introduction on the morning of the event but flexibility is key for this event. If you have a laptop, please bring this too.
So what exactly will happen on the day? Armed with their laptops and WIFI, journalists and developers will be put into teams of around four to develop their ideas, with the aim of finishing final projects that can be published and shared publicly. Each team will then present their project to the whole group. Overall winners will receive a prize at the end of the day.
*Not sure what a hack day is? Let’s go with the Wikipedia definition: It “an event where developers, designers and people with ideas gather to build ‘cool stuff'”…
The Scraperwiki tour will be stopping off in Dublin on Tuesday 16 November.
Feel free to comment below and discuss potential datasets that could be mined on the day, or areas that deserve investigation.
Alan Meban. Tweets as @alaninbelfast. Blogs about cinema and theatre over at Alan in Belfast. A freelancer who writes about, reports from, live-tweets and live-streams civic, academic and political events and conferences. He delivers social media training/coaching; produces podcasts and radio programmes; is a FactCheckNI director; a member of Ofcom’s Advisory Committee for Northern Ireland; and a member of the Corrymeela Community.
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