h4d2 participation

We are pleased to present H4D2, a hackathon put on by the University in Birmingham, England. I’m thrilled about this event for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is how much research and forethought has gone into preparing for the event. Just some of my favorite rockstart attendees are Christopher Brewster, Seyyed Shah, Smari McCarthy, Sara Farmer, Fran Boon, and Chris Foote. Special attention has been paid to what the problem space looks like, where technology might be applied, and how to break challenges into chunks for processing. I’m curious to see how this much front-loading affects the vibe and output products of the event. We often struggle to see how we can shoe-horn the outputs from these events into existing systems – sometimes with great success, but more often without – and to have such a solid grasp of ability and actuality gives me great hope in the outcomes.

This also would set the tone for a much more fluid interaction between academia, digital humanitarians, and traditional response. H4D2 provides space for history and innovation to stand side by side, as they should, and see disruptive technologies address long-standing and very complex problems.

Aston University and the University of Warwick are happy to announce the Hackathon for Disaster Response, a 2-day event to bring together software developers and emergency management experts to hack out solutions to disaster-related problems. We will focus specifically on data available via social media, and on structured data (open data, linked data) available from a variety of sources. This event is sponsored as part of the Disaster 2.0 project. – from h4d2.eu

http://h4d2register.eventbrite.com/

I do hope you’ll join us. If you can’t, please get the word out about this event. I will be there, along with Sara Farmer. If you instead find yourself in New York City that weekend, please attend the Social Good Summit hackathon GWOB has teamed up with AT&T and Ericsson to put on. We’ll be live casting between the events, so we can still create amazing things for the world together.