Hackathons and this Google Group

[lindasee4]

Hi,

 

We have some new people who have just joined our group so I thought I would quickly clarify the purpose of this group and how this relates to the events we are holding at CASA.

 

This group started before an event that was held on 26 Sep 2013 at CASA, which was a half day workshop called Data Hacking the City. It wasn't a true hackathon in the sense of having challenges to work on but was a way of being introduced to different sources of data that CASA use in their research. Steven Gray took roughly 2/3's of the participants through an exercise on how to access and map Twitter data while Richard Milton introduced 1/3 of the group to data from London Transport, weather data, air pollution data, etc. and how you would access this. You'll have seen that Richard has posted his slides from the workshop and some resources for you in terms of accessing these different types of data. Steven will shortly post his notes on accessing Twitter data.

 

We are now holding a real hackathon from the 7 to 9 November. This is part of the ESRC's Festival of Social Science so the event is being sponsored by the ESRC and the UK Ordnance Survey.

 

You can read more about the event here: http://www.geotalisman.org/hacking-the-smart-city-7-to-9-nov-2013/ and there is a link to register. It's completely free and we will feed you.

 

We will use this google group to provide you with information about the event and to discuss our challenges. Although Richard and Steven will be showing people how to access data and use CASA technologies as they did in the half day workshop on a sort of ad hoc basis, we really want you to work on specific challenges. We've listed three on the website above but we will be developing other challenges before the event and presenting them as 'pitches' on the first evening. Then depending on what you are interested in, you will form teams and work on solutions, learning new things in the process and having fun meeting and interacting with others.

 

We'd also like to encourage you to suggest your own challenges and you can use this forum to let us know what your ideal smart city challenge might be. Can you think of an app that would make your life easier that doesn't currently exist? Are there any datasets you want to experiment with, so not just how to access a given data source but being let loose on it and see what you can do with it?

 

And if you have questions about the event, feel free to post them here.

 

Best wishes,

 

Linda