Three fellow students in my faculty (all from different domains within said faculty) and I have started what we are calling a student collective. Named after the first letter in three of our names: Rory Eduardo Xinwei, Map_Rex, we decided to attempt some spatial analysis for the betterment of others. It got off to a rather slow start, with us trying to develop a few maps (not the prettiest ones ever produced) for the 3FM festival in Enschede. The festival is hosted by a different Dutch city every year to raise money for developing countries in order to mitigate infant mortality.
Now that I have some more time, we are trying to organize the Enschede event for International Open Data Hackathon 2013. So far the space has been booked, invitations sent via Facebook, and Eventbrite. I also updated the Enschede2013 entry with a few minor edits from what Dave Borghuis posted to include a OSM map of the location, and a link to Map_Rex on twitter, etc…
The event will be loosely organized with myself and fellow Map_Rex colleagues in the vein of an “unconference”. We will just trying to start things off by organizing the event, and introducing people to some of the basic principles of open data and hacakathon events. For many of the attendees this will be their first event of this nature and they will be from countries where even the word hacker still has a negative connotation to it. A valuable resource from the International Open Data Hackathon wiki was used to help create this event found in this google dive doc. The last few steps are:
- Create an agenda.
- Secure a projector or “beamer” as the Dutch like to call it
- Create a DropBox or Google Drive account to facilitate the sharing of information
- Organize a few ideas on projects people can undertake as examples to get people’s motors running
- Send reminders to the attendees about the event
Well here’s hoping for a success event! Pictures and a debrief to be posted shortly after the event.
Rory Patrick Nealon 