First NBIC Hackathon big success

15 Apr 2010

Prior to the NBIC Conference 2010, the first NBIC Hackathon was organised to tackle a number of interesting problems.
Hackathon? A marathon for hackers? Basically, that is what it boils down to. In a Hackathon, enthousiastic programmers are 'locked up' together to work on challenges that require input from different areas of expertise. As such, it is perfectly suited to address 'dreams' - solutions or tools that many people would like to have, but fall outside the scope of the individual projects. Creating a dedicated environment to work with others on such tools is the hallmark of a Hackathon. For the first NBIC edition on March 26 and 27, approximately 15 participants gathered in Utrecht for two days of hard work. A rewarding enterprise, as concrete results could be communicated on the second day of the NBIC Conference 2010. The Hackathon delivered, for example, a new tool to add background information to PDF files using a special PDF viewer and information from the Concept Wiki. Prior to the Hackathon, this was only available for text on web pages. Another example is the use of context to decide the right meaning of terms that have multiple meanings and to use that decision to display only the relevant additional information in a pop-up.

Judging from the response of the participants and the organisers, we can expect multiple editions of the Hackathon in the near future. Interested in participating? Contact Rob Hooft, rob.hooft@removethis.nbic.nl, to stay informed.

For more information, pictures and videos: https://wiki.nbic.nl/index.php/March_2010_Hackathon

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