Netherlands Hackathon 2018 - Women Tech Storm/FAQ

There might be some questions you have and you might find the answers right here.

What is a hackathon?

A hackathon is a design sprint-like event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development. The goal of a hackathon is to create usable software. Hackathons tend to have a specific focus, which can include the programming language used, the operating system, an application, an API, or the subject and the demographic group of the programmers. In other cases, there is no restriction on the type of software being created. (Read more)

Scholarships

WMNL will provide hotels and meals during the hackathon. The entrance fee for the Hackathon is free for the participants.

For air fares you can ask your local chapter for funds.

Why only women?

In the global programming community there is a gender gap. The Wikimedia community also has this gender gap, as you can read here , here and here

We see it as a part of our ongoing effort to close the gender gap on Wikimedia projects. This event is specifically to stimulate women to learn how to code with Wikimedia software.

When can I sign up?

Please register here. Please note that the amount of participants is  limited and you will receive a final confirmation of your participation before April 11th..

Who decides who joins?

We have a small selection committee and they will contact you after you sign up for the event.
We aim to design a small group of women, where 50% has Wikimedia experience and wants to learn how to code; and 50% knows how to code and wants to learn about Wikimedia.

What can you work on at the Wiki Women Tech Storm?

Wikipedia contains a wealth of information, but it is not equipped to answer difficult research questions. Questions such as "Which painter has the most street names named after her?" or "What is the largest city in the world with a female mayor?" can not be answered with one press of a button with Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's sisterproject Wikidata, a central repository for the "structured data" of Wikimedia sister projects such as Wikipedia, Wikivoyage and Wikisource, offers that possibility. By means of searches that you can build with programs like Sparql, you can quickly get answers to such questions with Wikidata.

Wikidata exists since 2012 and you can participate in various ways. Examples include matching data with external databases from e.g. museums, linking images of objects automatically to identical items in Wikidata and external databases. Develop a game that challenges other people to make such links in a playful and rewarding way. Also consider assessing and improving existing algorithms to make the search functions even smarter. Of course you can also go deeper into building Sparql queries.

Wikimedia Commons, the image bank behind Wikipedia, contains many images. It is possible to upload large bulk images at once to Wikimedia Commons. Tools are available for this, but of course uploading requires preparatory work. Because how do you ensure that meaningful texts that describe the image come with the images? How are the details of the author and the license automatically added? How do you ensure that others see and use your photos?

During the WikiVrouwen Tech Storm you can familiarize yourself with the above questions. How do you work and which tools can you use for this? Are the tools perhaps not yet optimal and can they be improved? Learn how to connect large amounts of data with smart techniques and to use them to create beautiful visualisations as in this example project 'The Sum of all knowledge'. Or, for example, how you can automatically identify objects depicted in images.

I have more questions!

Please e-mail hackathonwikimedia.nl
For press contacts, please contact coxwikimedia.nl