November 19, 2011

Africa@Home Data/Science Hackfest 2011

19-20 November 2011

Where science, society and technology ignite!

What’s it all about?

Volunteers on the Web can now help researchers with a host of scientific and social challenges.

From collecting data about government spending to folding proteins to simulating the future of our planet’s climate.

The scope for citizens and schools to benefit from all this online science is enormous.

But there’s a catch. This is a grassroots movement, so it needs YOUR help!

If you are a scientist, if you have programming and web-design skills you’d like to contribute to science, or if you are just passionate about the idea of volunteer science on the Web, then you should come!

Who’s organizing this?

Kindly hosted by AIMS, the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences, in Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa. With participation of the Department of Computer Science at UCT, the Citizen Cyberscience Centre, Connexions, the Open Knowledge Foundation, P2PU, Siyavula and SACEMA, through the support of the Shuttleworth Foundation.

What will I get out of it?

This is a two-day event, and the goal is to learn about some cool science, play with some neat software, and above all meet people with a passion for public participation in cutting-edge research. We will form teams and work together to design and produce some really nifty demos and prototypes.

The sort of projects you can work on will be based on the real needs of scientists, many of whom will be actively participating. Concretely, you might get involved in…

Working on a mobile-phone-based scheme for monitoring the spread of AIDS in Southern Africa.
Building an interface for a project that will allow anyone on the Web to help digitize historical documents.
Designing a course to help others create their own citizen science project on the Web.
Turning an online project for simulating the spread of malaria in Africa into an educational tool that teachers could use in a high-school math class.

…by all means bring your own ideas for projects to the event, as well!

AIMS ECOSYSTEM