Simon Willison's Weblog: hackday

They Write For You

2010-02-02T09:27:40+00:00

I helped put together this visualisation of stories written by MPs for various newspapers at last Friday’s ’Hackers and Hacks" hack day.

Tags: hackday, mps, newspapers, politics, projects, visualisations

This shouldn't be the image of Hack Day

2009-10-19T22:22:34+00:00

I love hack days. I was working in the vicinity of Chad Dickerson when he organised the first internal Yahoo! Hack Day back in 2005, and I've since participated in hack day events at Yahoo!, Global Radio and the Guardian. I've also been to every one of Yahoo!'s Open Hack Day events in London. They're fantastic, and the team that organises them should be applauded.

As such, I care a great deal about the image of hack day - and the videos that emerged from last weekend's Taiwan Hack Day are hugely disappointing.

(These are still images from the video - the original has been taken down).

Seriously, what the hell?

I've heard arguments that this kind of thing is culturally acceptable in Taiwan - in fact it may even be expected for technology events, though I'd love to hear further confirmation. I don't care. The technology industry has a serious, widely recognised problem attracting female talent. The ratio of male to female attendants at most conferences I attend is embarassing - An Event Apart last week in Chicago was a notable and commendable exception.

Our industry is still young. If we want an all-encompassing technology scene, we need to actively work to cultivate an inclusive environment. This means a zero tolerance approach to this kind of entertainment. Booth babes, tequila girls, and scantily clad gyrating women simply set the wrong tone, here or abroad. Heck, this isn't just about offending women - many guy geeks I know would be mortified by this kind of thing.

Hack days are a celebration of ingenuity and creativity. Past US hack days have featured performances from Beck and Girl Talk, both of whom embody the creative spirit of the event. Sexy dancing girls? Not so much.

I'm not the only one who's disappointed.

Caterina Fake:

@Yahoo, for shame : http://flic.kr/p/78btX1 I'm frankly disgusted.

Chad Dickerson:

i am *so* disappointed: http://flic.kr/p/78btX1. remember, a team of women delivered the winning hack at the 1st one:http://bit.ly/FokfF

There was a flurry of activity about this on Twitter yesterday. I sat on this entry for most of today, partly because writing this kind of thing is really hard but also because I was hoping someone at Yahoo! would wake up and release some kind of statement. So far, nothing.

Update (1:30am): Chris Yeh of YDN has responded with an appropriately worded apology.

Tags: conferences, events, hackday, hackgirls, taiwan, womenintechnology, yahoo

Hack Day tools for non-developers

2009-07-28T14:23:53+00:00

We're about to run our second internal hack day at the Guardian. The first was an enormous amount of fun and the second one looks set to be even more productive.

There's only one rule at hack day: build something you can demonstrate at the end of the event (Powerpoint slides don't count). Importantly though, our hack days are not restricted to just our development team: anyone from the technology department can get involved, and we extend the invitation to other parts of the organisation as well. At the Guardian, this includes journalists.

For our first hack day, I put together a list of "tools for non-developers" - sites, services and software that could be used for hacking without programming knowledge as a pre-requisite. I'm now updating that list with recommendations from elsewhere. Here's the list so far:

Freebase

Originally a kind of structured version of Wikipedia, Freebase changed its focus last year towards being a "social database about things you know and love". In other words, it's the most powerful OCD-enabler in the history of the world. Create your own "Base" on any subject you like, set up your own types and start gathering together topics from the millions already available in Freebase - or add your own. Examples include the Battlestar Galactica base, the Tall Ships base and the fabulous Database base. If you are a developer the tools in the Make Things with Freebase section are top notch.

Dabble DB

Dabble is a weird combination of a spreadsheet, an online database and a set of visualisation tools. Watch the 8 minute demo to get an idea of how powerful this is - you can start off by loading in an existing spreadsheet and take it from there. You'll need to sign up for the free 30 day trial.

Google Docs

You can always build a hack in Excel, but Google Spreadsheets is surprisingly powerful and means that you can collaborate with others on your hack (including developers, who can use the Google Docs API to get at the data in your spreadsheet). Check out the following tutorials, which describe ways of using Google Spreadsheets to scrape in data from other webpages and output it in interesting formats:

There's also a simple way to create a form that submits data in to a Google Spreadsheet.

Yahoo! Pipes

Visual tools for combining, filtering and modifying RSS feeds. Combine with the large number of full-content feeds on guardian.co.uk for all sorts of interesting possibilities. Here's a tutorial that incorporates Google Docs as well.

Google My Maps

Google provide a really neat interface for adding your own points, lines and areas to a Google Map. Outputs KML, a handy file format for carting geographic data around between different tools.

If you already have a KML or GeoRSS feed URL from somewhere (e.g. the output of a Yahoo! Pipe), you can paste it directly in to the Google Maps search box to see the points rendered on a map.

Google SketchUp

A simple to use 3D drawing package that lets you create 3D models of real-world buildings and then import them in to Google Earth.

OpenStreetMap

Try your hand at some open source cartography on OpenStreetMap, the geographic world's answer to Wikipedia. If you have the equipment you can contribute GPS traces, otherwise there's a clever online editor that will let you trace out roads from satellite photos - or you could just make sure your favourite pub is included on the map. The export tools can provide vector or static maps, and if you export as SVG you can further edit your map in Illustrator or Inkscape.

CloudMade Maps

Commercial tools built on top of OpenStreetMap, the most exciting of which allows you to create your own map theme by setting your preferred colours and line widths for various types of map feature.

Many Eyes

IBM Research's suite of data visualisation tools, with a wiki-style collaboration platform for publishing data and creating visualisations.

Dapper

Dapper provides a powerful tool for screen scraping websites, without needing to write any code. Output formats include RSS, iCalendar and Google Maps.

TiddlyWiki

TiddlyWiki is a complete wiki in a single HTML file, which you can save locally and use as a notebook, collaboration tool and much more. There's a large ecosystem of plugins and macros which can be used to extend it with new features - see TiddlyVault for an index.

WolframAlpha

The "computational knowledge engine" with the hubristic search-based interface, potentially useful as a source of data and a tool for processing and visualising that data.

Tumblr

Useful as both an input and an output for feeds processed using other tools, and with a smart bookmarklet for collecting bits and pieces from around the web.

The UCSB Toy Chest

An outstanding list of tools that people "without programming skills (but with basic computer and Internet literacy) can use to create interesting projects", compiled by the English department at UC Santa Barbara.

Your help needed

There must be dozens, if not hundreds of useful tools missing from the above. Tell me in the comments and I'll add them to the list.

Tags: freebase, google, google-maps, guardian, hackday, mapping, nondevelopers, openstreetmap, pipes, sketchup, tools, yahoo-pipes, computer-literacy

Results from Hack Day at The Guardian

2008-11-19T09:57:36+00:00

Results from Hack Day at The Guardian

A full list of hacks from last week’s hack day.

Tags: hackday, the-guardian

Notes from Hack Day at The Guardian

2008-11-18T23:42:46+00:00

Notes from Hack Day at The Guardian

Our first hack day was a ridiculous amount of fun. Matt’s write-up includes a 15 minute highlight video, which includes my 90 second presentation of my crowdsourcing SVG-powered parliamentary constituencies hack.

Tags: hackday, hacks, matt-mcalister, svg, the-guardian

Hack Day at the Guardian

2008-11-18T17:58:26+00:00

Hack Day at the Guardian

Video of the demos from the first Hack Day at the Guardian. I presented a crowdsourcing app I used to collect annotations for an SVG map of the UK.

Tags: guardian, hackday, svg

Freebase Hack Day

2008-10-24T00:06:06+00:00

Freebase Hack Day

I’m finding Freebase increasingly interesting at the moment, and their public hack day on the 8th November in San Francisco looks like it could be a lot of fun. They’ll be previewing Acre, a new server-side JavaScript application platform targeted at building Freebase powered applications. Hit “view source” at the bottom of the hack day site to see what an Acre app looks like.

Tags: acre, events, freebase, hackday, javascript, san-francisco

I can't believe it's all over!

2007-06-18T22:16:27+00:00

I can't believe it's all over!

Hack Day London rocked.

Tags: hackday, hackdaylondon, tom-coates

A Hack for Europe!

2007-04-18T23:24:45+00:00

A Hack for Europe!

Signups are now open for Hack Day Europe, on June 16th and 17th. You need to apply for an invitation.

Tags: bbc, bbcbackstage, hackday, tom-coates, yahoo

Hack Day 2007 - get your diaries out

2007-03-29T14:24:42+00:00

Hack Day 2007 - get your diaries out

Yahoo! UK and the BBC are hosting a public hack day on the weekend of June 16th/17th at Alexandra Palace, complete with a concert from a “top secret” band. The US hack day surprise performance was Beck.

Tags: bbc, hackday, yahoo