We’re happy to announce our first Hacks Meet Hackers event for students, to take place in Liverpool on Wednesday December 8, 2010 from 9.30am to 5pm at Liverpool John Moores University’s Art and Design Academy.

In partnership with Open Labs, we’re putting on this event for student developers and journalists from LJMU’s School of Journalism and other departments including the School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences.

So what’s this hack day all about? It’s a practical event at which web developers and designers will pair up with journalists and bloggers to produce a number of projects and stories based on public data.

Who’s it for? We hope to attract ‘hacks’ and ‘hackers’ from all different types of backgrounds – students with skills in journalism, data visualisation, designers, programmers, statistics, games developers etc.

What will you get out of it? The aim is to show journalists how to use programming and design techniques to create online news stories and features; and vice versa, to show programmers how to find, develop, and polish stories and features.

What should participants bring? We would encourage people to come along with ideas for local ‘datasets’ that are of interest. In addition we will create a list of suggested data sets at the introduction on the morning of the event but flexibility is key for this event. If you have a laptop, please bring this too.

But what exactly will happen on the day itself? Armed with their laptops and WIFI, journalists and developers will be put into teams of around four to develop ideas, with the aim of finishing final projects that can be published and shared publicly. Each team will then present their project to the whole group.

Overall winners will receive a prize at the end of the day. Food and drink will be provided during the day!
Any more questions? Please get in touch via aine[at]scraperwiki.com.