Would anyone like to be involved in co-organising a hackathon with us for the end of Cooperative Fortnight?
We’ve selected a date of July 5th and July 6th and we’re currently looking at venue options in Leeds, West Yorkshire. For the Leeds event are aiming for 50 participants and approx 10 facilitators to include mentors, judges, fire marshal, first aid, front of house.
Ticket prices are up in the air at the moment. We want to cover some of the costs but dcdc neither expect nor desire this event to be money making beyond self funding. We haven’t yet sought any external commercial sponsorship - although we may.
We would be especially interested in linking up with likewise events in other towns or cities.
We have a slack workspace for discussion that I’ll invite anyone that is interested into.
You can contact us either here, or on twitter @dcdcio, or by email if you wish - team at dcdc dot io
Generally the theme is ethical tech. We wouldn’t expect every team to create coop taxis and coop fast food and coop serverless cloud but obviously where teams are thinking of cooperativism, social impact, environmental impact etc. it’s going to be reflected in the judging.
What people would actually do is hard to predict of course. Our last event was blockchain themed so the ideas were constrained and/or helped by that fact. In the end we saw a project to protect NHS user’s data through transparent licensing, one to incentivise recycling through a Proof of Recycling consensus algorithm and another was a syndication platform for fast food delivery drivers.
Last time, we closed doors at 9PM on the Saturday and opened at 8AM on the Sunday. Staying open the whole way through is an option but we’re not sure yet…
At the Ctrl Shift Emergency Summit for Change last week, which clashed with the Worker Co-op Weekend, the Land Justice Camp, Radical Routes Gathering and several other events, it was highlighted that there is a need for a “Solidarity Calendar” - somewhere/thing that people planning such events can refer to, and add to, that lists events relating to the co-operative and solidarity economy. This would allow us to make better use of our valuable and diminishing time.
Might that be a suitable project for a hackathon? Can we adapt something that already exists?
Due to lower than expected numbers, we have decided to make the event a free-of-charge open door hackalong. This doesn’t change things significantly, except that there will no longer be an official competition element to proceedings so instead you can expect things to feel much more like an open door co-working space.
As well as being there for you, we will be there working on our own projects too. So even if you’re just curious to see what we’re up to, you can pop in at any point throughout the event.