[okfn-labs] Gauging hack day interest: London and One Health

Thu Nov 22 20:31:11 UTC 2012

Hi Labs folk, 

I am possibly planning a hack event in the new year in London on the subject of One Health. [1][2]

The general gist is to bring together researchers from some of the Bloomsbury colleges [3] and developers/info architects as an introduction to the world of hackdays and to foster some relationships between devs and epidemiologists, researchers, PhD candidates and others.

There are massively important initiatives happening in the world of health,[4] and a lot of the data around is messy or under-used, and I think a hack day would be a good forum to kick off ideas and show the interest of open-source devs. The kinds of themes include:

* zoonotic diseases (diseases passed from animals to people)
* emerging diseases
* climate change
* urbanisation
* movement of livestalk and wildlife in changing environments

and more...

My wife (doing her PhD in epidemiology at RVC) brought this up when I ran hack days for a startup, and said she wished she could get that kind of applied focus on some of the problems they're working on. Why not? It sounds like a good challenge, and I'm sure there is interest out there.

So, would you be interested in a hack day, in London possibly around Bloomsbury, to work on diverse data sources?

[1]: http://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/
[2]: http://www.onehealthinitiative.com/
[3]: http://www.bloomsbury.ac.uk/
[4]: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/44327/

-- 
Zach Beauvais | @zbeauvais (http://twitter.com/zbeauvais)
z.beauvais at gmail.com (mailto:z.beauvais at gmail.com)
http://zachbeauvais.com

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