[okfn-za] Cape Town Science Hack Day

Thu Jan 19 08:26:55 UTC 2012

Dear everyone,

See below for an advert for the upcoming science hack day in Cape Town.  You're welcome to attend! Also, if there are any sources of data other forms of open science that you recommend we mention to the participants, let me know and I'll make sure to include it in the resources.

Cheers,

Carolina

Science Hack Day is coming to Cape Town!

Science Hack Day Cape Town is the first Science Hack Day in Africa. We have therefore adopted the theme of Hacking science for development! 

WHAT IS SCIENCE HACK DAY?

The mission of Science Hack Day is to get excited and make things with science! A Hack Day is a 48-hour event that brings together designers, developers, scientists and other geeks in the same physical space for a brief but intense period of collaboration, hacking, and building ‘cool stuff’. By collaborating on focused tasks during this short period, small groups of hackers are capable of producing remarkable results!

WHAT’S A HACK?

A hack is a quick solution to a problem – maybe not the most elegant solution, but often the cleverest. On the web, mashups are a common example of hacking: mixing up data from different sources in new and interesting ways.

WHO IS THIS FOR?

If you’re an amateur coder, designer, scientist, hacker or just an enthusiastic person with good ideas, Science Hack Day is for you.

WHY CAPE TOWN?

After London in 2010, San Francisco in 2010, Cincinatti, Mexico City and San Francisco in 2011, Science Hack Day is coming to Cape Town!

With four tertiary level education institutions (UCT, UWC, CPUT, SU) and national research agencies (SKA Africa, SAAO, CHPC, iThemba Labs, SANSA, ALC, SANAP, SACEMA) in the region, science is alive in Cape Town!

Add to that a vibrant design community that got us the title of 2014 World Design Capital under the same theme of design to transform lives, and you could be part of something really new and different! Bring science and design together with African ingenuity. Who knows what could come out of it?

HOW AND HOW MUCH?

The event is FREE and we will feed you! You just need to be among the first 50 people to register at:http://scihackct.eventbrite.com/

I WANT TO PROPOSE SOMETHING...

Great! If you know a really cool technology that you want to talk about or an interesting dataset or even a science project you would like to tell us about, let us know! Contact us at scihackcpt at gmail.com and we'll get in touch!

WHEN AND WHERE?

28-29 January 2012

African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS)
6 Melrose Road
Muizenberg 7945

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

http://capetown.sciencehackday.com/
scihackcpt at gmail.com
@SciHackCT on twitter