Hackathon

Saturday, April 9 - Sunday, April 10, 2016
10:00 am - 5:00 pm next day (through the night)

external page The Laundry
3359 26th St, San Francisco, CA 94110

external page Registration

Task 1: Citizen science

Citizen Science - the direct involvement of the public in scientific research ¡ª has been part of the scientific enterprise for over a century. The internet has elevated citizen science to a new level by connecting large networks of people around the world with shared scientific interests. Projects such as Galaxy Zoo, Stardust@HOME and EyeWire have led to scientific insights which were only possible due to the involvement of citizen science. The next generation of citizen science projects will go further by distributing and opening up the entire scientific process, from the choice of topic, hypothesis generation and sample selection all the way to analysis, interpretation and dissemination. With the help of machine learning, citizen scientists will fundamentally change the way we do science. By developing new models for decision making, collaborative networks of citizen scientists may also prototype new ways of collaborating at the community, city, state and national level and thus develop new forms of government. In 2016, citizen science on the internet is just beyond the fledgling stage and creative ideas are needed to push it forward.

In this hack day participants will build their own citizen science projects.

Task 2: Home Networks 2.0

The wait is over!! The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) has finally happened. Watches, clothes, cars, door locks, coffee machines, thermostats are only a handful of examples of Internet-enabled devices. Soon, even plants will send us a tweet when they¡¯re thirsty. One critical aspect of IoT has been overlooked though: the home network (most often wireless) they connect to. Usually limited to a single (and closed) WiFi router, home networks suffer from no innovation, poor visibility, and bad performance. As an illustration, "My WiFi is not working" returns 113,000,000 Google hits...

This hackathon is about innovating within and with home networks. Making them more useful, faster or simply just more fun! So, what will you create? A new way to locate connected objects based on their WiFi footprints? Battery-powered and mobile access points that can follow you in your house to always ensure perfect connectivity? A way to detect the presence of a particular person in a given room? Or maybe just a way to finally diagnose home networks performance in real time¡­ In any case, we believe the possibilities are endless!